Apache

http://snpp.com/episodes/3F20

Much Apu About Nothing [ The Simpsons ]

Original Airdate in N.A.: 5-May-96


Helen: [frantic] Think of the children!

Quimby: All right, I promise to take swift and decisive action against these hibernating hucksters. [crowd cheers and leaves] [Quimby pulls out a picnic basket] Heh heh heh... [eats a sandwich]










http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/31.htm

Metamorphosis [ Star Trek: The Original Series ]

Stardate: Unknown

Original Airdate: Nov 10, 1967


KIRK: You'll find I have a very low tolerance level where the safety of my people are concerned. We find you out here, where no human has any business being. We were virtually hijacked in space and brought here. Now I'm not just requesting an explanation, Mister. I'm demanding one.










http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=1348

The American Presidency Project

William J. Clinton

XLII President of the United States: 1993 - 2001

Remarks at a Reception for Hillary Clinton in New York City

September 11, 2000


And I realize that so many times, people like me in positions of responsibility just mess it up for them, if people play games with power and create illusions in the minds of people about false values










http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=941

The American Presidency Project

William J. Clinton

XLII President of the United States: 1993-2001

Remarks at the University of Warwick in Coventry, United Kingdom

December 14, 2000

Thank you very much, Vice Chancellor Follett and Lady Follett, Chancellor Ramphal. Lord Skidelsky, thank you for your biography of Keynes. I wonder what Mr. Keynes would think of us paying down the national debt in America today. [Laughter]










https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgrade


Belgrade

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. Its name translates to White city. The city has a population of 1.23 million, while over 1.65 million people live in its metro area


Belgrade was the capital of Yugoslavia (in various forms of governments) from its creation in 1918, to its final dissolution in 2006.


List of Belgrade's sister and twin cities:


United Kingdom Coventry, since 1957











From 12/7/1998 ( my first day working at Microsoft Corporation as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and the active duty United States Marine Corps lieutenant colonel circa 1998 ) To 12/14/2000 is 738 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 11/10/1967 ( premiere US TV series episode "Star Trek"::"Metamorphosis" ) is 738 days



From 3/16/1991 ( my first successful major test of my ultraspace matter transportation device as Kerry Wayne Burgess the successful Ph.D. graduate Columbia South Carolina ) To 12/14/2000 is 3561 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 8/3/1975 ( Gerald Ford - Toast at a State Dinner in Belgrade ) is 3561 days



From 12/20/1994 ( in Bosnia as Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps captain this day is my United States Navy Cross medal date of record ) To 12/14/2000 is 2186 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 10/28/1971 ( Richard Nixon - Remarks of Welcome to President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia ) is 2186 days



From 12/20/1994 ( in Bosnia as Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps captain this day is my United States Navy Cross medal date of record ) To 12/14/2000 is 2186 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 10/28/1971 ( premiere US TV series episode "Alias Smith and Jones"::"Six Strangers at Apache Springs" ) is 2186 days



From 1/17/1991 ( the date of record of my United States Navy Medal of Honor as Kerry Wayne Burgess chief warrant officer United States Marine Corps circa 1991 also known as Matthew Kline for official duty and also known as Wayne Newman for official duty ) To 12/14/2000 is 3619 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 9/30/1975 ( my biological brother Thomas Reagan the United States Navy test pilot was the primary test pilot for the first flight of the Hughes and McDonnell Douglas AH-64 Apache attack helicopter and for the United States Army AH-64 Apache test program ) is 3619 days



From 1/17/1991 ( RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 - the Persian Gulf War begins as scheduled severe criminal activity against the United States of America ) To 12/14/2000 is 3619 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 9/30/1975 ( my biological brother Thomas Reagan the United States Navy test pilot was the primary test pilot for the first flight of the Hughes and McDonnell Douglas AH-64 Apache attack helicopter and for the United States Army AH-64 Apache test program ) is 3619 days



