| LIFE-NET NEWS |
| by Ret Z. |
| Covering Poverty Widely in a Net of Many Voices |
| 2003 May 7 | No Profit; No Proceeds |
| Volume 7 Number 1 | All-Volunteer |
| "Give a family a fish, and they'll eat a meal; give them a Net, and they'll have fish for Life." |
| 'Impossible' Enviro-Revolution Already Happening |
|
Despite little action on critical issues at the recent
World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg,
the New Year revealed fresh evidence of humanity's capacity
to respond rapidly to unprecedented environmental and
social threats. According to the Worldwatch Institute's
annual report State of the World 2003, scaling up recent
successes in curbing infectious disease, increasing the
income of the poor, and advancing the use of renewable
energy, among others, would soon put the world's economy
on a more sustainable path.
The report's research team documents a host of successes that demonstrate humanity's ability to reinvent the world. Examples:
Source: Worldwatch Institute |
| Communities Oppose 'Food Imperialism' |
|
Local communities are increasingly resisting the
multinational food conglomerates that control and shape
global food production and distribution, writes Brian
Halweil in the May/June 2003 edition of World Watch. "We
are beginning to see declarations of independence from the
existing system in which the Krafts, Monsantos, and Archer
Daniels Midlands play the roles of the Tudors, Tzars, and
Louis XIVs in our modern food systems," he says in an
article that documents how these activists are working
toward a more democratic system of producing food.
Money spent locally on food generates nearly twice as much income for the local economy, according to Halweil. In addition, local food systems promote greater crop diversity and reduce costly dependence on fossil fuels. Greater food self-sufficiency could also prove particularly important for developing countries that want to achieve a certain measure of independence from the fluctuations of international markets and the constraints of international trade agreements. Source: Worldwatch Institute |
| Lead Paint Still A Grave Problem |
|
Lead poisoning may impair children's intelligence at far
lower levels than current federal health guidelines,
meaning that potentially millions more US children than
previously thought have lost a few IQ points by ingesting
contaminated dust. Not only do small amounts of the toxic
metal lower a child's intelligence, but each additional
unit of lead has a relatively more dramatic effect than at
higher levels of exposure, according to a study published
a few weeks ago in the New England Journal of Medicine.
An estimated 434,000 children younger than 6 currently have blood lead levels above the federal guideline. That number represents about 2% of the US population--a sharp decline from the late 1970s, when nine out of 10 children had levels that high. The improvement is attributed to the removal of lead from gasoline and to growing awareness about the dangers of lead-based paint and lead used to solder plumbing. A professor of children's environmental health, Bruce P. Lanphear, recommended that the nation adopt some sort of risk prevention strategy like that used in Denmark, where houses are screened for lead hazards before children are poisoned, not after. He said, "We're letting children be used as biological indicators of substandard housing." Source: Philadelphia Inquirer |
| Sea Gulls |
|
On a fisheries discussion list, William Bartlett wrote:
A few weeks ago I ate at a fast food restaurant. I was seated beside a large plate glass window with a nice view of the parking lot. As I ate I watched about 10 sea gulls fighting over an apple core. These were sea gulls, not parking lot gulls. Throughout my life I have always seen sea gulls around trash dumps. It cannot be a very good diet. It just does not seem right that these birds are here; almost begging. With my meal came a bag of corn chips. I didn't need them all and felt maybe the gulls could use them more than me. I still remember some many years back when I would see great flocks of these birds sitting on the shore or on piers and jetties waiting for some predatory fish to run chomping through a school of menhaden. Up they would go squawking and hollering, out to where the fish were breaking. Diving down to fetch a scrap of some fish ripped apart by a blue or striped bass. No more! Gone! Sad. Now just a few gulls sit with cormorants on the hedging and poles of the pound nets waiting for the fish to become trapped and they can just drop down into the pound and fill up. I had second thoughts about feeding the seagulls the corn chips. My head said no but my heart said yes. I fed them the chips. In short order there were more than 30 seagulls fighting over crumbs from the chips. We are not doing the right things for some of our wildlife. Do we rethink how we change things around us or just accept the fact that we now have garbage gulls and parking lot gulls? Source: FISHFOLK |
| Christian Groups Unite Against AIDS |
|
American Christians are putting aside their judgments and
fears to wage a serious national campaign to rid the world
of a major health crisis--the spread of HIV/AIDS. They are
marshalling the resources of American churches to help ease
the suffering and work on eliminating poverty and
ignorance, called the underlying causes in developing
countries where the deadly disease is virtually wiping out
entire villages. They are joining the national, secular
efforts of many organizations, including amfAR, the
American Foundation for AIDS Research.
