Poverty

Poverty is general scarcity, dearth, or the state of one who lacks a certain amount of material possessions or money. It is a multifaceted concept, which includes social, economic, and political elements. Poverty may be defined as either absolute or relative. Absolute poverty or destitution refers to the lack of means necessary to meet basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter. Relative poverty takes into consideration individual social and economic status compared to the rest of society.

After the industrial revolution, mass production in factories made production goods increasingly less expensive and more accessible. Of more importance is the modernization of agriculture, such as fertilizers, to provide enough yield to feed the population. Responding to basic needs can be restricted by constraints on government's ability to deliver services, such as corruption, tax avoidance, debt and loan conditionalities and by the brain drain of health care and educational professionals. Strategies of increasing income to make basic needs more affordable typically include welfare, economic freedoms and providing financial services.

Christopher Paul

Christopher Paul is an American convert to Islam and member of al Qaeda, who has pled guilty to acts of terrorism. He is currently serving a 15-year prison term arising from those charges.

Born Paul Kenyatta Laws, he changed his name to Abdulmalek Kenyatta in 1989, but then to Christopher Paul in 1994. He pled guilty to planning terrorist attacks in a plea agreement that calls for a 20-year prison term. He had been indicted on April 12, 2007 on the following charges: conspiring to support terrorists, conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction and providing support to terrorists. He was charged with planning to set off bombs in Europe and the United States.

He received training from al-Qaeda in the early 1990s in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is reported to have stayed in the Beit ur Salam guesthouse, a guest house reserved exclusively for graduates of Al Qaeda training camps. Then in 1999 he went to Germany to train terrorists planning to attack Americans at overseas resorts. He was also alleged, in August 2002, to have met two other men in a suburban Columbus coffee house where they discussed terrorist attacks. The other two men were convicted of separate acts: Nuradin Abdi for a plot to blow up an Ohio shopping mall, and Iyman Faris for a plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge.

Christopher Paul Stelling

Christopher Paul Stelling (born February 19, 1982) is a singer-songwriter and guitarist currently based in Brooklyn, New York. Stelling was born in Daytona Beach, Florida, and has also resided in Colorado, Washington, Massachusetts, and North Carolina. He has released two official albums, 2012's Songs of Praise and Scorn and 2013's False Cities. He has toured the United States extensively and has also toured Europe.

Songs of Praise and Scorn (2011–2012)

Stelling's official debut album was self released on February 21, 2012.Songs of Praise and Scorn was recorded with friends over a 5-day period in August 2011 in a 200-year-old, actively working funeral home in Kentucky. Fifteen songs were recorded, but only 10 made the cut for the actual album. The album was met with very favorable reviews, prompting The Village Voice to say, "Every song on his debut album Songs of Praise and Scorn cooks with both down-home comfort and avant-garde brio, Stelling building earthy folk troubadour stories over a fluster of wild arpeggios."American Songwriter noted, "Stelling is an artist who can leave one shaking one's head in bewilderment over how somebody can play difficult guitar parts and sing a completely disparate melody line at the same time. But he also hasn't forgotten how to just play simple chords when that's what a song calls for."