The Mothers Index (based on ranking of 125 countries)
* Countries that are tied

Top 10 Countries	Bottom 10 Countries
1.   Sweden	125. Niger
2.   Denmark / Finland *	124. Burkina Faso
4.   Austria / Germany / Norway *	123. Mali
7.   Australia / Netherlands *	122. Chad
9.   Canada	121. Guinea-Bissau
10. United States / United Kingdom *	120. Sierra Leone
	119. Ethiopia
	118. Yemen
	117. Central African Republic
	115. Democratic Republic of Congo / Liberia *

KEY INDICATORS: The status of mothers was compared in 125 countries based on six indicators of women’s well-being and four indicators of children’s well-being:

• lifetime risk of maternal mortality
• percent of women using modern contraception
• percent of births attended by skilled personnel
• percent of pregnant women with anemia
• adult female literacy rate
• participation of women in national government
• infant mortality rate
• gross primary enrollment rate
• percent of population with access to safe water, and
• percent of children under age 5 suffering from moderate to severe nutritional wasting

“Life is not easy for moms and children in the bottom-ranked countries. Most have never been to school. Mothers are lucky to survive childbirth, and their babies fortunate to survive the first month, yet alone the first year of life,” said MacCormack. “But the good news is that we know what it takes to help these moms and children survive and thrive.”

“Humanitarian organizations like Save the Children are working in partnership with communities and governments to provide proven programs that benefit mothers and children in developing countries. Save the Children’s 70-plus years of experience on the ground have shown us that increasing access to education and child and maternal health—including family planning—are critical to the well-being of children and their mothers,” he said.

KEY FINDINGS: The Mothers' Index identifies female education, presence of a skilled attendant at birth and access to, and use of, family planning services, as the three areas most strongly associated with child survival and well-being.

• Women who are educated are more likely to postpone marriage and early childbirth, seek health care for themselves and their families, and encourage all of their children, including girls, to go to school. 
  
  
• As contraceptive use rises and mothers are able to space their births at healthy intervals, deaths among mothers and children decline. For example, in the United States, 71 percent of women use modern birth control, 1 in 2,500 mothers dies in childbirth and 7 out of 1,000 infants do not live to see their first birthday. Compare this to Mali, where 6 percent of women use birth control, 1 in 10 mothers dies in childbirth, and 1 in 8 infants dies before reaching age 1.

COUNTRY COMPARISONS: The Mothers' Index exposes an enormous disparity between the highest- and lowest-scoring countries and underscores an urgent need to address this divide. For instance, in Sweden, which tops the list, nearly all women are literate. In contrast, only 34 percent of Ethiopian women are literate. And a mother in Ethiopia is 37 times more likely to see her child die in the first year of life than a mother in Sweden.

• Compared to a mother in the top 10 countries, a mother in the bottom 10 countries is 28 times more likely to see her child die in the first year of life and over 750 times more likely to die herself in pregnancy or childbirth.

• In the bottom 10 countries, nearly 1 out of 3 children is not enrolled in school and only 1 out of 4 adult women is literate. In the top 10 countries, virtually all children go to school and all women are literate.

• Skilled health personnel attend fewer than 15 percent of births in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Nepal.

• Fewer than 5 percent of women use modern contraception in Chad, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, Rwanda and Sierra Leone.

 mom I know asked her 15-year-old daughter recently about her math homework. The teenager, not exactly sure what was due when, replied that she'd "Facebook" someone for the assignment. Why not use the telephone? the mom wanted to know. Her daughter rolled her eyes at that one.

Where I live, just outside Washington, Facebook.com is both noun and verb, the unchallenged colossus of adolescent communication that works like the telephone, the back fence, the class bulletin board (and, at times, the locker room), all rolled into one virtual mosh pit. In other towns, MySpace.com plays the same starring role. In both cases, they have legions of parents pulling out their hair.

Here's why: those online social networks have become, almost overnight, booming teen magnets exerting an almost irresistible pull on kids' time and attention. Though both sites are only two years old, MySpace is the No. 2 most- trafficked spot on the Internet; Facebook is No. 7, right behind Google. MySpace is open to anyone with an e-mail address; Facebook requires members to be affiliated with a college or a high school, which is why it's the preferred virtual reality in my household.

