Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday, 31 May 2012

Why a spare million dollars won't put you on the rich list

Sylvia Pennington

Being a millionaire just means there's a new level of things you can't afford, writes Sylvia Pennington.

Back in the day, ''millionaire'' and ''rich'' were considered synonyms, but it's not so straightforward in 2012, when six-figure salaries are commonplace, and a spare million dollars buys only modest suburban comfort.

Most of us would have no trouble picking out the well heeled in our midst, but identifying what puts them into the wealthy club has become more subjective than ever.

James Gerrard, a financial planner at PSK Financial Services in Sydney, says having $1 million to invest in addition to the family home is the minimum you need to join the high net worth club.

You'll be joined by a swag of baby boomers and the odd Gen X and Y who've come into money early or done well with a business venture.

"People in this category include pre-retirees who've sold something, been made redundant or accumulated steadily over the years," Gerrard said. "It's rare for those under 50 who haven't had a windfall, inheritance or floated their own start-up to have this kind of cash."

Thirty-something accountant Daniel Pluta agreed. A partner in his own firm alongside wife Natalie, he describes his own position as "comfortable". The pair have restrictions on what they spend, chip away at a mortgage and adhere to "some sort of budget".

Pluta says being wealthy means not having to do any of this - and having enough put by that working is optional.

"You would need to own your own home and perhaps a holiday house fully paid off, some investments in shares and plenty of cash reserves," he said. "Being wealthy is a mirage - the closer you get to it, the further away it is. As you accumulate wealth there are always new things to spend it on and a new level of things you can't afford."

For Peter Maniaty, the creative group head at Sydney advertising agency Euro RSCG, it's less about the balance sheet and more about the vibe.

"For me, it's about happiness and a lifestyle that's genuinely free from financial anxiety," Maniaty said.

"By this definition I don't consider myself to be wealthy, even though I earn a reasonably high income. If my wealth was a pair of shoes, they'd be a size too small. Yes, I can squeeze into them but it's not especially comfortable. Oh, and there's a constant threat of blisters."

For those not yet at the point of living off their interest, a family income of $250,000 will gain entry to the working wealthy club, Gerrard said. This sum - typically in the form of a $200,000 breadwinner's salary and a $50,000 top-up from a partner working part-time - gives a combined net income of $14,500 a month. It's enough to cover the $6500 payments on a $1 million mortgage, living expenses of $5000 and leave $3000 for the slush fund.

It's far from a fortune - but certainly enough to pay for a nice home, holidays and perhaps the lease on a set or two of European wheels as well.

And flush enough that you can scrape along without the 30 per cent private health insurance rebate, according to the government's reckoning. Come July, families earning more than $260,001 will no longer be eligible for this concession, while, over at Centrelink, family tax benefits cease being paid when a couple with three children pulls in more than $163,885.

But while $260,000 a year may have you paying more for your hospital cover, it's far from sufficient to get you into a wealthy person's ''des res'' in Australia's priciest market, according to those who sell them for a living.

Hamish Robertson, a luxury property specialist at John McGrath agency in Sydney, said, by real estate agents' rule of thumb, premium properties start at $3 million plus - putting them beyond the means of many working wealthy couples, unless they've had their nose to the golden grindstone for some time.

Heavy-hitting professionals in their 40s and successful, self-employed businesspeople make up the bulk of the premium market, Robertson said, while higher up the ladder again, the really rich roost in super-premium waterfront homes costing $10 million and up. Typically it won't be their only perch; most in this group also own a farm or beachside getaway.

For many wealthy folk and wannabes, stashing the cash is not enough - they need to know they're doing it faster than those next door. This is one reason people seek the help of financial planners, Gerrard said. "People do voice concern as to whether they are keeping up," he said.

"Everyone is looking at the Joneses … They look at what the neighbours have and feel quite poor."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/why-a-spare-million-dollars-wont-put-you-on-the-rich-list-20120530-1zje0.html#ixzz1wQ4cfHMK

 

BBC News, Tuesday, 29 May 2012

Archbishop of Canterbury criticises 'paranoid' Britain

Rowan Williams: 'Gulf between rich and poor is growing'

The Archbishop of Canterbury has said he is disappointed by the direction the UK has taken in recent years. 

Speaking to the BBC's Newsnight, Dr Rowan Williams raised concerns about the gap between rich and poor and the lack of cultural cohesion in the UK.

Dr Williams is stepping down as head of the Anglican Communion in December.

"There have been moments in the last decade and more when, perhaps, we might have been able to take a different line," he said. 

He was referring to the way the British think and feel as a society and told Newsnight's Stephen Smith that British society had "put up the shutters" and retreated into "corporate paranoia" in the wake of terrorist threats.

A culture has developed, he said, in which people are fearful of those above and below on the social ladder and are becoming "fist-clenching, anxious, not generous".

Dr Williams said a "sense of hopelessness" had developed at the bottom levels of society.

"The gulf between the top and the bottom of the economic ladder has grown and is growing, that's not something we really tackled."

Anxiety of wealth

The interview was recorded as part of a BBC Newsnight film about the lessons modern Britain can learn from the works of Charles Dickens.

The central message of Dickens, he said, was that you have to let go of the anxiety that comes from the acquisition of wealth. 

"You have to grow through generosity - that is, I think, the Dickens lesson that I would want to see etched in granite across the life of this country," said Dr Williams.

He said another lesson we could learn from Dickens was that the education system should teach people to use their imagination and emotions, rather than turning education into a "sausage machine" or "letting the box-ticking mentality take over."

"Without imagination you won't get people to understand that they're part of something bigger than themselves. 

"The more you go down a narrowly utilitarian model of education, where you're just thinking about outcomes and ultimate profits and educating people for skills in the economy, the more you think like that, the less you actually equip people to belong, to work together, to have solidarity and vision for themselves as a group."

Dr Williams went on to say that it was too early to be cynical about Prime Minister David Cameron's idea of the Big Society.

"It contains within itself the hugely important sense of investing your value, your worth in the value, worth, happiness of your immediate community - so it's about building community, about getting beyond the bounds of selfishness and about taking local responsibilities." 

Dr Williams said the misfortune was that this ideal came along at the same time as the economic crisis hit the UK and resources have since drained away.

Referring back to Charles Dickens and the writer's valuation of the "hard-working local doctor, imaginative teacher and nurse", Dr Williams argued that we do not value these professions enough and this attitude has not changed over the last 10 years.

The Star, Sunday May 27, 2012

Sam Chong – First Malaysian-born billionaire in Australia

MELBOURNE: Mining magnate Sam Chong has become Australia's first Malaysian-born billionaire as revealed by the latest Business Review Weekly (BRW) Richest 200 list.

