One Geek

Tonight looking through my photos I am missing Nagaland for the first time since I got back to Australia..

Found this interesting article about Nagaland.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmitted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmitted into a power that can move the world.

It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.

A ”No” uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a ”Yes” merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.

We must become the change we want to see.

If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today.

To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall — think of it, ALWAYS.

God comes to the hungry in the form of food.

Hicks to serve nine months of a seven year sentence. No time off for his five year and four months in Guantanamo Bay. Nine months makes sure that he will be in prison until after the election.

60 Days or less until he comes back to Australia.
Do you think someone will be throwing a welcome home party for the man?

Found this on Steve’s blog

This is true religion. True religion will not let us fall asleep in the comfort of our freedom. Love thy neighbor is not a piece of advice. It’s a command. And that means a lot. That means a lot. That means that in the global village we’re gonna have to start loving a whole lot more people – that’s what that means. His truth is marching on.

And to those in the church who still sit in judgment on the AIDS emergency, let me climb into the pulpit for just one moment. Because whatever thoughts we have about God, who he is or even if God exists, most will agree that God has a special place for the poor.

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house.
God is where the opportunity is lost and lives are shattered.
God is with the mother who has infected her child with the virus that will take both their lives.
God is under the rubble and the cries we hear during war time.
God, my friends, is with the poor.
And God is with us, if we are with them.

Taken from DATA

As much as I don’t want India to be kicked out of the World Cup I really enjoyed watching Bangladesh defeat them, and I would like Bangladesh to keep playing this World Cup. I would love them to upset some other big teams like Australia.

Well I think the lesser of two evils won the election today. I hope that was the case.

I was actually pretty sad to hear today about Fred Nile getting in again. My reason for this is his recent proposal to ban Muslim immigration temporarily. I am annoyed at that for two reasons. The first is just that I think it is wrong to discriminate against a religious group particularly to isolate such a large group of people. This though is not as annoying as the misunderstanding of the powers of the state and federal governments. The State Goverment has almost no power what so ever over immigration and yet Fred Nile is making comments about it to get elected in NSW.

The greens managed to get 13% of the lower house vote in my electoral seat matching labour’s 13%.

We desperately need gender equality.

At an anti-slavery event I went to today I found out that their are over 27 million slaves. Of these 80% are women that’s 17.6 million women. Out of these women the sample that the speaker had talked to (which would of been hundreds at least), all had been used as sex slaves. This is simply unacceptable.

We need to change this world. We need to change the way men look at women. How is it that we somehow have developed a norm that sexual exploitation is acceptable. Now I know it is not only one way, and I know that some males face sexual exploitation from both men and women. The majority of the abuse seems to be of women by men though so that is why I am focusing there.

I don’t know how exactly we work on such a huge issue. I imagine that the place to start is to refuse to be part of exploitation and degradation of women. Some of it is very subtle, some less so.

As an Australian male I have heard far too many degrading remarks about women. I have been silent and even participated in too many of these conversations. I wonder if I would have the guts to walk away from such conversations or speak up. I know that as of today I haven’t got a good record. I want to fix that.

The next big topic in this area is sex. With my Christian upbringing I find it a little difficult to talk about sex openly. I feel like there is so much judgement attached to it, and guilt as well. I think I need to dedicate more time if I am going to blog properly about it. It’s a cope out I know, but don’t want get judgemental, and I don’t want google to index me saying something stupid on this topic. So stay tuned. If you really want a big post on sex and gender equality comment here and I will do it.

I need a good social justice oriented thesis for next semester. My current idea is far too infrastructure dependent being a processes for making digital x-ray storage cheaper.

-update-
I am also looking for jobs for a social justice junkie computer geek based in Sydney for now, and anywhere in the world from the end of next year.

It’s alive and well. All too well. I saw it India, and it happens here in Australia too behind closed doors. It makes me angry.

I was interested to see if TEAR had much on their website about TB. Google gave me 103 hits from TEAR on TB. Pretty good I reckon.