Created by a Harvard student, Facebook started out as a digital version of those little photo guides of incoming college freshmen and quickly expanded to include the student bodies of more than 2,100 colleges. Last fall, high schools were invited to join, and now Facebook has 7 million members. Like all secret societies, it has its own language, passageways and handshakes. You can "poke" a friend--sort of like a wink or a wave--without saying much more. You can check the "pulse" to see what movies, books and music are topping the charts at your school. You can post pictures of yourself and your friends, and there's a nifty feature that allows kids to create specialized subgroups of Facebookers who share hobbies, obsessions great and small or inside jokes. And then there's "the wall," which may be Facebook's most distinctive feature. It's the place on every member's site where friends can post messages, have conversations and just generally keep up. The wall makes sense in one respect: it's easy and fun to spot an incoming message. But in another it's curious: you can peruse the postings of everyone else at your school. Which means the wall is one of those giveaway clues about Generation M: teenagers think their lives are private just so long as their parents aren't tuning in.

As a social-networking tool, these sites have become almost indispensable. But they have their darker passages too. When students began posting pictures of themselves at parties holding a beer and leaving messages that were hurtful, defamatory or demeaning, schools began considering ways to regulate the speech on the site. Some high schools have officially banned Facebook as well as MySpace activity during the school day and discouraged kids from spending time on those sites after hours. Colleges can't begin to enforce such bans, but many have groups studying how to control bad behavior or have issued guidelines. And they have discovered a powerful incentive for improving digital deportment, informing students that a variety of employers admit they check applicants' Facebook pages for clues to their personalities before making job offers. "Most of the people who use Facebook," says the company's marketing director, Melanie Deitch, "realize that anything you post there is public information."

A few cases of online friendships that turned violent or even homicidal have pressured social-network sites to provide better security for their members. Facebook recently overhauled its privacy settings to give members tighter controls over who sees what.

But to me the bigger worry with those sites isn't so much the privacy or security issues, though those are real enough. It's the sheer amount of screen-sucking time they consume in lives that are already overscheduled. Being a teenager is one enormous exercise in time management. Watching my kids try to juggle school, homework, sports, music lessons and sleep, I sometimes think my life is easier than theirs. That's partly because I have some tools they lack, but it's also because I think I know an abyss when I see one. Facebook is one giant time vortex--a black hole of chatter--and for many kids it's hard to find an exit. Under its influence, 90 minutes of homework ends up taking four to five hours, says Dr. Alan Goodwin, principal of Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Md. Those sites are "a huge distraction."

At our house, we haven't banned Facebook entirely. Instead, we've had a lot of conversations about what is appropriate speech and then checked to make sure those conversations stuck. And we've tried to restrict Internet access during homework hours. I say "tried" because I'm sure my 15-year-old knows several ways around all the password protections I set up in recent months. (In trying to erect one barricade a few weeks ago, I accidentally deleted half his homework for a semester. That was a fun day.)

Facebook reports its members spend an average of 18 minutes on the site each day. I asked my son last week if that number sounded right to him. You know what he did? He just rolled his eyes at me.

Paul Rusesabagina was never the most idealistic man. As manager of the Belgian-owned Mille Collines, a luxury hotel in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, he knew when to slip a bottle of Scotch to corrupt colonels to keep them in his pocket.

Those street smarts became his salvation when Rwanda plummeted into genocide ten years ago in an event that transformed the genial businessman into an unlikely hero.

As ethnic Hutus began killing their Tutsi neighbors, Rusesabagina—a Hutu married to a Tutsi woman—turned his hotel into an impromptu refugee camp for more than a thousand terrified Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Deserted by international peacekeepers, Rusesabagina began cashing in every favor he had ever earned, bribing the Rwandan Hutu soldiers and keeping the bloodthirsty militia (mostly) outside the gates during the hundred days of slaughter.