A self-made man, Chong, 69, who was born in Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands, increased his wealth by A$50mil (RM153.623mil) from last year's A$950mil (RM2.918bil).

Another Malaysian is close to joining the Billionaires' Club. He is award-winning Queensland property developer Maha Sinnathamby, 72, who is listed as having A$820mil (RM2.519bil) and his kitty is increasing rapidly by the month.

Chong, who is married with one child, came to Australia in 1973 to study mining engineering at the University of New South Wales, Sydney in 1973.

BRW, Australia's leading business magazine, said Chong held a range of mining roles after graduating before taking a position with Queensland Coal Mine Management, now known as Jellinbah Group, in the 1980s.

There he worked with millionaires Jim Gorman and the late Ken Talbot before they left to pursue other ventures.

Chong maintains a 23 percent stake in the company, which has 70 per cent interests in two small-sized coal mines in the Bowen Basin in central Queensland and is in the process of developing another one.

Chong, who lives in Brisbane, also has an extensive property portfolio in and around Brisbane with his A$70mil (RM215mil) apartment and hotel development in Brisbane's Central Business District (CBD)due for completion late next year.

Sinnathamby's is a classic story of hard and dedicated work paying off.

From a humble home during the Japanese Occupation, he moved to Sydney after leaving St Paul's Institution, Seremban, to complete an engineering degree.

Sinnathmby's Greater Springfield is the largest privately owned master-planned city in Australia. 

A man of vision, Sinnathamby is the master developer of the entire 2,860 hectare Greater Springfield land parcel which has become home to more than 23,000 residents and 9,000 students since it was established in 1991.

Only 13 percent of the acreage, which he and a friend Bob Sharpless bought for just A$7.2mil (RM 22.12mil) in the early 1990s, has been developed.

When completed, the investment in Greater Springfield, which is about 45km from Brisbane, is calculated to be worth more than A$23bil (RM70.66bil). More than A$3.2bil (RM9.83bil) has been invested to date.

Greater Springfield has its own CBD, central parkland and lakes as well as education, hospital, well-being and information technology precincts.

Sinnathamby's four adult children are all involved in his property development and are a close-knit family.

Two other Malaysians have again made the BRW Rich list this year.

David Teoh and his wife Vicky, both 56, have increased their wealth from A$484mil (RM1.487bil) last year to A$525mil (RM1.613bil), money made from technology ventures. - Bernama

'Gay' penguin couple given egg of their own

This is funny but I also feel bad laughing about it. A real good read though.

Until the next time, cheers.

'Gay' penguin couple given egg of their own

 

May 23, 2012

 

MADRID - Every spring for six years penguins Inca and Rayas have lovingly built a nest together, only to find that no eggs arrive to fill it. It does not seem to have dawned on the couple that both of them are male.

But after the repeated heartbreak of watching other penguins become parents and raise their young, the "gay" couple finally have something to celebrate after their keepers gave them an egg of their own to care for.

Rather than questioning how the improbable scenario arose, the inseparable pair has seized their one chance at fatherhood with the zeal of a couple who know they may not get another.

Inca has taken on the "female" role of incubating the donated egg, obtained by keepers a month ago, and stoically remains atop his prize for most of the day, refusing the temptation to dip his feathers into the water.

His partner Rayas, meanwhile, keeps a watchful guard over the nest while eating whatever he can fit in his beak in preparation for the traditional male job of feeding his young with regurgitated fish.

His keepers report that Rayas has become more anxious due to nervous anticipation of his due date in June, but that the job seems to have made him into a "new penguin", according to the The Daily Telegraph.

Ms Yolanda Martin, who cares for the pair, said: "We wanted them to have something to stay together for - so we got an egg. Otherwise they might have become depressed."

The couple drew attention after forming an inseparable bond from the day they met at Faunia Park in Madrid, but the new development has made them a media sensation, topping news bulletins and bringing a welcome ray of sunshine to Spain after weeks of miserable headlines about the country's economic turmoil.

Ms Martin said it was "lovely" to be able to cheer people up but emphasised that the penguins are not actually gay - they are just the best of friends.

The penguins' bundle of joy arrived a year after staff at a zoo in China gave a penguin couple named Adam and Steve a chick to look after last year.

But other "gay" relationships have not ended so happily: Buddy and Pedro, an all-male pairing at Toronto Zoo were put in separate enclosures by keepers who felt they were not making a sufficient contribution to the gene pool. AGENCIES

Baby trapped in tumble dryer after 'joke' goes wrong

How stupid can parents be?

Until the next time, cheers.

Baby trapped in tumble dryer after 'joke' goes wrong

May 23, 2012

 
NEW YORK - Security camera footage captures the moment a toddler is placed inside a laundrette tumble dryer "as a joke" before the machine is inadvertedly switched on.

CCTV from the store in the United States shows a couple loading a tumble dryer. When the woman's back is turned, the man picks up his child and hides it among the laundry before closing the door.

The auto-lock on the machine's door activates the tumble dryer, preventing the shocked father from retrieving his son, The Daily Telegraph reported.

As the machine begins its cycle, the parents frantically try to shut it down. After a minute of panic, an attendant turns off the power allowing the couple to retrieve their child before making a hasty dash for the exit.

The child is reported to have survived its ordeal with only minor bruising. AGENCIES

An interesting article..wonder how true this is.

Until the next time, cheers.

The Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday, 22 May 2012

Five dictators with mummy issues

Uri Friedman

THE Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, who was very close with his mother, once remarked that "people who know that they are preferred or favoured by their mother give evidence in their lives of a peculiar self-reliance and an unshakeable optimism which often seem like heroic attributes and bring actual success to their possessors".

Whether you subscribe to Freud's theories or not, it's certainly true that some of the world's most powerful rulers have had fascinating relationships with their mothers — some surprisingly loving, others ambivalent or just plain bitter. Alexander the Great's power-hungry mother, Olympias, is thought to have been a driving force behind her son's ascension to the throne of Macedonia. Napoleon Bonaparte's mother, Letizia, taught her son discipline ("she sometimes made me go to bed without supper," he once recalled) and followed him to exile in Elba and then back to Paris before the Battle of Waterloo.

Modern-day dictators have had their share of complicated mother-son relationships as well.

