Day: November 13, 2002

Illegal Abortions a Major Killer of Women in Ethopia

According to the World Health Organization, complications arising from illegal abortions are now the second leading cause of death for young women in Ethiopia. Only tuberculosis kills more young women in that poverty-stricken nation.

Abortion is illegal in Ethiopia except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger, but illegal abortions are easy to obtain and widespread. According to WHO, the death rate from illegal abortions in Ethiopia is a staggering 1,209 per 100,000 abortions. In the United States, by contrast, the death rate from legal abortions is about 1 per 100,000.

A number of factors help to make the death rate so high, including a lack of access to contraception, a very low literacy rate among women (only about 14 percent of women are literate), and Ethiopia’s poverty which leads to only about US $1.50 per person being spent on health care resources annually.

Source:

High Death Rate from Illegal Abortions. UN Integrated Regional Information Networks, October 28, 2002.

Teens Pay The Deadly Price Of Religious Taboo. Tewedaj Kebede, Panos, July 2001.

Many Ethiopian Teens Dying from Illegal Abortions. Women’s E-News, November 4, 2002.

Stan Lee Screwed Out of Spider-Man Profits

Slashdot linked to this article highlighting the Enron-like accounting system used by Hollywood. Stan Lee has a standing agreement with Marvel Entertainment that he is to receive 10 percent of the profits from any television or film venture using characters that he created.

Well, Spider-Man, raked in over $400 million in the United States, but under Hollywood accounting that means it didn’t make any profits at all and so Marvel has told Lee, sorry, but Spider-Man just wasn’t profitable. Lee is suing Marvel for $10 million and hoping he doesn’t get screwed out of profits for The Daredevil, Hulk, and the X-Men sequel.

Speaking of Spider-Man, the other day my wife and I are watching it with my daughter on DVD. During the big crowd fighting scene between Spidey and the Green Goblin, I tell my wife, “hey look, there’s a cameo with Stan Lee.” I rewind it and run it again, at which point she looks at me and asks, “Who’s Stan Lee?”

Men are from Zenn-La, women are from Venus, I guess.

Source:

Spider-Man creator sues Marvel. Reuters, Nov. 12, 2002.

Update:

Henry Hanks writes:

I can’t exactly shed a tear for the guy since he’s made every effort to take full credit for work that was partially due to the toil and sweat of others…

That may be, but I think the bigger issues is the persistent uses of creative accounting by Hollywood to make blockbusters appear unprofitable on paper so they don’t have to fulfill their contracts with writers and others intellectual property creators (but, of course, they then turn around and assert their own intellectual property interests to make damn sure that I don’t do something as horrible as make a backup copy of the Spider-Man DVD.)

More Warnings about Hunger in Ethiopia and Eritrea

Aid agencies and Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi warned this week that if international aid does not arrive soon, the numbers of people who could die in Ethiopia in 2003 will be even more than died in the 1984 famine which received international publicity and an outpouring of sympathy from Western nations.

“If that was a nightmare,” Zenawi told The Scotsman, “then this will be too ghastly to contemplate. We can’t cope on our own with the requirements of the current drought.”

United Nations World Food Program spokesman Wagdi Othman told The Scotsman,

There are six million people in need of food aid now and we think hat number will increase dramatically next year to ten to 14 million. A lot of people are already hungry and they are threatened by starvation. We will have a clearer picture by next year, but we can’t wait for those figures to come and we have been ringing alarm bells since June. No-one can say that they weren’t aware of this.

Neighboring Eritrea is also hard hit by the droughts, poverty, and continued hostilities between the two countries. At the moment the Eritrean government says that 1.4 million people will face food shortages through the end of next year, and that number is likely to climb to 2.3 million in a country of around 4 million people.

Interestingly, The Scotsman highlights a main problem with international relief efforts, quoting officials who admit that the 1984-inspired relief efforts didn’t even make a dent at long term structural changes in Ethiopia. The Band Aid and Live Aid fund raising efforts raised more than Pounds 110 million, most of which was spent on basic technology,

. . . and Penny Jenden, the former Band Aid chief executive, has since admitted that Africa is littered with the remains of tractors or drilling rigs that nobody knew how to mend.

Current aid efforts aren’t likely to do any better. Until Ethiopia and Eritrea decide to end all hostilities, reform their governments, and tackle poverty and other issues in earnest, the best donor nations can do is simply feed people who would otherwise starve and forget grandiose notions about preventing future famines.

Sources:

Threat to 15 million as new famine hits Ethiopia. Gethin Chamberlain, The Scotsman, November 12, 2002.

