| LIFE-NET NEWS |
| by Ret Z. |
| Covering Poverty Widely in a Net of Many Voices |
| 2003 February 26 | No Profit; No Proceeds |
| Volume 6 Number 6 | All-Volunteer |
| "Give a family a fish, and they'll eat a meal; give them a Net, and they'll have fish for Life." |
| Earth Vs. Mercury |
|
A global crackdown on mercury pollution, an agreement to
help rescue the environment of the occupied Palestinian
territories and assistance for small island States to reduce
their vulnerability to climate change, were among the key
agreements made at the end of a meeting of the Governing
Council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in
Nairobi, Kenya.
Countries agreed "there is sufficient evidence of significant global adverse impacts from mercury and its compounds to warrant further international action to reduce the risks to human health and the environment." Under the action plan agreed today, UNEP has been asked to assist all countries, particularly developing ones and countries with economies in transition such as States of the former Soviet Union, in a wide ranging initiative to cut emissions of mercury. The agreement also calls for UNEP to help develop public awareness programmes to alert the public to the risks, especially vulnerable groups such as pregnant women and babies. Source: Green Delaware |
| Prison Fellowship Under Fire |
|
Americans United for Separation of Church and State has
filed two suits against a program in Iowa run by Prison
Fellowship Ministries, an evangelical Christian group founded
by former Nixon official Charles Colson after serving time for
his role in Watergate. The program also operates in Minnesota,
Kansas and Texas, and according to the suits is a standing
affront to the Constitution.
The program lasts 18 months and is a kind of moral boot camp for Christian prisoners prior to their release. They get job-skills training and drug treatment, but the focus is on a Christian worldview meant to transform the prisoners as persons. Is it a violation of church and state? Hardly. The program is entirely voluntary. The suits complain of special treatment for participants. But that isn't unusual. All sorts of programs in prison have incentives and privileges for those who participate in them. The states fund the nonreligious aspects of the program, but the dollars for the religious portion--the bulk of it--come from private sources. Rather than a forum for a constitutional food fight, Prison Fellowship is better understood as a possible meeting ground for a right-left consensus on criminal-justice issues. The left would admit that prisons are a necessary protection for society, while the right would become more attuned to running them in a civilized manner, and at least trying to make inmates better people. Source: National Review |
| A Push for 'Earn While You Learn' Schemes |
|
UK ministers are appealing to more employers to offer
Modern Apprenticeship vocational qualifications to young
people. They are setting up a taskforce to try to increase the
range of opportunities available and to see what reforms are
needed. Colleges are warning that only 51% of apprentices
achieve the main part of the qualification, and fewer than
three in 10 complete all the elements.
Modern Apprenticeships are designed to enable school leavers to learn the key skills of an industry and gain nationally recognised qualifications, while earning a wage. More than 70 sectors of business and industry offer them, ranging from accountancy to sport. But the Association of Colleges said the requirement for apprentices to study "key skills" such as communication, information technology, working with others and applied arithmetic was a "major barrier". For example, young people learning carpentry had to show they could do statistics to A-level maths standard, a spokesperson said. And many small and medium-sized employers find it difficult to allow their apprentices sufficient time away from their workplace to complete their studies. Bryan Sanderson, chair of the Learning and Skills Council, appealed for more businesses to run the programmes, with a focus on smaller employers. "We have the demand from young people. Some 60,000 have responded to our recent information campaign and we need more employers to join us." He said that about 150,000 under-22s were expected to sign up to the scheme this year--25,000 short of the target. Source: BBC News |
| Camden's Star Shines Against 76ers |
|
Some naysayers say nothing good has come out of Camden.
They suggest the city should just be paved over or given to
Pennsylvania.
But if those people happened to visit the First Union Center in Philadelphia on Sunday, they would have seen just one of the great things Camden has given us all - a dream named Dajuan Wagner. Wagner, 20, grew up in one of the poorest cities in the nation. And he made it. He showed people in Camden and beyond that they, too, can dream; that they can be a success despite everything that's stacked against them. Wagner's not the best player in the NBA. To be honest, he's not even that close. But if there's one thing that he has learned in his two decades on Earth, it's not to give up when things get tough. It's a lesson that some people never learn, but Wagner learned it at a young age. He's from Camden. Source: Courier-Post |
| Individual Irresponsibility and American Poverty |
|
If you're a poor adult in America, for the most part, it's
all your fault. That's true, at least today, whether you're
black, white, brown or polka dot.