Adolf Hitler

Country: Germany
Mother: Klara

Impoverished ... Adolf Hitler after his release from Landsberg prison in 1924. Photo: AFP

The tombstone of Hitler's parents, Klara and Alois, in the Leonding cemetery, Austria. Photo: AP

Relationship: Although he often clashed with his father over his poor performance at school, the Führer adored his mother. Hitler left his home in 1907 as a teenager to try to make it as an artist in Vienna (Klara encouraged his artistic endeavours) but returned briefly after his mother died of cancer that same year, leaving him an orphan. In Mein Kampf, which Hitler wrote in the 1920s, he reflected on his reaction to her passing:

"I am thankful for that period in my life because it hardened me and enabled me to be as tough as I now am. And I am even more thankful because I appreciate the fact that I was thus saved from the emptiness of a life of ease and that a mother's darling was taken from tender arms and handed over to Adversity as to a new mother. Though I then rebelled against it as too hard a fate, I am grateful that I was thrown into a world of misery and poverty and thus came to know the people for whom I was afterwards to fight."

Eduard Bloch, the Jewish doctor who treated Klara, would later recall that while Hitler "was not a 'mother's boy' in the usual sense," he had "never witnessed a closer attachment." He had also never witnessed "anyone so prostrate with grief as Adolf Hitler" as he sat by his mother's deathbed, sketching her to "preserve a last impression." Some have speculated that Bloch's failure to save Klara contributed to Hitler's hatred of Jews. But the Nazis permitted Bloch to leave Austria for the United States in 1940, and Bloch claimed that Hitler once remarked, "If all Jews were like him, there would be no Jewish question."

Joseph Stalin

Country: Soviet Union
Mother: Ekaterina ("Keke")

Josif Visionarovich Djugashvili, the child who became Stalin the dictator

 

Relationship: Stalin, like Hitler, was fond of his mother but had a tumultuous relationship with his father, an alcoholic who savagely beat him and Keke ("Soso," as Stalin was called, once arrived at a police officer's house in the Georgian village where he grew up with his face covered in blood, yelling "he's killing my mother!").

Keke worked hard as a laundress to enroll Stalin in a church school and later a theological seminary — even fighting to send him back to school when his father, who had since left the home, briefly kidnapped Soso, and set him up as an apprentice cobbler. But she too meted out corporal punishment and grew angry with Stalin when he misbehaved at school. And while Stalin installed his mother in a palace in Georgia during his rise to power, he rarely visited her. His letters to her included lines such as "Dear mother, please live for 10,000 years. Kisses, Soso" and "I know you're disappointed in me but what can I do? I'm busy and can't write often."

When Stalin visited his mother in 1935, shortly before her death, a doctor who was treating Keke recalled a conversation that went something like this:

"Why did you beat me so hard?"
"That's why you turned out so well. Joseph — who exactly are you now?"
"Remember the tsar? Well, I'm like the tsar."
"You'd have done better to have become a priest."

Robert Mugabe

Country: Zimbabwe
Mother: Bona

Robert Mugabe at a party meeting, 2010. Photo: Reuters

 

 

 

Relationship: Mugabe doesn't speak often about his mother, a devout Catholic who sank into depression after her husband abandoned the family and Mugabe's two older brothers died. But he opened up to journalist Heidi Holland several years ago, noting that books were his main companions as a child. "I lived in my mind a lot," he recalled. "I liked talking to myself." Holland's takeaway?

"Although the family was desperately poor, it was the emotional deprivation of his childhood that scarred Robert for life. While his parental grandfather did his best to compensate for the absent father, teaching Robert how to catch birds for the family pot, it was to austere Bona that Robert looked forlornly for affection. . . .

"As he grew up, Robert got his sense of who he was from Bona. She left him in no doubt that he was to be the achiever who rose above everyone else; the leader chosen by God Himself. She may also have viewed him as a substitute for her own failure to serve the Church as she and her parents had intended."

Bona's lofty aspirations for her son make one anecdote in Peter Godwin's recent biography of Mugabe particularly baffling. A former student of Mugabe's told Godwin he was with Bona in 1980 when Mugabe was elected Zimbabwe's first black prime minister. "Bona was not happy he had won," the student explained. "We were at her house and she said, 'He is not capable of doing it. He is not the kind of person who will look after other people.'"

Slobodan Milosevic

Country: Yugoslavia
Mother: Stanislava

Relationship: Milosevic entered the world at a tumultuous time; he was born in a Serbian town during the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia, and his father abandoned the family a few years afterward. Milosevic's mother, a teacher and Communist activist, "became the centre of her son's childhood universe," Adam LeBor writes in his biography of Milosevic. "Stanislava took care every day to send Slobodan out in a fresh white shirt, like a junior version of the Communist official she hoped he would be." The New York Times described the young Milosevic as a "pudgy loner with few friends."

When Milosevic headed off to university in Belgrade, however, he began visiting home less frequently and started dating a fellow student named Mira Markovic, who did not get along with Stanislava. In 1974, an increasingly depressed Stanislava hanged herself at the family home, just over a decade after Milosevic's father had committed suicide.

Milosevic appears to have blamed himself for his mother's death. "My mother never forgave me for Mira," he reportedly told a friend.

Jean-Claude Duvalier

Country: Haiti
Mother: Simone

Jean-Claude Duvalier and his father Francois in Port au Prince. Photo: AFP

The wedding of Jean-Claude Duvalier and Michele Bennett, Port-au-Prince, 1980. Photo: A

Relationship: When "Baby Doc" Duvalier succeeded his father, François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, as the ruler of Haiti in 1971, at the age of 19, his mother, a voodoo enthusiast of humble origins, emerged as a major power behind the throne. But things began to change in 1980 when Baby Doc married Michele Bennett, the daughter of a wealthy Haitian businessman and the daughter-in-law of a man who led a failed coup against Papa Doc.

  "Since the marriage, Simone Duvalier, whose official title is Guardian of the Revolution, has apparently been edged almost completely out of the palace picture by her daughter-in-law and spends most of her time in Paris," the Los Angeles Times reported in 1985.

The mother-son-daughter-in-law triangle only got more bizarre. In 1986, when Baby Doc was ousted from power, Simone joined him and his wife in exile — first in the French Alps and then in Paris.

"In recent years," The New York Times noted in its 1997 obituary for Simone, "after Jean-Claude's bitter divorce from Michele, Mrs. Duvalier was again said to be with her son in France, amid widespread reports they were living in a state of virtual poverty."

Baby Doc returned to Haiti in 2011 and is technically under house arrest and facing charges of crimes against humanity — though he's somehow managing to dine with friends at upscale bistros and even give commencement addresses. "Was Jean-Claude Duvalier scary?" his lawyer asked recently. "Not Duvalier. But yes, the people around him, secret police, yes, some of them were very scary. But Jean-Claude is a nice guy, believe me."
A nice guy who loved his mother.