I received a link to this very good website on TB the TB Survival Project. If you want to know more about TB it is a fantastic place to start.

You owe it to yourself to read some of the stories they have here, this one in particular is quite interesting.

Today is World TB Day.

According to a recent WHO the global tuberculosis (TB) epidemic has levelled off for the first time since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared TB a public health emergency in 1993. The Global Tuberculosis Control Report released today by WHO finds that the percentage of the world’s population struck by TB peaked in 2004 and then held steady in 2005.

Some interesting messages of hope are coming from the WHO which you can read here.

UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon

“We are currently seeing both the fruits of global action to control TB and the lethal nature of the disease’s ongoing burden. Almost 60 per cent of TB cases worldwide are detected, and out of those, the vast majority are cured. Over the past decade, 26 million patients have been placed on effective TB treatment thanks to the efforts of governments and a wide range of partners.”

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Executive Director, Sir Richard Feachem

“More than 1 million people are alive today thanks to the hard work of national tuberculosis programs who receive Global Fund resources and are supported by strong partners like the World Health Organization, Stop TB Partnership, the Global Drug Facility and the Green Light Committee. However, TB still kills 1.6 million people each year. We must step up the fight by mobilizing even more resources in order to expand and improve the quality of existing programs to treat both ordinary and drug resistant TB, and to make greater investments in HIV/TB co-infection interventions.”

UNFPA Executive Director/UN Under-Secretary-General, Ms Thoraya Ahmed Obaid

“We call on all countries to scale up TB diagnosis and treatment, especially as a key component of their maternal health services. Tuberculosis is taking a heavy toll on women, affecting them in the prime of their lives, threatening their health security and that of their families. We at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) call on all countries to scale up TB diagnosis and treatment, especially as a key component of reproductive and maternal health services.”

World Bank, Vice President for Human Development, Joy Pumaphi

“Given the world’s commitment to halve TB deaths by 2015, the development community must do more to better finance TB control interventions, and the health systems necessary to reduce the deadly impact of this disease and others. While welcoming progress in better TB detection and treatment in a growing number of countries, the World Bank is re-doubling its efforts to help poor countries strengthen their health systems as its best contribution to combating TB worldwide, while encouraging donors to commit to long-term predictable donor assistance for health. In this way, the Bank is committed to help developing countries achieve better TB results in Africa and other regions that are not currently on track to meet their 2015 TB goals, a task complicated by TB’s co-epidemic association with HIV and AIDS, and the emergence of extensively drug-resistant forms of the disease.”

Just read some interesting information on Multiple Drug Resistant(MDR) and Extremly Drug Resistant TB(XDR). Here are some quotes from one of the pages I was looking at.

10%
Proportion of all new cases of active TB resistant to at least one anti-TB drug

420,000
Estimated annual prevalence of MDR-TB (2005)

10,000$
Cost of curing one case of MDR-TB

6-59%
Range of cure rates for MDR-TB treatment

39%
Reported prevalence of MDR-TB in South African study

80%
KZN TB patients also infected with HIV

“I’ve been to some of the worst places in the world dealing with TB. This is the worst epidemic I’ve seen.”
- Dr. Jim Yong Kim, Partners in Health, following recent trip to Lesotho

“We are dealing with a type of TB that is virtually untreatable.”
- Dr Paul Nunn, WHO Stop TB Department

[XDR-TB is]…a manifestation of failure of good practice in TB control
- Dr Mario Raviglione, Director, WHO Stop-TB Department

We need to pay attention to XDR-TB, but we do not need to panic
- Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institutes of Health (US)

“This [XDR TB] is very
worrying, especially when mixed with HIV
- Dr Paul Nunn,
WHO

“XDR TB is very serious - we are potentially getting close to a bacteria that we have no tools, no weapons against”

- Paul Sommerfeld,
Stop TB

One in Ten Page

I know it all seems a bit depressing but I think it’s important to be informed. I think that being aware about MDR and XDR TB is useful if you are doing any lobbying about the Millennium Development Goals or against drug company patents.