From 5/14/1992 ( as Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps chief warrant officer circa 1992 and United States chief test pilot I performed the first flight of the US Army and Boeing AH-64D Apache Longbow ) To 12/14/2000 is 3136 days

3136 = 1568 + 1568

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 2/17/1970 ( premiere US TV series pilot "McCloud" ) is 1568 days



From 12/7/1947 ( premiere US film "Dangerous Years" ) To 12/14/2000 is 19366 days

19366 = 9683 + 9683

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 5/7/1992 ( the first launch of the US space shuttle Endeavour orbiter vehicle mission STS-49 includes me Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps officer and United States STS-49 pilot astronaut ) is 9683 days



From 10/7/1961 ( premiere US TV series episode "The Tall Man"::"Shadow of the Past" ) To 11/18/1996 ( premiere US film "Star Trek: First Contact" ) is 12826 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 12/14/2000 is 12826 days





http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=941

The American Presidency Project

William J. Clinton

XLII President of the United States: 1993-2001

Remarks at the University of Warwick in Coventry, United Kingdom

December 14, 2000

Thank you very much, Vice Chancellor Follett and Lady Follett, Chancellor Ramphal. Lord Skidelsky, thank you for your biography of Keynes. I wonder what Mr. Keynes would think of us paying down the national debt in America today. [Laughter]

I would like to thank the president of the student union, Caitlin McKenzie, for welcoming me. And I am delighted to be here with all of you. But I'd like to specifically, if I might, acknowledge one more person in the audience, a good friend to Hillary and me, the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking. Thank you, Stephen, for being here. We're delighted to—[inaudible].

Tony and Cherie Blair and Hillary and Chelsea and I are pleased to be here. I thank the Prime Minister for his kind remarks. It is true that we have all enjoyed an unusual friendship between the two of us and our families. But it is also true that we have honored the deeper and more important friendship between the United States and Great Britain, one that I believe will endure through the ages and be strengthened through changes of party and from election to election.

I wanted to have a moment before I left this country for the last time as President just to say a few words about a subject which, as the Prime Minister said, we have discussed a lot, that I believe will shape the lives of the young people in this audience perhaps more than any other, and that is the phenomenon of globalization.

We have worked hard in our respective nations and in our multinational memberships to try to develop a response to globalization that we all call by the shorthand term, Third Way. Sometimes I think that term tends to be viewed as more of a political term than one that has actual policy substance, but for us it's a very serious attempt to put a human face on the global economy and to direct the process of globalization in a way that benefits all people.

The intensifying process of economic integration and political interdependence that we know as globalization is clearly tearing down barriers and building new networks among nations, peoples, and cultures at an astonishing and historically unprecedented rate. It has been fueled by an explosion of technology that enables information, ideas, and money, people, products, and services to move within and across national borders at increasingly greater speeds and volumes.

A particularly significant element of this process is the emergence of a global media village in which what happens anywhere is felt in a flash everywhere—from Coventry to Kansas to Cambodia. This process, I believe, is irreversible. In a single hour today, more people and goods move from continent to continent than moved in the entire 19th century.

For most people in countries like ours, the United States and Britain, this is helping to create an almost unprecedented prosperity, and along with it, the change to meet some of the long-term challenges we face within our nations.

I am profoundly grateful that when I leave office, we will still be in the longest economic expansion in our history, that all income levels have benefited, and that we are able to deal with some of our long-term challenges. And I have enjoyed immensely the progress of the United Kingdom, the economic progress—the low unemployment rate, the high growth rate, the increasing numbers of people moving off public assistance, and young people moving into universities.

But I think it's important to point out that globalization need not benefit only the advanced nations. Indeed, in developing countries, too, it brings the promise but not the guarantee of a better future. More people have been lifted out of poverty the last few decades than at any time in history. Life expectancy in developing countries is up. Infant mortality is down. And according to the United Nations Human Development Index, which measures a decent standard of living, a good education, and a long and healthy life, the gap between rich and poor countries actually has declined since 1970. And yet, that is, by far, not the whole story. For, if you took another starting point or just one region of the world, or a set of governments that have had particular vulnerability to developments like the Asian financial crisis, for example, you could make a compelling case that from time to time, people in developing countries and whole countries themselves, if they get caught on the wrong side of a development like the Asian financial crisis, are actually worse off for quite a good while.