Support for the initiative is coming from evangelical Christians, Catholics and a range of religious organizations. Leading the charge--and lending his media-luring celebrity to the cause--is U2 pop star Bono. In early April, World Vision raised $450,000 in one night for the cause. World Relief, the international charity arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, and Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse are also working on the problem. Rev. Leith Anderson of Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, said he believes that the church is uniquely qualified to attack the crisis. "Who's going to provide for the orphans, the widows? We can do it with our churches in Africa. We can minister to people in ways that the (secular and governmental) groups can't. They don't have the social structure to do it. They don't have churches." However, for some evangelical Christians, putting aside their judgments isn't easy. AIDS is commonly spread by sexual contact or intravenous drugs, making it easy for some people to judge its victims as getting what they deserve. In a 2002 World Vision poll, only 7% of evangelical Christians said they would donate money to help children orphaned by AIDS, while 56% said they definitely would not. Source: Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune |
| Yes, The War Was About Oil |
|
Adapted from a column by Christian conservative columnist
Chad Allen:
For more than a decade, the Iraqi people had received little in benefits from the country's most abundant natural resource. While Saddam Hussein was in power, only he and those in his inner circle enjoyed the riches from Iraq's oil. While it is true that the people of Iraq have especially suffered over the past six years since the UN's Oil-for-Food program was enacted, Hussein could have ended the literal starvation of many Iraqis simply by agreeing to UN inspections and requests. Some have tried to blame the US and the UN for the malnourishment, but Hussein bears the responsibility. Susan Blaustein of the Coalition for International Justice authored a report last year in which she said, "Each country has had its own reasons for refusing to crack down on Hussein's illegal revenue-generating activities. Russia and France have been loathe to lose their lucrative Oil-for-Food contracts and future oil rights by taking any tough stance on Iraq in the UN Security Council." Was their opposition not all about oil? On numerous occasions, the Bush administration has expressed its desire to put Iraq's oil back into the hands of its rightful owners, the Iraqi people. Vladimir Putin and Jacques Chirac never uttered similar words because oil in the hands of the Iraqis may equate to lost revenues for both countries. Now that the war is virtually completed, the US must back up its words by allowing the Iraqi people to have full control over their oil. Let there be no doubt that this war was about oil. It was about allowing a citizenry the ability to gain from their natural resources and utilize their talents, while ridding the country of a dictator who stole its oil revenues, which rightfully belonged to its people. Source: Washington Dispatch |
| Poisoned Town Pleads for Help |
|
The doctor from Veles compared what he had witnessed to a
scene from a horror film. "Babies are being born with
entire organs missing. The deformities are frightening,"
he said, asking not to be named.
The central Macedonian town of Veles has been suffering through a public health catastrophe. A smelter for lead and zinc--built barely 100 feet away from the nearest houses, in defiance of expert advice--has brought horror and agony into the lives of the town's 60,000 inhabitants. The children of 700 families in the town have serious health problems, and in the last five months alone, two have died of cancer. Infertility and miscarriages are on the rise, while newborn babies are lucky not to be diagnosed with heart or lung disease, asthma, anemia, cancer or other major problems. Compensation claims launched by residents have revealed that the smelting plant has no single owner. Instead, ownership is divided between a number of companies. Critics say this was done to evade creditors and complicate any claims for compensation. The town is said to have the highest death rate in Macedonia. World Health Organization officials added Veles to their list of critically dangerous places in 2001. Most at risk are the town's children, who inherit deformities and ingest toxins, but lack the immunities to fight back. Rozeta Bosilkova, a pediatrician in Veles, said, "My patients do not respond well to any treatment, even for the common cold. This is because their defense mechanisms have been badly eroded." The Center for Microbiotic Medicine in Moscow is one of the few places parents can hope to have their children's complaints treated. But few can afford to pay for the treatment. The government has recently announced that it will set up a task force dedicated to solving the problem. But locals can be forgiven for doubting whether real improvements will follow the latest official proclamations. Earlier statements have yet to bear fruit. The UN Development Program recently donated equipment for use in monitoring the plant's emissions. However, Vera Ristova, who heads the Veles branch of the Republican Institute for Health Protection, which received the equipment, refused to tell IWPR whether it had been used yet or not. As health deteriorates, anger grows. Said Veles mayor Ace Koceski, "The inhabitants of Veles are the conscience of this country. Macedonia cannot hope to join the EU without addressing this problem." Source: Institute for War & Peace Reporting |
| Life-Net News Extras |