Uri Friedman is an associate editor at Foreign Policy.
Foreign Policy

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/five-dictators-with-mummy-issues-20120522-1z2mr.html#ixzz1vfaizu9P

What will the Chinese brains think up next.....

Until the next time, cheers.

AFP - Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Fake pig ears latest China food scandal

SHANGHAI, (AFP) - Police in China are investigating after the discovery of a batch of "fake" pigs' ears reportedly made from gelatin, according to state media.

In the latest food safety scare to hit the country, the bogus ears were discovered in a market in Ganzhou city in the eastern province of Jiangxi in late March after a customer complained of a strange smell when cooking them, the state-run China Daily newspaper reported.

Food safety officials tested the "ears" and found they had been made from gelatin and the chemical sodium oleate, commonly used in the production of soap.

China's government has repeatedly vowed to improve food safety as people grow increasingly alarmed about the quality of what they eat, but scandals still occur due to weak enforcement and unscrupulous business practices.

Photos circulating online showed local officials examining a box of the fake ears, which appeared light-brown in colour and to have a plastic-like texture.

The China Daily quoted an expert as offering a sure-fire method for telling real ears -- a popular delicacy -- from fake ones, saying the genuine article should have hair and small blood vessels.

The Jiangxi provincial health department could not be reached for comment on the latest case.

The investigation into the fake ears comes as authorities launched a probe into vegetable sellers in the eastern province of Shandong for spraying cabbages with the harmful chemical formaldehyde to keep them fresh.

Last year authorities arrested more than 30 people over the sale of cooking oil made from leftovers scooped out of gutters.

And in 2008, milk was at the centre of one of China's biggest food safety scandals when the industrial chemical melamine was found to have been illegally added to dairy products to give the appearance of higher protein content.

Bizzare!! This guy is so "attached" to his iPod. Well, it's hard to know how people think nowadays. I am also attached to my iPad but where shall I "attached" it to?

Until the next time, cheers.

The Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday, 16 May 2012

Man surgically attaches iPod to wrist

Tattoo artist Dave Hurban displays an iPod Nano which he has attached to his wrist through magnetic piercings. Photo: Reuters

Professional body piercer Dave Hurban is a man attached to his iPod. Literally.

Hurban, 21, who works in a tattoo parlor in Newfield, New Jersey, implanted four metal studs in the skin of his wrist and secured his iPod to them magnetically.

"I just invented the strapless watch," he said on Monday of his Apple device, set to display a clock.

Hurban shows the four magnetic pins. Photo: Reuters

Hurban cheerfully recounted how he mapped out the four corners of the iPod on his arm and then inserted four titanium studs into his skin. Once the incisions healed, he popped on his iPod, which is held in place magnetically.

"It's way simpler than you think it is," said Hurban, who posted his "How To" video (warning: graphic content) on YouTube, where it has been viewed nearly 900,000 times in two weeks.

Hurban, whose other body piercings include two on his lip and one on each ear, said the unusual application was a big hit at a tattoo convention in Baltimore last weekend.

"I must have talked to like 400 people individually,' he said. "Every person I showed, they were like so amazed."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mp3s/man-surgically-attaches-ipod-to-wrist-20120515-1ynwp.html#ixzz1v1Kk6scu

Investigation into 10-Yuan Brothel sex workers: Majority from rural areas, treat prostitution like farming

This article appeared in a magazine called Cina Smack on a heads up from a young cousin. It is rather disturbing reading this article as we live in our modern and urban lives while so many are still going through such hardships. The disparity in the lives are so telling that I don't know how humanity can survive for even another 100 years without making any efforts to address such issues. My heart goes out for them.....

Until the next time, cheers.

Investigation into 10-Yuan Brothel sex workers: Majority from rural areas, treat prostitution like farming

“In many of China’s hidden yet visible corners, commercialized sex is a kind of unbelievably low-cost operation. Severe punishments and police raids have not made these “10-yuan brothels” disappear, where the problems like disease and violent crime grow and fester in dark corners…”

The basement is pitch dark, there are no windows, and is more like a damp cave. The only source of light is a light bulb by the bed, which hangs overhead from a long cord.

Wu Xianfang wraps the light bulb with a puckered red plastic bag, the harsh light becomes red and soft. It’s said that a woman’s skin looks the best under this kind of light, that one’s wrinkles can’t be seen.

Wu Xianfang is 48 years old, her body plump. From behind, she has straight jet black hair, and no one can tell it is gray hair dyed. A single mattress takes up half the space of the room. All day long, she either lies or sits on the bed, waiting for customers.

In this small hostel renovated from an old arcade live thirty to forty of Wu Xianfang’s “sisters”, the oldest of them already 62 years old. Mothers from the rural countryside over the age of forty make up the bulk of these sex workers.

The locals call this kind of place a “10-yuan brothel”. The customers are usually local old men, or middle aged migrant workers from out of town.

The price of every transaction varies between 10 to 30 yuan, and with such meager income, these impoverished sex workers still face the risk of fines, disease, violence, and discrimination.

“You can tell if they have a disease or not”

The county town where Wu Xianfang lives has a population of over a million people, with three to four bathing centers, forty to fifty leisure & massage parlors, and about fifteen hostels involved in providing sexual services.

Some people in the industry have ranked sex workers into four levels: the most expensive ones are at night clubs such as “Heaven on Earth”; the “ding dong princesses” of hotels and bath centers in second; third are those in massage parlors, leisure parlors, and hair salons that charge over a hundred ; and fourth are streetwalkers costing about sixty yuan. As for sex workers at 10-yuan brothels, they are lower than low, like the ‘street-side food stalls” of the sex industry.

The hostel where Wu Xianfang works is in a long, narrow alley, behind a bustling shopping street. As soon as you enter the door, the light is gone, with the scent of smoked firewood. There are three floors in the hostel, each floor has 9 separate rooms, and each room is just a little larger than a ping-pong table, divided by wood planks, with the places for ventilation covered by glass and pornographic posters.

No ID, no deposit, just 15 yuan and a woman can book a room for business. The good-looking ones, with some luck, can receive over ten customers a day, like a production line, and making over two thousand kuai a month wouldn’t be difficult. But there are also women who receive no customers at all the entire day. In general though, business here looks good, the brothel owner even making use of the basement now, and has built a simple room on the roof.

The consensus these girls have reached is: The customers who come here are long suffering men, migrant workers, without wives, who come only after they can no longer suppress their needs and urges, and generally finish their business in about 5 minutes.