And we begin the new century and a new millennium with half the world's people struggling to survive on less than $2 a day, nearly one billion living in chronic hunger. Almost a billion of the world's adults cannot read. Half the children in the poorest countries still are not in school. So, while some of us walk on the cutting edge of the new global economy, still, amazing numbers of people live on the bare razor's edge of survival.

And these trends and other troubling ones are likely to be exacerbated by a rapidly growing population, expected to increase by 50 percent by the middle of this century, with the increase concentrated almost entirely in nations that today, at least, are the least capable of coping with it. So the great question before us is not whether globalization will proceed, but how. And what is our responsibility in the developed world to try to shape this process so that it lifts people in all nations?

First, let me say, I think we have both the ability and the responsibility to make a great deal of difference by promoting development and economic empowerment among the world's poor; by bringing solid public health systems, the latest medical advances, and good educational opportunities to them; by achieving sustainable development and breaking the iron link between economic growth, resource destruction, and greater pollution, which is driving global warming today; and by closing the digital divide.

I might say, parenthetically, I believe there are national security and common security aspects to the whole globalization challenge that I really don't have time to go into today, so I'll just steer off the text and say what I think briefly, which is that as we open borders and we increase the freedom of movement of people, information, and ideas, this open society becomes more vulnerable to cross-national, multinational, organized forces of destruction: terrorists; weapons of mass destruction; the marriage of technology in these weapons, small-scale chemical and biological and maybe even nuclear weapons; narcotraffickers and organized criminals; and increasingly, all these people sort of working together in lines that are quite blurred.

And so that's a whole separate set of questions. But today I prefer to focus on what we have to do to see that this process benefits people in all countries and at all levels of society.

At the core of the national character of the British and the American people is the belief in the inherent dignity and equality of all humans. We know perfectly well today how children live and die in the poorest countries and how little it would take to make a difference in their lives. In a global information age, we can no longer have the excuse of ignorance. We can choose not to act, of course, but we can no longer choose not to know.

With the cold war over, no overriding struggle for survival diverts us from aiding the survival of the hundreds of millions of people in the developing world struggling just to get by from day to day. Moreover, it is not only the right thing to do; it is plainly in our interest to do so.

We have seen how abject poverty accelerates turmoil and conflict, how it creates recruits for terrorists and those who incite ethnic and religious hatred, how it fuels a violent rejection of the open economic and social order upon which our future depends. Global poverty is a powder keg, ignitable by our indifference.

Prime Minister Blair made the same point in introducing his government's White Paper on international development. Thankfully, he remains among the world's leaders in pressing the commonsense notion that the more we help the rest of the world, the better it will be for us. Every penny we spend on reducing worldwide poverty, improving literacy, wiping out disease will come back to us and our children a hundredfold.

With the global Third Way approach that he and I and others have worked on, of more open markets, public investments by wealthy nations in education, health care, and the environment in developing countries, and improved governance in those countries themselves, we can develop a future in which prosperity is shared more widely and potential realized more fully in every corner of the globe.

Today I want to briefly discuss our shared responsibility to meet these challenges, and the role of all of us, from the richest to the poorest nations to the multilateral institutions to the business and NGO and religious and civil society communities within and across our borders.

First, let me say, I think it's quite important that we unapologetically reaffirm a conviction that open markets and rule-based trade are necessary proven engines of economic growth. I have just come from Ireland, where the openness of the economy has made that small country the fastest growing economy in Europe, indeed, for the last few years, in the entire industrialized world. From the early 1970's to the early 1990's, developing countries that chose growth through trade grew at least twice as fast as those who kept their doors closed and their tariffs high.