Eritrea: Fear of hunger sets in. UN Integrated Regional Information Networks, November 10, 2002.

Fair Trade Coffee?

On election day, voters in Berkeley defeated a measure that would have made it a crime punishable by up to 6 months in jail to sell coffee that was not labeled as Fair Trade. Fair Trade Coffee is offered by activists as a way to help out third world farmers and save the environment, but it likely has the opposite effect.

The main problem with coffee is that there’s simply too much of it. World coffee markets are currently glutted with product, and as such farmers receive only about U.S. 24 cents per pound. That is the lowest price for coffee in a century according to an Oxfam report.

Fair Trade Coffee, on the other hand, guarantees farmers at small cooperatives $1.25 per pound for coffee beans.

Talk about perverse incentives. Farmers should be looking at the low price of coffee, conclude that there is a glut, and move on to other crops. But if Fair Trade Coffee were to take off, it would send a price signal to farmers to grow even more coffee, further glutting the world market.

And they call that fair?

Source:

Global issues flow into America’s coffee. Kim Bendheim, The New York Times, November 3, 2002.

Illegal Abortions a Major Killer of Women in Ethiopia

According to the World Health Organization, complications arising from illegal abortions are now the second leading cuase of death for young women in Ethiopia. Only tuberculosis kills more young women in that poverty-stricken nation.

Abortion is illegal in Ethiopia except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger, but illegal abortions are easy to obtain and widespread. According to WHO, the death rate from illegal abortions in Ethopia is a staggering 1,209 per 100,000 abortions. In the United States, by contrast, the death rate from legal abortions is about 1 per 100,000.

A number of factors help to make the death rate so high, including a lack of access to contraception, a very low literacy rate among women (only about 14 percent of women are literate), and Ethiopia’s poverty which leads to ony about US $1.50 per person being spent on health care resources annually.

Source:

High Death Rate from Illegal Abortions. UN Integrated Regional Information Networks, October 28, 2002.

Teens Pay The Deadly Price Of Religious Taboo. Tewedaj Kebede, Panos, July 2001.

Many Ethiopian Teens Dying from Illegal Abortions. Women’s E-News, November 4, 2002.

PETA's Latest Anti-Fur Ad

In the 1990s, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals gained a lot of publicity with its “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur Ads” featuring super models doing just that. But recently fur has made quite a comeback in fashion circles, and many of those same models are once again appearing on runways decked out in fur rather than in their birthday suits.

So now PETA is turning to singer Sophie Ellis Bextor for an anti-fur campaign photographed by Paul McCartney’s daughter Mary McCartney.

The ad features Bextor holding up a skinned fox with the words, “Here’s the rest of your fur coat.”

Yes, PETA used a real fox for the shoot. According to PETA, the fox was found dead and skinned for the sake of the photo shoot. A Northern Territory News story on the ad noted that the photo shoot “had to be curtailed to one hour because of the stench of the decomposing animal.”

Bextor said she wanted to make a strong stand against fur,

I think fur is really pathetic when there are so many alternatives.

I’m part of the generation that grew up with the ‘We’d rather go naked than wear fur’ campaign and it’s something that really struck a chord with me. It felt a very natural thing to do, to be on the side of the animals when it came to fur.

PETA’s Dawn Carr admitted to The Daily Telegraph that fur had made a comeback in fashion shows,

We have been seeing a lot more fur on the catwalks recently. But, obviously, fashion shows do not reveal the pain and suffering behind each garment.

Animals are electrocuted, gassed and have their necks broken in the name of fashion. We are trying to make the point that fur is never going to be back in fashion.

We have never used a skinned, dead animal in this way before. It is quite shocking and quite difficult to look at.

But Sue Carroll, a columnist for The Mirror, put PETA’s message into the proper perspective,

Most women wear leather, not fur. Why wasn’t Sophie posing next to the skeleton of a cow with the slogan, “Here’s the rest of your shoes.”

Source:

Comment on Anti-Fur Advert. Sue Carroll, The Mirror, November 13, 2002.

Pop singer brandishes skinned fox in protest against the fur trade. Sally Pook, The Daily Telegraph (London), November 12, 2002.

Anti-fur campaigners step up battle. Graham Hiscott, Press Association, November 12, 2002.

Sophie attacks fur trade with advert shocking image: Sophie Ellis Bextor with a skinned fox. Birmingham Evening Mail, November 12, 2002.

Fur flies as Sophie joins fight. Northern Territory News, November 14, 2002.