Eating Dog Meat.

EATING DOG MEAT IN THE WORLD: A Thai website lists the following countries or regions where mainstream culture favours or at least condones dog meat eating: 1. China; 2. Indonesia; 3. Mexico; 4. Philippines; 5. Taiwan; 6. Korea; 7. Switzerland; 8. Vietnam; 9. Polynesia; 10. Siberia; 11. Alaska; 12. North Canada; 13. Groenland — See:

http://thaispca.org/?page_id=39&lang=en

In the same site, world dog population is evaluated at 500 M and dogs killed for consumption at 16 M per year, i.e. 3.2 %.

These figures can be compared with the following:

Some 21,000 children die every day around the world.

That is equivalent to:

1 child dying every 4 seconds;

14 children dying every minute;

A 2011 Libya conflict-scale death toll every day;

A 2010 Haiti earthquake occurring every 10 days;

A 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring every 11 days;

An Iraq-scale death toll every 19–46 days;

Just under 7.6 million children dying every year;

Some 92 million children dying between 2000 and 2010;

The silent killers are poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. Despite the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage.

Too Poor To Retire.

Reprinted from Los Angeles Times:
JAN. 29, 2016 | REPORTING FROM DARIEN, N.Y.
http://graphics.latimes.com/retirement-nomads/ 

Sad but true stories of many older Americans who can not afford to retire.

I usually have a short attention span, this is a compelling article that I can understand and identified with. I read it all the way though to the end. As a real estate agent & started this endeavor in 2007, I have seen my fair share of homes being taken over by the banks. I have had to work on short sale & sell homes for clients who lost their jobs and no longer can afford to keep their homes. I have had my fair share of sadness seeing all the belongings left behind in the garages; family albums, children's shoes, books, clothes, boxes and boxes of stuff they no longer can take with them etc. I have so many friends who have been in these positions described in this article. This is one of the most heart breaking, real life stories & who knows how many more are out there? This is what's going on in our country, shrinking middleclass, aging poor and homelessness. 

A

t the wise age of 79, Dolores Westfall knows food shopping on an empty stomach is a fool’s errand. On her way to the grocery store last May, she pulled into the Town & Country Family Restaurant to take the edge off her appetite.

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After much consideration, she ordered the prime rib special and an iced tea — expensive at $21.36, but the leftovers, wrapped carefully to go, would provide two more lunches.

The problem, she later realized, was that a big insurance bill was coming due. How was she going to pay it? Was she going to tip into insolvency over a plate of prime rib?

“I thought I could handle eating and shopping,” she said, “but lunch put me over the top.”

Westfall — 5 feet 1 tall, with a graceful dancer’s body she honed as a tap-dancing teenager — is as stubborn as she is high-spirited. But she finds herself these days in a precarious place: Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next....

Continued on LA TIMES with more story & pictures..

Ageism??

A Case of Agism?
Fremont woman finds herself living on the street
By Rebecca Parr, rparr@bayareanewsgroup.com Stephanie Welch weathered the booms and busts of Silicon Valley since its infancy in the 1960s, always able to find a job but that changed during the recession and a health setback where she now finds herself living on the street and bewildered. 

2016-3-5 11:00:00 A.M.

Reprinted from The San Jose Mercury News:

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_29598188/fremont-woman-finds-herself-living-on-the-street

After weathering booms and busts of Silicon Valley, Fremont woman finds herself living on the street By Rebecca Parr, rparr@bayareanewsgroup.com Doug Stewart, with the Central County Homeless Outreach program, looks for homeless under an overpass late in the evening in Martinez, Calif., on Thursday, March 4, 2016. Stewart started the Central County Homeless Outreach program 13 years ago to help them in whatever ways he could. And now, after ... Central County Homeless Outreach founder to end operations

FREMONT -- Stephanie Welch weathered the booms and busts of Silicon Valley since its infancy in the 1960s, always able to find a job.

But that changed during the recession when Welch, then in her late 50s, could not even get an interview. Since 2010, her life has spiraled downward, and Welch now finds herself living on the street and bewildered.

"The ageism -- I never saw it coming," she said.

Welch is homeless, pushing a shopping cart with some of her things around a retail parking lot in the Warm Springs neighborhood.

"I was raised here; I went to Mission San Jose. Warm Springs is a comfort for me. I don't know where else I would go," she said.....