Now what? If the wealthiest countries ended our agricultural subsidies, leveling the playing field for the world's farmers, that alone could increase the income of developing countries by $20 billion a year.

Not as simple as it sounds. I come from a farming State, and I live in a country that basically has very low tariffs and protections on agriculture. But I see these beautiful fields in Great Britain; I have driven down the highways of France; I know there is a cultural, social value to the fabric that has developed here over the centuries. But we cannot avoid the fact that if we say we want these people to have a decent life, and we know this is something they could do for the global economy more cheaply than we, we have to ask ourselves what our relative responsibilities are and if there is some other way we can preserve the fabric of rural life here, the beauty of the fields, and the sustainability of the balanced society that is important for Great Britain, the United States, France, and every other country.

The point I wanted to make is a larger one. This is just one thing we could do that would put $20 billion a year in income into developing countries. That's why I disagree with the antiglobalization protesters who suggest that poor countries should somehow be saved from development by keeping their doors closed to trade. I think that is a recipe for continuing their poverty, not erasing it. More open markets would give the world's poorest nations more chances to grow and prosper.

Now, I know that many people don't believe that. And I know that inequality, as I said, in the last few years has increased in many nations. But the answer is not to abandon the path of expanded trade but, instead, to do whatever is necessary to build a new consensus on trade. That's easy for me to say—you can see how successful I was in Seattle in doing that. [Laughter]

But let me say to all of you, in the last 2 years we not only had this WTO ministerial in Seattle—I went to Switzerland three times to speak to the WTO, the International Labor Organization, and the World Economic Forum at Davos, all in an attempt to hammer out what the basic elements of a new consensus on trade, and in a larger sense, on putting a human face on the global economy would be.

We do have to answer those who fear that the burden of open markets will fall mainly on them. Whether they're farmers in Europe or textile workers in America, these concerns fuel powerful political resistance to the idea of open trade in the developed countries.

We have to do better in making the case not just on how exports create jobs but on how imports are good, because of the competition they provide; because they increase innovation and they provide savings for hard-pressed working families throughout the world. And we must do more to improve education and job training so that more people have the skills to compete in a world that is changing very rapidly.

We must also ask developing countries to be less resistant to concerns for human rights, labor, and the environment so that spirited economic competition does not become a race to the bottom. At the same time, we must make sure that when we say we're concerned about labor and the environment and human rights in the context of trade, it is not a pretext for protectionism.

Both the United States and Europe must do more to build a consensus for trade. In America, for example, we devote far, far too little of our wealth to development assistance. But on a per capita basis, we also spend nearly 40 percent more than Europeans on imports from developing countries. Recently, we passed landmark trade agreements with Africa and the Caribbean Basin that will make a real difference to those regions. If America matched Europe's generosity in development assistance and Europe matched our openness in buying products from the developing nations, think how much growth and opportunity we could spur.

At the same time, I think it's important that we acknowledge that trade alone cannot lift nations from poverty. Many of the poorest developing countries are crippled by the burden of crushing debt, draining resources that could be used to meet the most basic human needs, from clean water to schools to shelter. For too long, the developed world was divided between those who felt any debt forgiveness would hurt the creditworthiness of developing nations and those who demanded outright cancellation of the debt with no conditions.

Last year, at the G-7 Summit in Cologne, we—Prime Minister Blair and I and our colleagues—began to build a new consensus responding to a remarkable coalition, asking for debt relief for the poorest nations in this millennial year.

We have embraced the global social contract: debt relief for reform. We pledged enhanced debt relief to poor countries that put forward plans to spend their savings where they ought to be spent, on reducing poverty, developing health systems, improving educational access and quality. This can make a dramatic difference.

For example, Uganda has used its savings, already, to double primary school enrollment, a direct consequence of debt relief. Bolivia will now use $77 million on health and education. Honduras will offer its children 9 years of schooling instead of 6, a 50 percent increase.