The greatest percentage of poverty is found in female-headed households. ... Divorce and death of the father might explain a small part of why there're so many female-headed households. But the bulk of it is explained by people having children and not getting married in the first place. Having children is not an act of God. It's not like you're walking down the street and pregnancy strikes you; children are a result of a conscious decision. According to a NPR/Kaiser/Kennedy School Poll, the leading cause of poverty identified by both the poor (75%) and non-poor (65%) was drug abuse. Again, it's not like you're walking down the street and you're struck with drug addiction; to use drugs is a conscious decision. Most middle-class Americans, including black Americans, are no more than one, two or three generations out of poverty. How did they manage this feat; what's the secret for avoiding poverty? Finish high school and take a job, any kind of a job. Today, but not when I graduated in 1954, if a person graduates from high school, with even a C average, there is a college or some kind of skills training program somewhere for him, and often financial assistance to boot. So if a person doesn't take advantage of today's available opportunities, particularly those during the boom of the 1990s, and engages in self-destructive behavior, whose fault is it? Source: Walter Williams (black conservative) on TownHall.com |
| Bushmen 'Moved for Diamonds' |
|
Only a handful of bushmen still live in the Central
Kalahari Game Reserve, an area in Botswana the size of
Denmark. Last year, the government cut off the water supplies
of 2,000 indigenous people and took them by truck to permanent
settlements outside the reserve in order, it said, to provide
them with proper public services. But there is evidence they
were forcibly removed.
Survival International questioned the government's motives, suggesting that mineral rights were a major reason for the removals. Latest geological maps from the Botswana Government released by Survival show a huge increase in diamond prospecting in the months since the people were moved, some of it funded by an offshoot of the World Bank. This appears to back up their accusations. But the government has denied there is a new rush for diamond exploration in the reserve and labelled Survival International a "terrorist" organisation, re-emphasising that the movement of people was with their best interests at heart. Source: BBC News |
| New Mexico Bill May Suppress Third Parties |
|
Greens in New Mexico are joining with other third parties
and democracy advocates in condemnation of a bill before the
New Mexico legislature that would drastically raise the bar for
political parties to achieve major party status.
House Bill 628, introduced by Speaker Ben Lujan, Democrat, would prohibit a party earning major party status through the 5% of votes cast in current law and increase the number of registered voters needed to qualify as a major party by 3000%. Currently a party must register one-third of 1%; the proposed bill would increase that by 30 times to 10% of all registered voters or 95,172. Richard Winger, editor of the non-partisan Ballot Access News, in a letter to Rep. Lujan, wrote that "Your bill H.B. 628 is far too harsh. ... No party, other than the Democratic or Republican Parties, has held as much as 5% of the registration of any state since 1916." Source: Green Party of the United States See New Mexico House Bill 628 |
| A New Shield for the Elderly |
|
San Francisco officials have announced new programs to
crack down on the ever-growing problem of financial and
physical abuse of elderly citizens.
"As the population ages, there are greater areas of neglect and abuse," said Carol Migden, chairwoman of the State Board of Equalization. "We need to pay attention to what will be a soaring demand." A third of the city's residents are over 65 years old, and that percentage is expected to balloon in coming years. City Attorney Dennis Herrera's office will launch a financial fraud program, the Police Department will have beat cops visit nursing homes, the DA's Office has pledged to pursue criminal cases involving the elderly, and Supervisors Aaron Peskin and Chris Daly are working together to increase enforcement. The various officials pledged to increase coordination with one another and with state government to reduce abuse without the need for more public funds. Hundreds of cases of elder abuse currently are under investigation in San Francisco. Source: San Francisco Examiner |
| Radical Christianity A Rising Challenge |
|
"We are living in revolutionary times," writes Philip
Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Penn
State. "But we aren't participating in them."
