ME and Ophelia

HAPPY NEW YEAR
Best wishes for a peaceful 2005

"I am a citizen, not of Athens, or Greece, but of the world."
- Socrates (5th Century B.C.)

"We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth together as brothers."
- Martin Luther King Jr.


Wed Dec. 29 (AFP/Jose Cendon)

Displaced boy: A Sudanese displaced boy finds shelter from the sun behind a big cloth in El-Sereif refugee camp near the town of Nyala in Sudan's southern Darfur region.
- - -

WHY THERE'S NO ESCAPING THE BLOG
Fortune Magazine's blog article

Fortune has posted a great must-read piece entitled "Why There's No Escaping the Blog." It is well written, witty, warm, accurate and not to be missed. Insightfully, it calls us "the swarm" and says "it didn't take long for the blogging world to do what it does best: swarm around a new piece of information; push, prod, and poke at it; and leave it either stronger or a bloody mess." Heh. Power to the people. John Lennon would have loved it. [via Joi Ito]
- - -

GOOGLE RESULTS DOUBLE SINCE YESTERDAY?
Skweezer can strip and reformat your web page

Yesterday, a Google search for "blogs" brought in about 14.7 million results. Today, it's twice that. Jim Elve's post/comments explains why.

See also how Jim refuses to be victimised by Skweezer.

Note, go to Skweezer, type in a URL and Skweezer will reformat the page and will strip most of the graphics (and ads) and resize the text to make the pages fit on a small screen device.
- - -

WORLD CITIZENSHIP
My new blog

This morning I started a new blog for my posts on world citizenship and UN reform. It took only a few minutes using the same template as Sudan Watch but registering the name took several attempts because the titles I wanted were already taken. It looks like Bloggers are starting up free BlogSpots at Blogger.com for ownership of titles or just to be able to post comments at other BlogSpots. A blog named blogosphere has no posts. It would be interesting to know how many individual active bloggers there really are.
- - -

2005 GLOBAL PEACE CONFERENCE
University of San Francisco August 2-5, 2005

The following is an extract from the website of the Association of World Citizens (AWC) who, along with the International Association of Educators for World Peace (IAEWP) are sponsoring the 2005 Global Peace Conference at the University of San Francisco August 2-5, 2005.

"AWC is an international peace organization with World Citizen Centers established in 50 countries. NGO status with the UN, including consultative status with ECOSOC.



"Only with a burning patience can we conquer the splendid City which will give light, justice, and dignity to all mankind" - Rimbaud 

JOIN WITH US AS WORLD CITIZENS TO BUILD THE 'SPLENDID CITY" (GLOBAL VILLAGE) FOR THE 21ST CENTURY."
- - -

THE UNITED NATIONS AT 60
The critical years ahead

Join an Online/Regional Meetings Symposium on World Citizens helping to achieve the goals of the UN's Millennium Declaration. This is preparation for the Summit Meeting of Heads of State in New York on September 13, 2005.

"The 2005 Summit will be an event of decisive importance. The decisions to be taken there may determine the whole future of the United Nations." - Secretary General Kofi Annan

The Association of World Citizens (AWC) and War & Peace Foundation will conduct an online and regional meetings symposium on the "United Nations in the Critical Years Ahead" with the focus on how we, as World Citizens and NGOs, can be more efficient at influencing, persuading, and pressuring our governments (and all governments) to honor their commitment to the goals of the Millennium Declaration that was adopted by consensus at the Millennium Summit in 2000. The goals of the Millennium Declaration provide a foundation for creating a world community and better world for the 21st century.

People in over 20 countries will hold regional meetings to discuss this topic from January through March. There will be regular online updates on www.worldcitizens.org under the title: Meeting the Millennium Goals.

AWC will collect the conclusions from the online and regional meetings and issue a report and recommendations that will be published in the War & Peace Digest (which is delivered to UN agencies in New York) and sent to heads of state and parliamentarians.  

A review of this project will be part of the 2005 Global Peace Conference held jointly by the AWC and the International Association of Educators for World Peace.  This Global Peace conference will be held at the University of San Francisco from August 2-5, 2005. Stay tuned to their website for details: www.worldcitizens.org

To read selected highlights from the United Nations Millennium Declaration, click here to read "United Nations at the Fork in the Road" by Douglas Mattern.
- - -

QUOTATION OF THE DAY
December 30, 2004

"We only want food and milk. We are not asking for everything. But our babies have no milk to drink." PASIDA MUHAMAD, in Nilaveli, Sri Lanka. [via NYT]
- - -

UPDATE ON ASIA EARTHQUAKE:

BBC report confirms the World Bank has announced that it is giving $250m to help victims while the UK increased its contribution to $96m, the biggest donation from an individual country.

Support is also growing for a debt moratorium for some of the stricken countries, with France subscribing to a proposal made by Germany on Wednesday and Italy calling for an extraordinary G8 summit to discuss debt relief.

AFP news agency quoted US Secretary of State Colin Powell as describing the German proposal as "interesting". Mr Powell said the UN had chief responsibility for co-ordinating the aid effort, despite a move by Washington to set up a core group of donor countries with India, Australia and Japan.

KEY AID PLEDGES
World Bank $250m
UK $96m
EU $44m
US: $35m
Canada: $33m
Japan: $30m
Australia: $27m
France: $20.4m
Denmark: $15.6m
Saudi Arabia: $10m

NATURAL DISASTERS
2004 Asian quake disaster - toll so far exceeds 117,000
2003 earthquake in Bam, Iran - official casualty figure is 26,271
1976 Earthquake in Tangshan, China, kills 242,000
1970 Cyclone in Bangladesh kills 500,000
1887 China's Yellow River breaks its banks in Huayan Kou killing 900,000
1826 Tsunami kills 27,000 in Japan
1815 Volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora on Indonesia's Sumbawa Island kills 90,000
1556 Earthquake in China's Shanxi and Henan provinces kills 830,000

Source: Reuters, United Nations via BBC News online.
- - -

PICTURES OF THE YEAR 2004



A Ukrainian woman places carnations into the shields of anti-riot policemen standing outside the presidential office in Kiev, November 24, 2004. Ukraine's authorities raised the stakes in a face-off with their liberal opposition as they prepared to announce results of a disputed election that are likely to infuriate thousands of protesters in the streets. Reuters/Vasily Fedosenko



The National Christmas Tree is seen in front of the U.S. Capitol at dusk in Washington on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2004. Reuters/Molly Riley

Browse 200 more Pictures of the Year 2004 at Yahoo! news photos.