The developed world must build on these efforts, as we did in the United States when we asked for 100 percent bilateral debt relief for the least developed nations. And we must include more and more nations in this initiative. But we should not do it by lowering our standards. Instead, we should help more nations to qualify for the list—that is, to come forward with plans to spend the savings on their people and their future. This starts with good governance—something that I think has been overlooked.

No matter how much we wish to do for the developing world, they need to have the capacity to absorb aid, to absorb assistance, and to do more for themselves. Democracy is not just about elections, even when they seem to go on forever. [Laughter] Democracy is also about what happens after the election. It's about the capacity to run clean government and root out corruption, to open the budget process, to show people an honest accounting of where their resources are being spent, and to give potential investors an honest accounting of what the risks and rewards might be. We have a moral obligation both to provide debt relief and to make sure these resources reach people who need them most.

The poorer these people are, of course, the less healthy they're likely to be. That brings me to the next point. The obstacles to good health in the developing world are many and of great magnitude. There is the obvious fact of malnutrition, the fact that so many women still lack access to family planning and basic health services. Around the world today, one woman dies every minute from complications due to childbirth.

There is the fact that 1 1/2 billion people lack access to safe, clean drinking water; and the growing danger of a changing climate, about which I will say more in a moment. But let me just mention the health aspects.

If temperatures keep rising, developing countries in tropical regions will be hurt the most, as disease spreads and crops are devastated. Already, we see in some African countries malaria occurring at higher altitudes than ever before because of climate change.

Today, infectious diseases are responsible for one in four deaths around the world—diseases like malaria, TB, and AIDS, diarrheal diseases. Just malaria, tuberculosis, and diarrhea kill 8 million people a year under the age of 15. Already, in South Africa, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, half of all the 15-year-olds are expected to die of AIDS. In just a few years, there will be three to six African countries where there will be more people in their sixties than in their thirties. This is a staggering human cost. Parenthetically, the economic toll is also breathtaking.

AIDS is predicted to cut the GDP of some African countries by 20 percent within 10 years. It is an epidemic with no natural boundary. Indeed, the fastest growing rate of infection today is in Russia and the nations of the former Soviet Union. Why makes the point of what we should do. In no small measure because those nations, in the aftermath of the end of communism, and actually beginning a few years before, have seen a steady erosion in the capacity of their public health systems to do the basic work that must be done.

We must attack AIDS, of course, within our countries—in the United States and Britain. But we must also do all we can to stop the disease from spreading in places like Russia and India, where the rates of growth are large, but the overall numbers of infected people are still relatively small. But we must not also forget that the number one health crisis in the world today remains AIDS in Africa. We must do more in prevention, care, medications, and the earliest possible development of an affordable vaccine.

The developing countries themselves hold a critical part of the answer. However limited their resources, they must make treatment and prevention a priority. Whatever their cultural beliefs, they must be honest about the ways AIDS spreads and how it can be prevented. Talking about AIDS may be difficult in some cultures, but its far easier to tell children the facts of life in any culture than to watch them learn the fact of death.

In China, a country with enough resources to teach all its children to read, only 4 percent of the adults know how AIDS is transmitted. Uganda, on the other hand, has cut the rate of infection by half. So there are a lot of things that the developing world will have to do for itself. This, too, is in no small measure an issue of governance and leadership. But the bulk of the new investment will have to come from the developed world.

In the last few years, our two nations have gotten off to a very good start. And yet the difference between what the world provides and what the world needs for treatment and prevention of AIDS, malaria, and TB is $6 billion a year. Now that may seem like a great deal of money, but think about this: Take America's fair share of closing that gap, $1.5 billion. That is about the same as our Government spends every year on office supplies, or about what the people of Britain spend every year on blue jeans.

So I hope that some way will be found for the United States and its allies to close that $6 billion gap. It will be a very good investment, indeed. And the economic and social consequences to our friends in Africa and to other places where the rates of growth is even greater will be quite profound unless we do.