Jenkins contends that the number of Christians living in the global South has risen dramatically in the last century and will continue to grow, causing a profound shift in a faith that many still consider predominantly American and Western European. By 2025, half of the world's Christian population will be in Africa and Latin America, and an additional 17% will be in Asia. The waning Christians of the North are concerned with democracy and privacy, but their Southern brethren--very numerous, very poor--embrace a charismatic religion of signs, wonders and healing (especially in impoverished communities without medical care). The new Christianity is much more conservative on social issues such as abortion and homosexuality and less willing to question religious authority on such matters as the ordination of women. The new Christianity will also run headfirst into equally conservative, traditional and increasingly centralized Islam, intent on imposing its own laws and expectations. The resulting conflicts may make the sectarian troubles of Northern Ireland look like an overheated chess match. One can only hope that our foreign policy reflects something more sophisticated than the heartwarming photographs of "Muslim Life in America" on the State Department's Web site. Source: Philadelphia Inquirer See also Muslim Life in America |
| Life-Net News Extras |
| The Revolutionary Struggle of the Obedient |
|
Saith the Bible:
Ephesians 6:12-3 "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. "Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand." Saith me, Ret Z.: Stand, therefore, and look your weapons over. Each of us has been placed on the front line, by terrorists and by governments. But are these our enemies? Guns and ordnance, are these our weapons? Nay, rather, but our weapons list looks more like this: Our vitals require the protection of truth, which as a demonstrator's sign said, is the first casualty of war. Truth, by which we get to the bottom of situations, beyond hype and misinformation, to discern God's true will. We lose our lives without the bullet-proof vest of righteousness, whose meaning also entails justice, yea, even the justice that is called social. Whence come wars and fightings among you, but from the desires of the greedy and of the deprived? Let us resolve to follow God's proper path for us. Abandon the usual divisions, that we may rightly divide the Word that God is waiting for us to hear well and heed. And, can feet shod with the evangel of peace, in good conscience, be swift to shed blood? Above all, the shield of faith--not of emotional barriers, not of hardened positions, but the belief that if we suspend any human contamination of our thinking, then God will, in His infinite fidelity, light the way for the few who hear the still small voice behind the din. Conservatives, liberals, both, others, make your crooked paths straight and prepare ye the way of the Word! Yea, if it is at all possible, with all our heart and mind and strength, in His love, as far as any last detail depends on us, we must wield nothing more deadly than the word (rhema) from God painstakingly perceived. Fear, and quake before Him Who can cast both body and soul into unrelenting hell. Righteousness, truth, faith, the Word, peace, love, gentleness, usefulness, compassion, justice. Against such there is no law; without such there is no security. Source: ChristiansofNewJersey |
| First Lady Touts Program for Worst Schools |
|
Laura Bush was in New Orleans last Wednesday to promote
a new program to recruit teachers for the worst schools in New
Orleans, the state's worst-rated school system.
Bush said America's public schools have more students than ever before, and the country will need more than 2 million new teachers in the next decade to accept the "awesome privilege" of educating them. Bush spoke to support the Orleans Parish Teaching Fellows program, which is looking for at least 125 certified teachers and education graduates who expect to be certified by fall. According to the program's Web site, they'll be placed in schools such as district learning academies, corrective actions schools, or schools that are not making adequate yearly progress toward meeting state goals. Another program called Teach Greater New Orleans is looking for 100 professionals who don't have education degrees but are willing to go to night school to get one while working in a challenged school. That program will pay tuition for those who work for at least three years in such schools. Source: Associated Press |
| A Wet Way to Get a Message Across |
|
A group protesting the proposed privatization of New
Orleans sewerage and water systems on Wednesday demonstrated a
unique way to get its point across--members held a pool in
front of City Hall.
Bathing suit-clad protesters splashed in a plastic "kiddie pool" set up near Gravier Street. They said the pool party was a way to enjoy New Orleans water while it is still publicly controlled and affordable. The group maintains there is a history of corruption charges against both companies competing for the bid. They also cite the failure of privatization attempts in other cities such as Atlanta. Protesters said the solution lies in re-engineering options that could overhaul the system and save money. Source: The New Orleans Channel |
| Independent Journalists in the Face of War |
|
Among Friends (Quakers) working in the media, journalists
probably have the most obvious and heaviest burdens during this
time. First there is the challenge of finding the truth in the
stories they cover. With sophisticated and complex campaigns
of misinformation (i.e. lies) being disseminated by governments
and other groups, this will be no easy task. Not only is the
information potentially questionable, but it will surely be
hiding something more grim. When a story is not about war, the
pressure to get it right will not be any less than it has ever
been. But these stories will have greater importance for a
public that will quickly tire of daily battle dispatches that
will seem more like video games than reality.
Journalists will have a harder time selling their stories to editorial boards if they present material that does not reflect the attitudes expressed in audience polls. News organizations have a lot of money invested in their war coverage. Look at their fancy graphics and the inflammatory titles for shows on a war that has not even begun. They cost money to produce. These companies expect a return on their investment. Most journalists would be dismayed if we suggested that their companies had a vested interest in seeing a war go forward. But, ratings go up in times of crisis and that means advertising dollars. While there are initial revenue losses during wall-to-wall coverage of a breaking news event, the returns are great as major stories take on a more suspenseful yet predictable pace. The question should not be "How can I stay in this business?" but, "How can I make a positive difference as a minority voice in this business?" Source: Faithful Witness |
| You Can Reduce Our Dependence On Mideast Oil | ||||||||||||
|
"Nothing is more frustrating than the feeling that every
time I fill-up the tank, I am sending my money to people who
are trying to kill me, my family, and my friends," writes
e-mailer Phil Tardif.
Perhaps you'd like to boycott Middle East oil, by getting your gas only from companies that don't import any. Here's a list, for the period 9/1/2000 to 8/31/01:
You can get updates from Boycott Middle East Oil . |
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