In the end, he survived along with his wife and three children, as did most of the refugees he sheltered.

Now his heroic story is recounted in Hotel Rwanda, a gripping account of a genocide that claimed an estimated 800,000 lives, mainly Tutsis but also many moderate Hutus.

The movie, which opens in limited release in the United States on December 22, has received some Oscar buzz, especially for Don Cheadle's performance as Rusesabagina.

Amnesty International has hosted several screenings for Hotel Rwanda to raise awareness for another genocide, one that is still unfolding: the conflict in Darfur, Sudan.

Last week, at the premiere in Beverly Hills, Rusesabagina received Amnesty's "Enduring Spirit" award. After the screening, the rotund former hotel manager, who now runs a trucking business in Belgium, appeared decidedly modest about the film's potential to stir the public's consciousness.

"All we want to do is to show what happened," he said, "so that ten years later, people can at least know what it was and how it was." At the start of the genocide, Rwanda, a nation of six million people, was about 85 percent Hutu and 15 percent Tutsi. The two groups speak the same language and share the same culture.

The primary cause of the conflict, referred to in the film, can be traced back to European colonialism. The Belgian rulers concluded that the tall and thin Tutsis were superior to the short and stocky Hutus, and favored the Tutsis for all positions of power.

Resentment among Hutus gradually built up. At Rwanda's independence in 1962, a Hutu dictatorship took over and further polarized the ethnic state, blaming Tutsis for every crisis.

The genocide was ignited by the death of Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, when his plane was shot down above the Kigali airport on April 6, 1994. Hutu extremist politicians blamed Tutsi rebels for shooting down the plane.

Within hours, the streets filled with Hutu militia known as the Interahamwe, or "those who work together." Spurred on by furious calls for blood by a local radio station, they first killed the Tutsi business and political elite, then turned to ordinary Tutsi citizens.

In weeks the slaughter had spread to much of the Rwandan countryside. Local officials ordered Hutu peasants to kill their Tutsi neighbors. Those Hutus who refused were murdered themselves. At its peak, the genocide claimed 8,000 lives per day, a rate far faster than the Holocaust.

The international community, meanwhile, turned a blind eye toward Rwanda's horrors. Western governments avoided calling the slaughter "genocide." Under the UN Geneva Convention, that would have obliged outside nations to intervene.

To some outside Rwanda, the massacres seemed like an impulsive outburst of ancient tribal hatred, which perhaps partly accounted for the West's reluctance to get involved. In reality, the genocide in Rwanda was precisely planned and executed by one of the most authoritarian states in Africa.

Terry George, Hotel Rwanda's director, is blunt when sharing his opinion about why the outside world deserted Rwanda. "It's simple," he said at a reception after the film's Hollywood screening. "African lives are not seen as valuable as the lives of Europeans or Americans."

Darfur

After the Holocaust, the international community pledged "never again" to allow genocide to take place. But it did happen—in Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, and in Rwanda.

In recent years, leaders of national governments and international institutions have acknowledged their shortcomings in Rwanda. During a visit to Rwanda in 1998, President Clinton apologized for not acting. Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, said he personally could have done more to stop it.

Yet human rights groups say genocide has been unfolding in Sudan's troubled Darfur region since last year.

That conflict erupted in February 2003, when black rebels took up arms against what they saw as years of state neglect and discrimination against Sudanese of African origin.

The Arab government, aided by a militia known as the Janjaweed, cracked down on the rebels and their perceived supporters, creating what the UN has described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

More than 70,000 people have been killed or have died from hunger and disease in the area, according to the UN, and another 1.5 million people have been displaced.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has said genocide is taking place in Darfur. But so far only an African Union force of 800 troops and 100 observers has been dispatched to the mainly desert region. They are there as peacekeepers and are not allowed to fire their weapons unless in self-defense.

"How far have we really come [since the genocide in Rwanda]?" said Bill Schultz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, who is based in New York. "The Sudanese government has been emboldened by international inaction. They think they can get away with murder, and frankly there's every reason to believe they are right."