| Camden Soccer Scores Big Press |
|
Life-Net Radio has been following the Camden Youth Soccer
Club since November. Last month I dropped by the field
one Saturday for a visit and found out that a major news
medium had finally run a story about them. A fine piece,
too. It'd be better to read the whole article; here's
what I could squeeze into this space:
The ball squirted loose from a scrum of players and dribbled to Michael Gorman, who used a deft right foot to push the play up the field. Streaking down a sideline, he unleashed a shot from just beyond the midfield stripe and watched the ball roll toward the net. Gooooooooaaaal! Like the great soccer players of the world, the 6-year- old sprinted to midfield, where he ran in a circle with his arms extended, as if he were flying. "I can beat the little kids," the Camden boy said after celebrating the second goal of his young career. "I got two all by myself." Until March 29, Michael could not have performed his Ronaldo impression because he lived in a city without an organized soccer league. Despite being the world's most popular sport, soccer in this country has often failed to penetrate cities such as Camden, a concrete jungle that has almost no usable soccer fields and only one high school team. Instead, the sport has become associated with homogenous, suburban communities and SUV-driving "soccer moms". But, as Camden's first youth soccer league, the Camden Youth Soccer Club, opened its first season of practice and play that Saturday, more than 450 city children joined the growing American soccer tableau. For many parents and players--ages 4 through 14, divided into four groups--this was their first exposure to the sport, its rules and its equipment. Despite the unfamiliarity, the Club appeared to be an unqualified success with parents. "Soccer is great. Anything that lets him know that there's more to life than hanging on the streets," said grandmother Marva Huff of Parkside. The Club was born through the efforts of a huge coalition of community groups, funding from a long list of organizations, and the work of Ed Bonnette, who has been involved in youth soccer for more than a decade. In 1993, he and his wife started a league in Gloucester Township that now has 70 teams and a $6 million soccer complex. All parents in the Camden league must help in at least two capacities, such as coaching a team or working the concession stand. The $5 fee to join the league has been waived for many of the children. Bonnette said he planned to build up the league, then turn it over to the parents. After the initial 10-week season, the league will follow up with a sign-up drive and a fall season. "By fall, we'll be 1,000 kids." Source: Philadelphia Inquirer |
| A Deep Divide: Evangelicals and the Media |
|
Evangelical Christians in the United States regard the
national media with profound distrust, according to a
recent informal survey. About 93% of the 37,000
respondents to a "Spiritual State of the Nation Survey" do
not trust the media, according to Coral Ridge Ministries
in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The group said the findings are consistent with its past surveys and the recent admission of New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, who wrote "one of the deepest divides in America today is the gulf of mutual suspicion that separates evangelicals from secular society." Evangelicals are a group with which the news media is "completely out of touch," said Kristof. Secularists, he wrote, regard these devout Americans with uninterest or suspicion. D. James Kennedy, president of Coral Ridge Ministries, said, "Kristof's candid column only echoes what many evangelicals, myself included, have long recognized." "There is a cultural divide between pro-family Americans on one side and media and political elites on the other," Kennedy said. "Too often the two sides peer at each other across the chasm with misgivings and misunderstanding." Kennedy said while evangelicals number 46% of the American populace, according to Gallup, "they are barely a blip on the radar of America's political and cultural elite." Source: Sermonaudio |
| Pupils, Aged Nine, To Host Radio Shows |
|
Pupils as young as nine are to broadcast live on radio as
part of a university project. Siren FM, the campus station
at Lincoln University, has asked eight children from a
nearby school to produce and present three 30-minute shows.
The experiment is part of a degree project involving around 20 media production students. One of them, Catherine Walker, said: "We've been going in every week and teaching the kids how to create simple radio content. "A group of nine and 10 year olds will be putting on three live shows. They've been trying lots of new things, like interviewing and putting minidisc packages together. They are really enjoying it. You can see their confidence growing all the time." The children, from Usher Junior School, Lincoln, will be on-air from 10am to 10.30am on May 3, 10 and 17. Ms Walker added: "They've come up with ideas of their own and been guided by us. Some of the things they will feature include talks on their favourite music and an interview with their head teacher." The project was devised to demonstrate the power of radio --often forgotten in a world dominated by television--to children. The Lincoln students' grades for the project will depend on the pupils' on-air performances. Ms Walker said: "The project has been good for everyone involved. They've come to realise the power of words and what they can achieve if they go on with their education, perhaps to university. It's also very rewarding for us." Source: BBC News |
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