The government alone cannot meet the health needs, but thus far, neither has the market. What is the problem? There is a huge demand for an AIDS vaccine, but the problem is, as all the economists here will readily understand, the demand is among people who have no money to pay for it. Therefore, the companies that could be developing the vaccines have virtually no incentive to put in the massive amounts of research money necessary to do the job. Only 10 percent—listen to this—10 percent of all biomedical research is devoted to diseases that overwhelmingly affect the poorest countries.

Now, we have sharply increased our investment in vaccine research, boosted funding for buying vaccines so that companies know there will be a guaranteed market not just for AIDS but for other infectious diseases, proposed a tax credit to help provide for future vaccines to encourage more companies to invest in trying to find vaccines where there are none presently.

I think we should expand that approach to the development of drugs and keep pressing pharmaceutical companies to make lifesaving treatments affordable to all. But we can't ask them to go broke; we're going to have to pay them to do it—directly or indirectly through tax credits.

One of the best health programs, the best economic development programs and the best antipoverty strategies, as the vice chancellor said very early on today, is a good education. Each additional year spent in school increases wages by 10 to 20 percent in the developing world. A primary education boosts the farmers' output by about 8 percent. And the education of girls is especially critical. Studies show that literate girls have significantly smaller and healthier families. I want to say just parenthetically here, I'm very grateful for the work that my wife has done over the last 8 years around the world to try to help protect young women and girls, get them in school, keep them in school. And I hope that we will do more on that. That can make a huge difference. And there are still cultures where there is dramatically disparate treatment between girls and boys and whether they go to school and whether they can stay. If all children on every continent had the tools to fulfill their God-given potential, the prospect for peace, prosperity, and freedom in the developing world would be far greater.

We are making progress. In the past decade, primary enrollments have increased at twice the rate—twice the rate—of the 1980's. Still, more than 100 million kids get no schooling at all; 60 percent of them are girls. Almost half of all African children and a quarter of those in south and west Asia are being denied this fundamental right.

Just this year 181 nations joined to set a goal of providing basic education to every child, girls and boys alike, in every country by 2015. Few of our other efforts will be successful if we fail to reach this goal. What it will take is now known to us all. It's going to take a commitment by the developing countries to propose specific strategies and realistic budgets, to get their kids out of the fields and factories, to remove the fees and other obstacles that keep them out of the classroom. And it's going to take an effort by the wealthier countries to invest in things that are working.

I hope a promising example is something that we in the United States started in the last year, a $300 million global school lunch initiative, using a nutritious meal as an incentive for parents to send their children to school. I am very hopeful that this will increase enrollment, and I believe it will. And I want to thank the U.K. and other countries that are willing to contribute to and support this.

But the main point I want to make is, we can't expect to get all these children in the developing world into schools unless we're willing to help pay. I've been to schools in Africa that have maps that don't have 70 countries that exist today on them. And yet, we know that if they just had one good computer with one good printer, and someone paid for the proper connections, they could get all the information they need in the poorest places in the world to provide good primary education. Should we pay for it? I think it would be a good investment.

Let me say just a few words about the digital divide. Today, south Asia is 700 times less likely to have access to the Internet than America. It's estimated that in 2010, in the Asia-Pacific region, the top 8 economies will have 72 percent of their people on line, but the bottom 11 will have less than 4 percent. If that happens, the global economy really will resemble a worldwide web, a bunch of interlocking strands with huge holes in between.

It's fair to ask, I suppose, are computers really an answer for people who are starving or can't yet read? Is E-commerce an answer for villages that don't even have electricity? Of course, I wouldn't say that. We have to begin with the basics. But there should not be a choice between Pentium and penicillin. That's another one of those false choices Prime Minister Blair and I have been trying to throw into the waste bin of history.

We should not patronize poor people by saying they don't need 21st century tools and skills. Microcredit loans in Bangladesh by the Grameen Bank to poor village women to buy cell phones has proved out to be one of the most important economic initiatives in one of the poorest countries in the world.