Paul Rusesabagina says he understands how easy it is for people to ignore what happens in a war thousands of miles away. As a few people gathered around him after the screening, one woman told Rusesabagina how much she appreciated the film. "I was in my college dorm at the time," she said. "I had no idea this was going on."

Rusesabagina nodded his head. "You can be a messenger," he told the woman. "Now you can tell others what you have seen."

Posted Sunday, Apr. 09, 2006
Two senior military officers are known to have challenged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the planning of the Iraq war. Army General Eric Shinseki publicly dissented and found himself marginalized. Marine Lieut. General Greg Newbold, the Pentagon's top operations officer, voiced his objections internally and then retired, in part out of opposition to the war. Here, for the first time, Newbold goes public with a full-throated critique:

In 1971, the rock group The Who released the antiwar anthem Won't Get Fooled Again. To most in my generation, the song conveyed a sense of betrayal by the nation's leaders, who had led our country into a costly and unnecessary war in Vietnam. To those of us who were truly counterculture--who became career members of the military during those rough times--the song conveyed a very different message. To us, its lyrics evoked a feeling that we must never again stand by quietly while those ignorant of and casual about war lead us into another one and then mismanage the conduct of it. Never again, we thought, would our military's senior leaders remain silent as American troops were marched off to an ill-considered engagement. It's 35 years later, and the judgment is in: the Who had it wrong. We have been fooled again.

From 2000 until October 2002, I was a Marine Corps lieutenant general and director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After 9/11, I was a witness and therefore a party to the actions that led us to the invasion of Iraq--an unnecessary war. Inside the military family, I made no secret of my view that the zealots' rationale for war made no sense. And I think I was outspoken enough to make those senior to me uncomfortable. But I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat--al-Qaeda. I retired from the military four months before the invasion, in part because of my opposition to those who had used 9/11's tragedy to hijack our security policy. Until now, I have resisted speaking out in public. I've been silent long enough.

I am driven to action now by the missteps and misjudgments of the White House and the Pentagon, and by my many painful visits to our military hospitals. In those places, I have been both inspired and shaken by the broken bodies but unbroken spirits of soldiers, Marines and corpsmen returning from this war. The cost of flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood. The willingness of our forces to shoulder such a load should make it a sacred obligation for civilian and military leaders to get our defense policy right. They must be absolutely sure that the commitment is for a cause as honorable as the sacrifice.

With the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership, I offer a challenge to those still in uniform: a leader's responsibility is to give voice to those who can't--or don't have the opportunity to--speak. Enlisted members of the armed forces swear their oath to those appointed over them; an officer swears an oath not to a person but to the Constitution. The distinction is important.

Before the antiwar banners start to unfurl, however, let me make clear--I am not opposed to war. I would gladly have traded my general's stars for a captain's bars to lead our troops into Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda. And while I don't accept the stated rationale for invading Iraq, my view--at the moment--is that a precipitous withdrawal would be a mistake. It would send a signal, heard around the world, that would reinforce the jihadists' message that America can be defeated, and thus increase the chances of future conflicts. If, however, the Iraqis prove unable to govern, and there is open civil war, then I am prepared to change my position.

I will admit my own prejudice: my deep affection and respect are for those who volunteer to serve our nation and therefore shoulder, in those thin ranks, the nation's most sacred obligation of citizenship. To those of you who don't know, our country has never been served by a more competent and professional military. For that reason, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent statement that "we" made the "right strategic decisions" but made thousands of "tactical errors" is an outrage. It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strategy by shifting the blame for failure to those who have been resolute in fighting. The truth is, our forces are successful in spite of the strategic guidance they receive, not because of it.

What we are living with now is the consequences of successive policy failures. Some of the missteps include: the distortion of intelligence in the buildup to the war, McNamara-like micromanagement that kept our forces from having enough resources to do the job, the failure to retain and reconstitute the Iraqi military in time to help quell civil disorder, the initial denial that an insurgency was the heart of the opposition to occupation, alienation of allies who could have helped in a more robust way to rebuild Iraq, and the continuing failure of the other agencies of our government to commit assets to the same degree as the Defense Department. My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions--or bury the results.

