One Geek

I find it interesting, the people who I see and know who are doing real good are so uncertain about the amount of good they are doing, and even their own motives. It’s strange, this somewhat reassures me in my life. I really hope I am not ever too comfortable or complacent, until I am in the next life. I am hoping that my current work which doesn’t really engage my central passions, is actually going to fund a really useful and good thesis. At least lots of my work is on a project aiming to improve public transport, which should fulfil a cardinal rule of aid and development of “first do no harm”. Though the amount of paper I am using on this job at the moment is slightly scary. Stupid drawings.

Anyway I think all I was saying here really was that I am feeling comforted by being uncertain in life. Since my India trip was cancelled I’ve been feeling a bit down, and a bit unpurposey and general uncertain. I’ve been trying to focus myself on my thesis and doing that well now, but even though I am currently doing it, it seems so far off. Also I’m trying to work out what I want to do after June next year. Too many options, sadly few of the ones I like are in Sydney.

The other thing that I think I need to do is focus more on God, but that is a whole other post.

Today I decided to buy a new pair of shoes, but I decided to try and buy non-slave made ones. No one seemed to want to sell me mens casuals shoes not made by slaves. Particular because the shoes I buy tend to cost between $90-250.

Shoe shop in centre point one
Only made in China or India. Offered to ask the manager and manager didn’t know, couldn’t assure me.

Myer on George St
Straight out no. At this point my backpack broke, and I ended up buying a bag made in China. I had a heavy backpack and didn’t have the energy to try and find a fairly traded one.

Colarado on Pit St
Didn’t even know what a sweat shop was.

Men’s shoes shop on Pit St
Said most mens casual shoes made in China and India. Found one pair in the shop made in Italy that I liked, but cost $270.

Florshim in Galaries of Victory
Didn’t know of any. Showed me two pairs made in China and India. Suggested that kangaroo leather would be OK because at least leather was fairly made. Then tried to convince me that it would cost to much to make shoes and pay workers more money.

At this point I gave up on buying shoes and decided to do have some probably not fair trade made coffee at a café. I did some work on my thesis and decided to head back to Hornsby.

Ecco Shoes Hornsby
I went and asked in Ecco Shoes Hornsby as one last attempt. I own a pair of Ecco shoes at the moment, they are good shoes but rather expensive. Anyway when I asked the woman in the shop, she told me not only were they not made by slaves, but that the employees in Thailand had a bus and were paid above the local award wage. She told me I could find more on their webpage, but I looked when I got home and whilst I found some positive stuff could not find any specifics.

I think I might buy a pair of Ecco shoes this week.

Went to Blackstump with Mil just for Saturday and Sunday. It was good, quite different from other times I’ve been. I didn’t really hear much music or talks but I spent a lot of my time having chats to different people. I had some very interesting chats with Urban Seed related people.

I am still waiting to talk to a pollie, but I am having fun.. Today I got to watch question time, I must say I wish labour would have a little more backbone and spend more of there time supporting there positions rather then attacking the government. The Liberal party seem so so much better at using question time to there advantage. Tonight I went to a climate change forum, which was quite interesting. I got the feeling that Peter Garrett wanted to offer more then he could as a Labour member. The Democrat’s and Green’s were very aware and good on the issue and the Liberal’s were entirely absent from the forum on Climate Change, which was not very suprising to anyone.

Tonight Micah Challenge put on a great cocktail evening which unfortunately few of the politician’s stayed long enough at to here a very inspirational figure from Rwanda speech about the Millennium Development Goal’s poverty, transparency and reconciliation speech. It certainly reminded me that my work on poverty reduction ain’t over.

Well I am in Canberra now for Voices for Justice(VFJ) after a long week in Muswellbrook, a night stuck in Newcastle due to trackwork.

Myself, Howie andBen came down yesterday afternoon. I’m a lobby group leader for VFJ which is basically a conference plus lobbying for the government to live up to its commitments to developing nations. My lobbying group for VFJ so far consists of me and another leader. One of the other participants in my group decided to dog my group for another without telling us. I found her and it was clear she wanted to be with her friends so I let her be. It was pretty funny though because she was using the lamest reasons for why she wanted to be in the other group. If she had just said she wanted to be with friends it would of been so much simpler.

So after last nights programs me and Howie went to our motel, where they had left out room open with the key in it. I love how trusting some people are. After hanging out in the motel long enough to see that we need to purchase WiFi cards from the closed reception we decided to go and get some food from a 24hour Coles we eventually found. It’s funny Howie is so much more healthy in his purchases since marrying Jenny.

This morning I got up at about 10am and had a shower and then Howie and I went down to reception to check in to get some WiFi.

Found an interesting CBS 60 minutes segment on the OLPC $100 project. It made me like the creator more, but I also agree with some of the shortcomings the segment pointed out. It doesn’t descend into the technical side of the project so it is a pretty easy video for anyone to watch.

Watch Blood Diamond tonight. Great film. It deals with so many issues, so well. The concept of TIA (This Is Africa) as a used by whites of accepting the unacceptable, the use of child soldiers and of course conflict diamonds are all dealt with well. The end of it made me cry a bit, it really does have good story telling.

I want to help this world be less crap.
I pray that I will never become apathetic to the suffering in this world.

Bono is speaking out about the poor performance of G8 nations in poverty reduction in Africa. He points out America’s good work on HIV/AIDS and Malaria. Though USAID has some interesting policies regarding abortion they do fully support ABC programs and give out condoms. I must say I also quite like Bill and Melinda Gates foundations work on HIV/AID.

The groups in G8 committed to increasing funding to $US5.4billion since Gleneagles and have only increased it by $US2.3 billion. That is one nice thing about Australia not being big, I know that us failing to meet our targeted 0.7% of GDP has less affect then countries in the G8.

Over 30% of new HIV/AIDS cases outside of Africa are people who inject drugs. Only 8% of injecting drug users have access to HIV Prevention programs. These programs are usually about clean needles and drug substitution. I find this lack of HIV protection programs for injecting drug users very disappointing.

I wonder if the problem is that many people don’t like to:
a) admit that people use illicit drugs,
b) that harm minimisation methods are thought to encourage or condone the use of drugs.

In addition, access to antiretroviral therapy is “unacceptably low” among IDUs because of a “lack of information, exclusion and widespread stigma and discrimination,” according to UNAIDS.

A man on death row requested that his last meal a vegetarian pizza be given to a homeless person in Nashville where he was in prison. The prison authorities denied this request but that did not stop the people from giving. Instead of one pizza being given on the day of his execution 100’s of pizzas were delivered to homeless shelters around the area.

Our indigenous population has the worst healthin the developed world. There is no good reason for an aboriginal to have 17 years less life expectancy then a white Australian. It makes me made.

We need to make Indigenous Poverty History.

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.

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.