At noon on April 14^th 2012, an old man wearing a white sleeveless undershirt groped for the handrail as he climbed upstairs. There were two small holes on the back of his vest, and his head was “Mediterranean sea” style [bald-headed with some hair still around]. He paced slowly with his hands behind his back, walking back and forth checking out one by one the rooms that had their doors open. A middle aged woman lying on her bed with a blowing fan seemed to his liking and the bargaining began. “How much?” “Not carrying disease, are you?”

Suddenly the brothel owner shouted: “Time to fetch your water!”

The girls who were asleep, upon hearing this, all collectively “came out of their caves” each carrying a large bucket, the corridor full of commotion. This is the noisiest time of the day. Here, there is only one bathroom on each floor, and hot water only available at certain times, twice every day, at eight or nine o‘clock in the morning, and two o’clock in the afternoon.

After the water had been provided, the brothel owner locked the faucet.

It was sticky everywhere, the walls, the floor, and the bed.

Wu Xianfang fetched the water and returned to her room, covered the mouth of the bucket with a layer of hard plastic paper, so the water could remain warm for use throughout the day. Many of the girls don’t really tidy themselves up, their hair messy. Wu Xianfang is considered one of the more tidy ones, her room neat and tidy. She can’t afford to spend the money to buy soap, so the cleaning all depends on this bucket of water and some salt mixed within — the salt held in an empty Coca-Cola Ice Dew bottle placed in a damp corner of the room, next to a Wahaha [a Chinese beverage brand] bottle holding medicinal liquor, which she drinks whenever she has a stomachache. There’s some rice in a black jar, which she says is because “mice may eat it”. She cooks for herself in the basement, by burning the lumps of wood collected from the dump next door by the brothel owner. There’s no air circulation, so once there’s a lot of coughing when the fire is started.

In order to keep their customers coming, most of these women here don’t use condoms — not to mention these things could be evidence of prostitution. Wu Xianfang sometimes uses them, and sometimes doesn’t, and in her own words, “you can tell if they have a disease or not”, her simple standard for detection being : those whose appearances are clean probably don’t carry any diseases, but must be cautious with those who in shabbier clothes.

Wu Xianfang has never had a gynecological examination. A gynecological examination costs thirty kuai, an amount she has receive three customers and risk being caught three times to earn. When her body feels unusual, she takes a bus to the country and has an infusion called “inflammation shot”, which costs over twenty kuai, is said to be penicillin, and as soon as the inflammation goes down, she immediately begins working again.

“Even if the sky collapses, our children must be brought up”

After the past five to six years, Wu Xianfang has become accustomed to this kind of life. She’s very diligent. Her “working hours” are from 8:00 in the morning to 9:30 at night and unless there’s a situation requiring her to return home, she works all year without a break. As time goes by, she’s gotten used to it, gotten numb about it, as doing this kind of work “is just like going into the fields to farm”.

Before taking up this profession, Wu Xianfang did her fair share of bitter and exhausting jobs. She was born in a remote mountain area of Guizhou, where there were only 9 families around. As a girl, she never went to school, and to this day still doesn’t know how to write her own name. Then she got married and had children, but her husband gambled, visited prostitutes, and beat her. Thoroughly hurt by men, she took her two sons and left — didn’t get a divorce, they never got a marriage certificate anyway.

In strange, foreign lands, she has fed pigs, worked in a woven bag factory, and even worked at a construction site, where she carried lime mortar on her shoulder from the first floor to the fourth, earning several hundred yuan per month, but no matter what she did she couldn’t feed her two sons enough food. In the difficult times, she had thought: If they truly can’t go one, then she’ll just jump into the river, and die together with her sons.

She survived like this until she was thirty-something. One day, a female fellow-townswoman came to Wu Xianfang, and said to her mysteriously: “Come with me, guarantee you’ll make big money.” And so, Wu Xianfang was taken into this travel-worn little county town in Guangxi. It wasn’t until she was tossed into a small hostel did she realize it was by doing this [prostitution].

At first, Wu Xianfang wouldn’t do it no matter what people said, nor would she talk to anyone, and shut herself in the room for a week. She couldn’t find a job, and she worried about the hostel and transportation expenses. It was then that a county cadre [county government official] appeared, willing to pay her a “high price” of 60 kuai on, who came everyday, and wanted only her. On the third day, Wu Xianfang gave in.

Believing they “have no other choice” is essentially the mark shared by these women:

“Longan” in room 209 rarely raises her eyes, and doesn’t talk to strangers much neither. Some say her husband is dead, some say her husband gambles and visits whores. Her daughter lives in the county town with her, is in fourth grade, and has taken care of the home since she was little. The more well-behaved her daughter becomes the more sorry “Longan” feels towards her.

Wang Juhua has three children, and her husband was a traveling doctor [no clinic, visits patients] who must serve 10 years in prison for the death of a patient in his care. Her husband in prison repeatedly exhorted her: “Even if the sky comes down [all is lost], our children must be brought up.”

Yuan Lirong is almost sixty, and business is not good, always wearing a sullen face. Her husband has fallen for someone else, won’t divorce, and still beats her viciously. Even now there’s still a scar on her left eye. She has a home she doesn’t dare return to.

This is a group of traditional but impoverished women come from the rural countryside. To them, fate is like a heavy bat: domestic violence, dead husbands, in prison…compelled by unrelenting family burdens and pressures: Children who need money to go to school, money needed to build houses in the countryside, sick family members who need money to go to the hospital.

No education, no skills, limited by age. This “profession” with almost zero requirements has admitted them.

Wu Xianfang is illiterate. Afraid of having money stolen, every so often she’ll beg a fellow-villager to deposit all her savings into her bank account to send home. Her sons are her biggest hope. In recent years, the elder one has become a driver, gotten married and moved into the bride’s home in rural Tianjin. The younger one is more worrisome, for a time asking for money daily, only later learning that he had fallen victim to a “pyramid scheme”.

She worked as usual during the days, but in her moments of free time could be found crying on the phone to her younger son, worrying so much that she couldn’t sleep at night, always a mess banging in her head, and over time, her hair began to fall out with a vengeance, until she became bald. To avoid scaring away customers, she spent over 80 kuai on medicine. She’d never thought that after eating the medicine, the hair that grew back would all be white. From then on, she began dying her hair jet black.

“It takes 150 customers to pay off the fine”

“Find a rich man” is a popular notion amongst the girls, but the meaning of which refers to those old men who are willing to spend several hundred kuai on them every month. In fact, after food and rent, 10-yuan brothel sex workers don’t make more than a few hundred kuai per month. And the rent has increased, each room now costing 13 or 15 yuan per day.