Flaws in our civilians are one thing; the failure of the Pentagon's military leaders is quite another. Those are men who know the hard consequences of war but, with few exceptions, acted timidly when their voices urgently needed to be heard. When they knew the plan was flawed, saw intelligence distorted to justify a rationale for war, or witnessed arrogant micromanagement that at times crippled the military's effectiveness, many leaders who wore the uniform chose inaction. A few of the most senior officers actually supported the logic for war. Others were simply intimidated, while still others must have believed that the principle of obedience does not allow for respectful dissent. The consequence of the military's quiescence was that a fundamentally flawed plan was executed for an invented war, while pursuing the real enemy, al-Qaeda, became a secondary effort.

There have been exceptions, albeit uncommon, to the rule of silence among military leaders. Former Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki, when challenged to offer his professional opinion during prewar congressional testimony, suggested that more troops might be needed for the invasion's aftermath. The Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense castigated him in public and marginalized him in his remaining months in his post. Army General John Abizaid, head of Central Command, has been forceful in his views with appointed officials on strategy and micromanagement of the fight in Iraq--often with success. Marine Commandant General Mike Hagee steadfastly challenged plans to underfund, understaff and underequip his service as the Corps has struggled to sustain its fighting capability.

To be sure, the Bush Administration and senior military officials are not alone in their culpability. Members of Congress--from both parties--defaulted in fulfilling their constitutional responsibility for oversight. Many in the media saw the warning signs and heard cautionary tales before the invasion from wise observers like former Central Command chiefs Joe Hoar and Tony Zinni but gave insufficient weight to their views. These are the same news organizations that now downplay both the heroic and the constructive in Iraq.

So what is to be done? We need fresh ideas and fresh faces. That means, as a first step, replacing Rumsfeld and many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach. The troops in the Middle East have performed their duty. Now we need people in Washington who can construct a unified strategy worthy of them. It is time to send a signal to our nation, our forces and the world that we are uncompromising on our security but are prepared to rethink how we achieve it. It is time for senior military leaders to discard caution in expressing their views and ensure that the President hears them clearly. And that we won't be fooled again.

据京华时报报道:继国家食品药品监督管理局医疗器械司原司长郝和平涉嫌受贿案发后，1月12日，北京西城区检察院以谈话的名义，将正在北京郊区宽沟召开“2006年全国食品药品监督管理工作会议”的曹文庄（国家食品药品监督管理局药品注册司司长、中国药学会秘书长）、卢爱英（药品注册司助理巡视员、注册司化药处原处长）、王国荣（国家药典委员会秘书长、中国药品生物制品检定所原副所长）等数位司局级干部以及3位药品注册司的处级干部叫到场外，并带回检察院进行调查。

