Poverty is a Threat to Peace

From Muhammad Yunus's acceptance speech for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize

I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social system that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue.

Poverty is created because we built our theoretical framework on assumptions which under-estimates human capacity, by designing concepts, which are too narrow (such as concept of business, credit- worthiness, entrepreneurship, employment) or developing institutions, which remain half-done (such as financial institutions, where poor are left out). Poverty is caused by the failure at the conceptual level, rather than any lack of capability on the part of people.

I firmly believe that we can create a poverty-free world if we collectively believe in it. In a poverty-free world, the only place you would be able to see poverty is in the poverty museums. When school children take a tour of the poverty museums, they would be horrified to see the misery and indignity that some human beings had to go through. They would blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhuman condition, which existed for so long, for so many people.

A human being is born into this world fully equipped not only to take care of him or herself, but also to contribute to enlarging the well being of the world as a whole.

Don't be fooled by the Dems

Although I am very happy about the election results -- I think any rational thinking human being would be -- I am still skeptical about what the D's are going to be able to accomplish. How are they going to come together to find unity within the "big tent" to pass meangingful social and economic reform measures? It will certainly be an interesting two years in Washington.

Come 2008, Will Kucinich and the “New Democrats” Fool
Us Again?

“Escalating conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the all-volunteer force to the breaking point,” declares an October report by Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, the policy arm of the “centrist” (read: neocon lite) Democratic Leadership Council. “Democrats should step forward with a plan to repair the damage, by adding more troops, replenishing depleted stocks of equipment, and reorganizing the force around the new missions of unconventional warfare, counterinsurgency, and civil reconstruction.”...