Bill Nye speaks up | myths about poverty + response

The One Campaign + the California Senate Race

The One Campaign asked California U.S. Senate candidates Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina:

How best can the US continue to tackle global disease, poverty, and hunger?

Their responses:

Senator Barbara Boxer: “I strongly believe that alleviating global disease, poverty and hunger is inextricably linked to making real progress in the world. Throughout my career, I have fought for women’s rights. And now I am proud to chair the first-ever Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee focused on improving the status of women and girls worldwide.

Studies have shown that when women and girls have opportunities they will make important contributions to their country’s economic and social progress. According to the World Bank, women and girls reinvest 90 percent of their income in their families, whereas men reinvest 30 to 40 percent. Educating women and girls is one of the most powerful development tools we have.

That is why I am so pleased that the United States has taken the lead in making the advancement of women a central element of its foreign policy. For example in April, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched the Secretary’s International Fund for Women and Girls—a partnership between the public and private sectors aimed at providing resources to those who are working to meet women’s needs worldwide.

The U.S. is not alone in recognizing that the status of women and girls is critical to uplifting a society. In July, the United Nations established U.N. Women—a new U.N. entity that is working to advance women’s rights around the globe.

We must continue to work with our international partners to give women and girls every opportunity to succeed because when women thrive, their societies thrive.

Joe Biden | ONE

Finishing a remarkable week in India, this post card is a pretty decent sentiment for a people set to rejoin the global work of displacing aggression and greed with shared prosperity and peace...

there is enough

No one should starve in 2008. Join the One Campaign in calling on President Bush and other leaders of the G8 to take immediate action to intervene in the cascading international food crisis and create permanent solutions to an unspeakable 21st century evil. There's nothing nuanced about this. No one should starve in 2008. Period.

The Lazarus Effect

on the record

Here's the ad The One Campaign is running in Iowa (and here are the ads for New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada) asking every presidential candidate to go on the record with his or her plan to make poverty history. 

What if we all put ourselves in this picture?

strange bedfellows | Opium, Afghanistan + the US

According to US Ambassador to Afghanistan William Wood, Afghani growers are having a record-breaking year, harvesting 457,135 acres of opium poppies — compared to 407,715 acres last year.

A report by the Associated Press says:

Afghanistan last year accounted for 92 percent of global opium production, up from 70 percent in 2000 and 52 percent a decade earlier. With the higher yields, global opium production increased 43 percent between 2005 and 2006.

Is it just me or . . . Never mind, it's probably just me.

[photo by SuperFantastic]

One Vote 08

Bono | i think this is remarkable

I think this — from Bono + The One Campaign — is remarkable in content and form.