I went to a village co-op in Nayla, Rajasthan, India, last year, last March, and I was astonished to see the women's milk co-op doing all of its billing on computers and marketing on computers. And I saw another computer there that had all the information from the federal and state government, with a wonderful printer, so that all the village women, no matter how poor, could come in. And one woman came in with a 2-week-old baby and printed out all the information about what she ought to do with the baby for the next 6 months.

So I think it's a copout to say that technology cannot be of immense help to very poor people in remote places. If it's done right, it may be of more help to them than to people who are nearer centers of more traditional, economic and educational and health opportunity.

So from my point of view, we have to begin to have more places like those poor villages in India, like the cell phone businesses in Bangladesh, like the city of Hyderabad in India, now being called "Cyberabad." Developing countries have to do their part here, too. They have to have laws and regulations that permit the greatest possible access at the lowest possible cost. And in the developed world, governments have to work with corporations and NGO's to provide equipment and expertise. That's the goal of the digital opportunity task force, which the G-8 has embraced, and I hope we will continue to do that.

Let me just say one word about climate change. If you follow this issue, you know we had a fairly contentious meeting recently about climate change, with no resolution about how to implement the Kyoto agreement, which calls for the advanced nations to set targets and for some mechanisms to be devised for the developing nations to participate. There are lots of controversies about to what extent countries should be able to get credit for sinks. Trees— do the trees have to be planted? Can they already be up? To what extent the developing countries should agree to follow a path of development that is different from the one that we followed in the United States and the United Kingdom. I don't want to get into all that now, except to say there will be domestic and regional politics everywhere. But let's look at the facts.

The facts are that the last decade was the hottest decade in 1,000 years. If the temperature of the Earth continues to warm at this rate, it is unsustainable. Within something like 50 years, in the United States, the Florida Everglades and the sugarcane fields in Louisiana will be under water. Agricultural production will have to be moved north in many places. And the world will be a very different place. There will be more extreme weather events. There will be more people displaced. It will become virtually impossible in some places to have a sustainable economy. This is a big deal.

And the only thing I would like to say is that I do not believe that we will ever succeed unless we convince people—the interest groups in places like the United States which have been resistant and the driving political forces in countries like India and China who don't want to think that we're using targets in climate change to keep them poor—we have to convince them that you can break the link between growing wealth and putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. There is ample evidence that this is true, and new discoveries just on the horizon which will make it more true.

But it is shocking to me how few people in responsible positions in the public and private sector even know what the present realities are in terms of the relationship in energy use and economic growth. So I think one of the most important things that the developed world ought to be doing is not only making sure we're doing a better job on our own business—which is something the United States has to do—not only doing more in emissions trading so that we can get more technology out into the developed world but making sure people know that this actually works.

An enormous majority of the decisionmakers in the developed and the developing world still don't believe that a country can grow rich and stay rich unless it puts more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere every year. It is not true. And so this is one area where we can make a big contribution to sustainable development and to creating economic opportunities in developing countries, if we can just get people in positions of influence to get rid of a big idea that is no longer true.

Was it Victor Hugo who said, "There's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come"? The reverse is also true: There's no bigger curse than a big idea that hangs on after its time has gone. And so, I hope all of you will think about that.

Finally, let me just say that no generation has ever had the opportunity that all of us now have to build a global economy that leaves no one behind and, in the process, to create a new century of peace and prosperity in a world that is more constructively and truly interdependent. It is a wonderful opportunity. It is also a profound responsibility. For 8 years, I have done what I could to lead my country down that path. I think for the rest of our lives, we had all better stay on it.

Thank you very much.