Even if they work 24 hours a day, there’s still an ever-present risk, one that threatens to take away everything they have in the blink of an eye — the police raid.

Routine inspections are okay, as its said the brothel owner has someone inside the police bureau, who will tip him off when something happens. When the time comes, the brothel owner is able to tell the girls to hide, turn off the lights and shut the doors, temporarily closing the business, reopening again after the police leave.

“What I’m most afraid of is some bad guy ‘setting a trap’,” Wu Xianfang says. Setting a trap means someone who comes pretending he’s looking for some action and gets evidence, then quickly calls the police, and when the police arrive and catch them on the scene, there’s no way to run. Offending customers, when business is too good, these could all bring trouble.

When being brought into the police station for the first time, it’s a 15 days detention. The second time, it’s reeducation through labor for a year and a notice to the family, or a fine of 3,000 yuan. 3,000 yuan, for a 10-yuan brothel sex worker means she has to receive 150 customers in order to pay it off.

One day at the end of the year of rabbit [2011], this happened to a thirty-year-old “sister”. She had bought a six o’clock afternoon train ticket home that day, had washed her hair and gotten ready when suddenly a customer arrived. She thought she might as well take this one, only to be caught/arrested. She came out three days later, apparently having been fined 3,000 yuan. She packed up all her things and went back to her hometown, and has never been seen again.

Almost everyone has run into trouble. For these sex workers who have no money, a fine is much more terrifying than detention.

Some bite their fingers and rub blood on their underwear while some simply risk their own lives, throwing themselves against the wall trying to commit suicide. Sometimes it works — One time, Wang Juhua had been caught on the scene once, and before anyone could react, she put one foot on the third floor railing, and the police let her go that time. She’s especially afraid of her son in college finding out these things about her. She always tells him: Mom works at a candy factory, a lot of candy, I eat them and eat them, and now I’ve gotten fat.

Wu Xianfang has also been caught twice. She’s not good with words and not very daring, so she quickly paid the fine to free herself, the first 600 kuai, the second time 3,000 yuan. “I’m afraid my son can’t reach me on the phone and will worry,” treating it like two months of wasted work. She had quit before, and had gone back home in shame.

But who would have known that in a moment of desperate need for money, she would return to this life. In 2011, Wu Xianfang once again had something to worry about: Her elder son’s family had no money to build a house, and she didn’t want her son’s in-laws to look down upon them; Her younger son had gotten away from the pyramid scheme and became a driver, but as he’s reaching 2 years of age, what if he can’t find a wife because he has no money? She worried about these things over and over, and decided to come back to work.

Nowadays the competition is fierce, you need to know how to flirt and provide companionship, and knowing how to sweet talk is also a skill. Wu Xianfang says that she’s shy, too old, and not good with words, so she moved to the mine-like basement.

To make things worse, she had an argument with one of her fellow-villager, who got angry, picked up a brick and broke the middle finger of her right hand. The hospital treatment cost her 3,000 yuan. The brothel owner talked to the fellow-villager many times, but the fellow-villager refused to pay even a cent. Wu Xianfang found herself tangled in yet another situation: Let it go, and that’s yet another two months of work gone to nothing. Seek revenge, and more money would be spent going to court, and what if the police send her in jail instead?

April 2012, it’s a busy farming season for rice transplantation, so there are fewer customers. Yuan Lirong is busy cross-stitching for her soon-to-be-married son, Wang Juhua had found someone new to depend on, “Ai Qing Mai Mai” [a popular Chinese pop song] always ringing on her cell phone, urging her to go out for tea in the evening, while some of the girls are enjoying the sun in the courtyard.

Wu Xianfang is in the basement dully waiting for business. Even though she’s moved some bricks to cover up the drain, the stench still comes up. At her doorway, old men pass by from time to time, sticking their head in to take a look at the goods on offer.

Even though her right hand is permanently crippled, even though it’s unclear when she’ll be arrested and taken away again, at this moment, a smile is on Wu Xianfang’s face, telling this Southern Weekly reporter that when her daughter-in-law’s family pig gives birth this August, she’s going to go home to feed them, and never come back.

(In order to protect the people involved, the exact locations are not mentioned, and the names in this article are pseudonyms.)

Is this the dawn of the modern man? Are you one?

Until the next time, cheers.

The Sydney Morning Herald, Sunday, 13 May 2012

Don't be embarrassed, embrace your fellow man

David Sygall

Illustration: John Shakespeare
 

The manhug may be a sign of changing attitudes to masculinity.

Real men don't cry. They hug each other.

It seems a simple gesture, an expression of closeness between mates, which, if done correctly, exudes virility. But when the manhug goes wrong, the repercussions can be horribly awkward.

It's why the perfect male-on-male embrace is governed by strict rules: three pats on the back, no ''nuzzling'' and definitely no contact below the chest.

Bonding ... Sean McManus and Nathan Sim hug. Photo: James Brickwood

But don't bother looking for these rules. They're neither written nor spoken, making sealing the deal like walking a minefield of masculinity.

Nevertheless, there appears to be an increasing propensity for physical interaction among young men whose displays of emotion to each other were once confined to a firm handshake.

In Europe and South America, men have been kissing and cuddling each other for centuries. On sporting fields worldwide they've been embracing for decades. But, among some demographics in Australia, for a man to hug his male friend in a social setting brought with it unwanted connotations.
The change, however slow, might suggest commonly held notions of masculinity are being redefined.
''Guys have generally become more sensitive and open to expressing their feelings,'' says Nick Smith, editor of men's magazine, GQ. ''We know through our magazine that 18 to 21-year-old guys, especially, are more in tune with emotions and are happy to express them.

''But we're in a funny time, where it's still changing and you have some awkward moments where you don't know whether to go in for the handshake or the hug.

''You can get it quite wrong.''

The behavioural change among young men, Smith believes, is symptomatic of a relaxation of once-rigid concepts of manliness.

''Dressing well, being comfortable with who you are and showing emotion have drifted right through to the broader masculine base,'' he says.

''Nowadays, if you walk into a pub and give your mate a hug, no one bats an eyelid.''

Among the connotations, however inaccurate, was that to cuddle another man was ''gay'' or ''weak''. But while the man-hug revolution suggests the end of homophobia is nigh, all may not be as it seems.
The willingness for young men to hug is positive, just 10 or 20 years ago, men were supposed to have no physical interaction at all, but the manner in which they embrace might raise more problems than it solves.