成都市有一所中学，在正常行课期间，高三老师到海南旅游去了，乐得忘了给家长打招呼，导致学生夜夜上网，于是家长告状，记者采访，校长撒谎，说老师们到深圳学习去了。
      校长为什么敢讲假话？他相信，讲假话比讲真话的风险小得多。果然，记者没再调查，教委说了“一经查实严肃处理”后再没严肃，老师们从海南旅游归来也没追查哪个家长告的状，有惊无险，当没这回事。
其实，这里面是有“规律”在运作的。一，上级领导心知肚明，但是“家丑不可外扬”，扬出去上级领导脸上无光。二，领导捏着群众的饭碗，谁敢据实举报就叫谁“下岗”；三，单位真被“查处”了，“惩罚”是要分摊到每个人头上的（譬如年终奖没了）。
再举一例。
      重庆市大足县人事局副局长李福多今年1月22日在家中自杀后，县有关部门确定其自杀原因是“工资微薄，无钱养母”。
      这个副局长是剖腹自杀的：“创口深达腹腔；在死者身边有两个空的剑南春酒瓶和9个烟头。”你想想，死者喝了两瓶剑南春白酒后，还能一本正经站起来，再能有条不紊地握着刀子刺破肚皮，并且把刀子扎进肚里很深？这是奇迹还是神话？再说，一个县人事局副局长每月有2000元的收入吧，供奉农村老母还不够吗？为什么不派人调查，老太太春节前向儿子要钱了吗，一年到头要了多少钱？报道语焉不详甚至无语，这里面到底有什么文章？
去年，甘肃某省级日报的前社长在家中被杀，警方很快就说是几个小偷干的。破案神速好，叫人信服才是真的好。
有太多的事实证明，“新闻发言人”不讲真话。
甚至政府高官也不讲真话。非奠肆虐时，中国卫生部长在中外记者招待会上信誓旦旦，中国没有非典，到中国来旅游是安全的。这个“神话”后来被一个有良知的中国人打破了。
他们为什么不讲真话？因为讲真话的人没有好下场。
      中国“第一黑哨”龚建平，因为良心发现而承认自己“吹黑哨”，结果被判刑。他眼睁睁看着别的“黑哨”比他更“黑”，日进斗金安然无恙，自己身患癌症死不瞑目。
      原乡党委书记李昌平因向总理上书“农民真苦，农村真穷，农业真危险”，而被迫辞职远走他乡。
2001年，中国股市上证指数达2200点，而到2005年时，一半的财富都蒸发掉了。不少“发言人”还说“中国股市是健康的”？
      2005年松花江水污染重大事故，十天后才说“设备检修”，市民普遍不相信但是毫无办法。污水要进入俄罗斯了，中国政府才赶紧筑坝，“污水不流外人田”。在当地政府一些官员眼里，外国人的生命才是生命啊，国际形象比群众的生命更重要。因此才有专家说：“谁叫你生在中国？”
这是中国的惯例啊。凡足以影响社会稳定的重大恶性案件，老百姓一般是很难及时从媒体上知道实情的。一句“稳定压倒一切”，不知压倒了多少人，牺牲了多少无辜者的生命？致使犯罪分子逃匿，渎职者以党纪代国法，民众付出惨重的代价，社会更不稳定了。
官场是一个向民众封闭的系统。在被条条块块分割的一亩三分地里，大大小小的“地主”们只对给予自己头上的乌纱帽负责。山高皇帝远。皇帝要江山稳，得靠整个系统操劳维持着，只要下面不出大错，皇帝是乐得睁眼闭眼的，所谓“民不究、官不理”，便是。
      而身在体制内的每一个人，为了保住一个越来越容易丢失的饭碗，被迫与单位共同造假，以维护单位的"形象"与“稳定”。
     杰弗逊说得好：“如果让我决定我们应该有一个没有报纸的政府还是没有政府的报纸，我会毫不犹豫地选择后者。”在现代社会，信息自由是新闻自由的前提。新闻自由就像空气。没有新闻自由，报纸是废纸，记者是奴才，人们长期被动地接受那些精心编织的谎言丧失了辨别事物真伪的能力，也会成为扼杀真话乃至真理的“帮闲”。今天不少中小学生欢呼父母当年上山下乡“那多好玩啊”。不少大学生毕业即失业，火石落在脚背上，甚至出现了“啃老族”。这是天下父母最大的辛酸啊。
     有不少善良的人希望领导听真话，说真话，这往往没用。权力不受监督，真话一出来就死，没死的人往往少了血性，甚至连人性都少了。因此，只有言论自由，新闻自由，最能有效地唤醒和启发人的自由意识，最能维护和保障人的自由权利。
     人，只能靠民主政体来保障。

世界上最遥远的距离

不是
生与死，
而是
我就站在你面前你
却不知道我爱你。


世界上最遥远的距离

不是
我就站在你面前
你却不知道我爱你，
而是
明明知道彼此相爱
却不能在一起。


世界上最遥远的距离

不是
明明知道彼此相爱
却不能在一起，
而是
明明无法抵挡这种思念，
却还得故意装做丝毫没有把你放在心里。


世界上最遥远的距离

不是
明明无法抵挡这种思念
却还得故意装做丝毫没有把你放在心里。
而是
用自己冷漠的心对爱你的人，
掘了一条无法跨越的沟渠。