NOTE: The President spoke at 3:08 p.m. in Butterworth Hall at the University of Warwick Arts Center. In his remarks, he referred to Sir Brian Follett, vice chancellor, Sir Shridath Ramphal, chancellor, and Lord Robert Skidelsky, professor of economics, University of Warwick; Sir Follett's wife, Lady Deb Follett; and Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom and his wife, Cherie.





http://news.microsoft.com/2000/12/14/helping-bridge-the-digital-divide-through-television/

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Helping Bridge the Digital Divide — Through Television

Posted December 14, 2000 By

REDMOND, Wash., Dec. 14, 2000 — Information technology’s benefits to society are undeniable. It has transformed the way people learn, work and play, creating new and previously unimagined opportunities for countless numbers of people. Yet, we are still a long way from bringing these benefits to the majority of people on the globe. Currently, only about five percent of the world population has access to personal computers, whereas media such as TV and radio routinely reach nearly three-quarters of the world’s people.

“Information technology is not a magic formula that is going to solve all our problems,” said Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations. “But it is a wonderful tool that can help liberate the poor and empower them.”

At the fifth annual United Nations World Television Forum held last month, government and television industry leaders and experts from every part of the world discussed the role television can and should play in helping to bridge the digital divide. Approximately 80 distinguished speakers participated in the event, including Annan; Harri Holkeri, president of the United Nations General Assembly; Makarim Wibisono, president of the United Nations Economic and Social Council; and Jon DeVaan, Microsoft senior vice president, TV Division.

“By informing and explaining, you can make people aware of the potential offered by the digital revolution,” Annan said to the senior representatives of traditional and new media, academia, civil society and governments around the world. “Those who most need the opportunities IT offers are at present the people who know least about them.”

DeVaan concurred, pointing out that in the United States and certain parts of Asia, household penetration by the PC has risen above 50 percent. However, that number is as low as 14 percent in Eastern European countries and well below 10 percent in most developing nations. Many people in the world cannot afford a personal computer, nor do they have access to one. So how can those people derive the same benefits from the Internet — a vast resource of information for learning and communication — as those who have easy access to PCs?

Television is an obvious answer. It is one of the most ubiquitous devices in the home today, DeVaan said, with roughly 1.5 billion TV sets in homes around the world. Compare that to the 400 million PCs in households worldwide, and the solution seems clear.

“When we talk about the digital divide, it’s critical to understand the importance of the Internet as a medium for breaking through the geographical, technological and socio-economic barriers of the world,” DeVaan said. “Building a truly global infrastructure with internationally supported, open standards should be our first priority … Microsoft has looked at this problem for some time and is actively pursuing ways to bring technology and Internet access to communities around the world.”

DeVaan explained that last year in China Microsoft introduced the Venus Computer, a low-cost device that connects the average TV to the Internet and also performs PC-like functions such as word processing, spreadsheets and gaming. The cost equaled roughly $180 U.S.

In the United States, Microsoft WebTV also brings the power and richness of the Internet to the TV set. By providing Internet access through a regular television set, information and communication are more accessible to those without personal computers. DeVaan spoke of children of migrant families in Florida whose education was often disruptive and inconsistent due to the families’ need to move from place to place to find work. In Miami-Dade County, the local public school district, Barry University and Microsoft worked together to provide Microsoft WebTV to those migrant families. With a television and a telephone, the students had access to a teaching staff dedicated to their needs as well as a consistent curriculum.

At the U.N. Forum, Annan also announced the establishment of an International Task Force, bringing together development institutions, private industry and foundations to help devise a strategy for information technology development, and to provide overall leadership on these issues.

“Once certain basic conditions are in place, new information technology does have enormous potential to promote economic growth and to help eradicate poverty,” Annan said.

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates expressed similar sentiments earlier this year at the Digital Dividends Conference in Seattle: “The fundamental benefits of having a tool like this — 99 percent of the benefits come when you’ve provided reasonable health and literacy to the person who is going to sit down and use it.”

“Helping people gain easy and cost-effective access to the amazing resources of the Internet is perhaps the single biggest thing we can all do to bridge the digital divide,” DeVaan said. “By enabling people to access the Internet using the ubiquitous TV — whether for education, communication, or just as a gateway to a larger world — we will ensure that one more barrier to participation in the global information revolution will come down.”



- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 03:41 AM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Monday 16 November 2015