Dr Harry Blatterer, a Macquarie University sociologist who specialises in the boundaries of friendship, speculates the definitive rules around the manhug indicate that the exchange is underpinned by homophobia.

''If you watch guys hug, they often pat each other on the shoulder or back and the hold is generally quite light,'' Blatterer says.

''It's a very specific hug. On one hand you could say that we are seeing a redefinition of homophobia or heterosexuality. But at the same time, the fact that men have to hug in a very particular way, still draws very clear boundaries.

''In a weird way, it reaffirms heterosexuality. This probably means there's some sort of hangover, evident in those hugs, from the old traditional ways. It really comes out of homophobia.

''Men will only be able to hug intimately once there is no more homophobia, because straight males still want to make sure they're not mistaken for being gay.''

Professor Raewyn Connell, a world-renowned expert on sex, gender and the social construction of masculinity, agrees there is a ''change of custom going on''. But rather than see it as a re-affirmation of heterosexuality, she believes men's lessened inhibition about body contact, even if confined by boundaries and rules, signifies a greater social acceptance of gay men and gay life.

''It means there are probably fewer men who are anxious that expressing emotion through the body will lead to them being treated in a homophobic way,'' Professor Connell says.

''Homophobia still exists … but it's not as deep and unchallenged as it was a generation ago.''

She says it would be ''a splendid thing'' if it were proven that there is more freedom today to express emotion through the body, including among women. However, she warns against generalising behavioural changes among social groups.

''Middle class, youngish, Anglo-white Australians might be hugging more,'' she says. ''But they are actually a minority among the whole population of men in Australia.''

The jury's out on the big squeeze

Sean McManus doles out hugs liberally and with relish. The 26-year-old barista hugs friends, family as well as customers having a tough day.

''I'm an embracer,'' he says. The cardinal rule of male hugging, he says, is not to linger: ''Get in tight, pull and you're out.''

Drinking next to him on Friday night at Manly's 4 Pines bar is Dave Camphin, Mr McManus's housemate and a man who takes a hostile view of modern men's readiness to embrace.

''Hugging's what you'd do with a woman,'' says the 37-year old construction worker. ''You maybe hug someone at a funeral and even then it's a distant pat on the back.''

He lowers a beer and raises a burly forearm to trace a semi-circle round his chest. ''This,'' he says, ''is the International Dave Line: you don't cross that.''
James Robertson

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life/dont-be-embarrassed-embrace-your-fellow-man-20120512-1yjgs.html#ixzz1uoR7LG4K

This article appeared in the Newsweek magazine and was also reproduced in a number of media publications. I did not know earlier that she was a Catholic. Pleased read on. It is very difficult when facing with a dilemna and needing to choose the right thing to do. Which will you choose?

Until the next time, cheers.

Melinda Gates’ New Crusade: Investing Billions in Women's Health

The Newsweek, May 7, 2012 1:00 AM EDT

She plans to use the Gates Foundation’s billions to revolutionize contraception worldwide. The Catholic right is pushing back. Is she ready for the political firestorm ahead?

In the 12 years since Melinda Gates and her husband, Bill, created the Gates Foundation, the world’s largest philanthropic organization, she has done a lot of traveling. A reserved woman who has long been wary of the public glare attached to the Gates name, she comes alive, her associates say, when she’s visiting the foundation’s projects in remote corners of the world. “You get her out in the field with a group of women, sitting on a mat or under a tree or in a hut, she is totally in her element, totally comfortable,” says Gary Darmstadt, director of family health at the foundation’s global health program.

Visiting vaccine programs in sub-Saharan Africa, Gates would often ask women at remote clinics what else they needed. Very often, she says, they would speak urgently about birth control. “Women sitting on a bench, 20 of them, immediately they’ll start speaking out and saying, ‘I wish I had that injection I used to get,’” says Gates. “‘I came to this clinic three months ago, and I got my injection. I came last week, and I couldn’t get it, and I’m here again.’”

They were talking about Depo-Provera, which is popular in many poor countries because women need to take it only four times a year, and because they can hide it, if necessary, from unsupportive husbands. As Gates discovered, injectable contraceptives, like many other forms of birth control, are frequently out of stock in clinics in the developing world, a result of both funding shortages and supply-chain problems.

Women would tell her that they’d left their farms and walked for hours, sometimes with children in tow, often without the knowledge of their husbands, in their fruitless search for the shot. “I was just stunned by how vociferous women were about what they wanted,” she says.

Because of those women, Gates made a decision that’s likely to change lives all over the world. As she revealed in an exclusive interview with Newsweek, she has decided to make family planning her signature issue and primary public health a priority. “My goal is to get this back on the global agenda,” she says. She is sitting in an office in the Gates Foundation’s 900,000-square-foot headquarters in downtown Seattle, a pair of airy boomerang-shaped buildings flooded with natural light. It was here at headquarters late last year that she announced her new emphasis on contraception at an all-staff meeting, to thrilled applause.

Nigel Parry for Newsweek

Now the foundation, which is worth almost $34 billion, is putting her agenda into practice. In July it’s teaming up with the British government to cosponsor a summit of world leaders in London, to start raising the $4 billion the foundation says it will cost to get 120 million more women access to contraceptives by 2020. And in a move that could be hugely significant for American women, it is pouring money into the long-neglected field of contraceptive research, seeking entirely new methods of birth control. Ultimately Gates hopes to galvanize a global movement. “When I started to realize that that needed to get done in family planning, I finally said, OK, I’m the person that’s going to do that,” she says.

Despite Gates’s passion, stepping forward wasn’t an easy decision. For one thing, the former Microsoft manager has always shunned the spotlight. The first time she agreed to a magazine profile was in 2008, 14 years after her marriage, when she spoke to Fortune about the foundation’s work. “I was reluctant to speak out on behalf of any foundation issues early on, because I had little kids, and I wanted some privacy in my family life,” she says.

Perhaps more importantly, there’s her Catholic faith, which has always informed her work. “From the very beginning, we said that as a foundation we will not support abortion, because we don’t believe in funding it,” she says. She’s long disagreed with the church’s position on contraception, and the Gates Foundation did some family-planning funding early in its history. Still, she went through a lot of soul-searching before she was ready to champion the issue publicly. “I had to wrestle with which pieces of religion do I use and believe in my life, what would I counsel my daughters to do,” she says. Defying church teachings was difficult, she adds, but also came to seem morally necessary. Otherwise, she says, “we’re not serving the other piece of the Catholic mission, which is social justice.”

Gates believes that by focusing on the lives of women and children, and by making it clear that the agenda is neither coercive population control nor abortion, the controversy over international family-planning programs can be defused. Right now, she points out, 100,000 women annually die in childbirth after unintended pregnancies. Six hundred thousand babies born to women who didn’t want to be pregnant die in the first month of life. “She is somebody who really sees this as a public-health necessity,” says Melanne Verveer, the United States ambassador at large for global women’s issues. “I think she believes, and I hope she is right, that people of different political persuasions can come together on this issue.”

This may be overly optimistic. Her first public speech on the issue, at a TEDxChange conference in Berlin in early April, was excoriated in the right-wing Catholic press and on conservative Catholic blogs. “Melinda Gates Promotes Abortion at Mtg, Attacks Catholics,” read a headline on LifeNews.com. The U.K. Catholic Herald’s Francis Phillips was more measured, saying, “It is always a disappointment when a public figure of great wealth, standing or power explains that although they are loyal Catholics they think Church teaching is wrong—predictably on moral matters.”

“You get her out in the field with a group of women, she is totally in her element,” a foundation official says. (Courtesy of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)

There was a time when creating worldwide access to birth control was a thoroughly bipartisan endeavor, taken seriously at the highest levels of American government. But that was before our politics were transformed by 30 years of ideological warfare over sex and reproduction.

In the middle of the 20th century, global family planning was seen as an issue of national security, not feminism. In the aftermath of World War II, high birth rates and falling death rates in poor countries led to an international panic about overpopulation, which many believed would cause widespread instability, leaving countries vulnerable to communist revolution. By the early 1960s, Dwight Eisenhower was calling for foreign aid for birth control in The Saturday Evening Post, and he and Harry Truman became honorary chairmen of Planned Parenthood. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson implored the United Nations to “face forthrightly the multiplying problems of our multiplying populations ... Let us act on the fact that less than $5 invested in population control is worth $100 invested in economic growth.”

Over the next 15 years, the U.S. led the world in a massive effort to bring family planning to every corner of the globe. Powerful Americans lobbied the United Nations to create the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, or UNFPA, and then to expand its work. “Success in the population field, under United Nations leadership, may ... determine whether we can resolve successfully the other great questions of peace, prosperity, and individual rights that face the world,” wrote George H.W. Bush in 1973.

But population control led to terrible excesses. During the Indian “emergency” that began in 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended civil liberties, and her younger son, Sanjay, instituted a campaign of mass, forcible sterilization. China instituted its coercive one-child policy in 1979.

Women’s-rights activists challenged the population-control orthodoxy and worked to redirect the resources behind it into family-planning programs that prioritized women’s health. Meanwhile, the Malthusian doom that experts prophesied in the 1960s and 1970s never came to pass, partly thanks to massive investments in contraception and in agricultural productivity. In the 1980s and 1990s, international family planning increasingly became associated with feminism rather than national security, making it subject to growing pressure from the ascendant religious right.

In 1984 Ronald Reagan instituted the Mexico City policy, denying American support for international organizations that perform abortions or even counsel about them, cutting off funding to large parts of the global family-planning infrastructure. In 1986 he cut off American funding for UNFPA. Both policies were copied by succeeding Republican administrations.

As a result of this intense politicization, American leadership on global family planning diminished, and no other country fully replaced it. Thus Gates, in her travels, discovered what she calls a “glaring hole. Nobody was working really in a united way on contraception.”

Part of what Gates hopes to do is to re-create the former broad-based consensus behind global family planning, but in a way that’s focused on women’s needs rather than on demographics. “This is about empowering women to be educated and to make a choice that they want to make,” she says. “And if you look at what happens demographically because of that choice, you then get some of these outcomes that people were hoping to get worldwide.”

She seems convinced that empirical evidence about the public-health benefits of birth control can overcome ideological objections. Indeed, one of the themes of her initiative is “no controversy.” “Today, I’d like to talk with you about something that should be a totally uncontroversial topic,” her TEDxChange talk began. The foundation has put up a website, NoControversy.TEDxChange.org, asking people to share stories of how contraception has changed their lives. “There is no controversy in raising your voice for equal access,” it says.

But controversy won’t be easily waved away. “If she wants to put money into it, that’s fine, but she doesn’t get to say no one gets to argue with me,” says Susan Yoshihara, director of research at the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, a group that’s played a major role in organizing international opposition to family-planning programs. Yoshihara says any attempt to link contraception and maternal health is “extremely controversial. You don’t tell a woman dying of an ectopic pregnancy that she should have used a female condom. To say that we’re going to help women not die in childbirth by telling them that they shouldn’t get pregnant in the first place, I think, borders on scandalous.”

“My goal is to get this back on the global agenda.” (Nigel Parry for Newsweek)

Such criticism will likely increase as the Gates Foundation becomes known for its work in developing new forms of birth control. Right now, it’s funding research into contraceptives that women could inject themselves, sparing them onerous clinic trips. Aware that many women reject the birth-control pill because of side effects, the foundation is investing in a search for a contraceptive medication that works without hormones, a “potential whole new class” of drug, says the Gates Foundation’s Darmstadt.

Another of the “crazy ideas we’ve been dreaming about,” he says, “is whether we could create an implantable device that would be woman-controlled, and that you could put it in, and it could last her reproductive lifetime.” She could turn it on and off at will, and it would never need to be removed. “That’s something that I think every woman everywhere in the world could potentially benefit from,” he says.

There’s currently very little investment in contraceptive research and development. The single biggest funder, Darmstadt says, is the U.S. government, through the National Institutes of Health. “It’s an area that’s really kind of stagnated,” he says. “One of the things that we see that we can do is to try to really stimulate that space.”

For reproductive-health advocates, this is terrific news. For some conservatives, though, it will likely seem almost dystopian. Indeed, in response to an item about contraceptive research on the Gates Foundation website, The Catholic Herald’s Phillips wrote, “A horrid image comes to mind, of white-coated boffins hard at work in diabolical laboratories, devising new ways of depriving men and women of their conjugal dignity, their culture and their traditions.”

Yet Gates can take comfort in the fact that even if the church hierarchy and its traditionalists don’t support what she’s doing, plenty of ordinary Catholics do. During her TEDxChange talk, she spoke of the Ursuline nuns who taught at her Dallas Catholic high school, nuns who “made service and social justice a high priority.” Through her work with the foundation, Gates said, “I believe that I’m applying the lessons that I learned in high school.”

Within an hour of returning to her hotel, she received a message from some of those nuns. “It was fantastic,” she says, her eyes misting for a moment. “They said, ‘We’re all for you. We know this is a difficult issue to speak on, but we absolutely believe that you’re living under Catholic values.’ And it was just so heartening.”