LIFE-NET NEWS

by Ret Z.

Covering Poverty Widely in a Net of Many Voices

2003 September 17	No Profit; No Proceeds
Volume 7 Number 14	All-Volunteer

"Give a family a fish, and they'll eat a meal;  give them a Net, and they'll have fish for Life."

Feds to Track Homeless Closely

In an attempt to grasp the scope of the United States' homeless problem, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is requiring local government and nonprofit organizations receiving grants for homeless programs to keep detailed files on their clientele. Data to be tracked ranges from Social Security numbers to HIV statuses to mental health histories.       Local agencies must have the so-called Homeless Management Information Systems, or HMIS, in place by 2004 or risk losing federal funds. Over the last 15 years, HUD has spent more than $11 billion on homeless assistance, yet the department knows little about the people it helps, including how many there are.       Estimates of the number of homeless Americans range from 600,000 to 3.5 million, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. But the exact figure is hard to calculate given the very nature of homelessness. For some people, homelessness is a transitory situation, precipitated by job loss or separation from a violent partner. For others--especially those struggling with drug addiction or mental illness--lack of shelter is a chronic problem.       HUD says the mandatory tracking program will help establish an accurate count of the nation's homeless, streamline services, and reduce fraud. Opponents say the HMIS databases will put homeless people's privacy at risk and could be misused by local officials to harass the homeless for political reasons.       Incidents of official harassment of the homeless are well-documented. So are accounts of police abuse of sensitive databases.       In an analysis of the proposed tracking systems, the Electronic Privacy Information Center urges HUD to extrapolate information from census-like "snapshots" of the homeless population in different areas rather than collecting individuals' personal data.       Source:  Wired News

Affluence and Unhappiness in British Teen Girls

Affluent British 15-year-old girls are now twice as prone to anxiety and depression as their poorer neighbors. These girls have every possible advantage. They do much better at school than boys. Hard-won freedoms denied to their mothers and grandmothers mean they have much more money to spend and choice about how to use their time. If any group is feeling pretty chipper about life under American-style advanced capitalism, it should be them.       Yet they are increasingly miserable. Whereas in 1987 only 6% suffered from a serious mental illness, now it's 18%. The cause of this derangement is the same as the one that has led to a dramatic rise in mental illness since 1950 throughout the developed world and especially in America.       In the case of the affluent teenage girls (but not poor ones or boys), between 1987 and 1999 their worries about school performance and their weight soared. Their anxieties perfectly matched a dramatic leap in their exam results and ever-greater pressures to look like Kate Moss or Posh Spice. Increased demands from parents, teachers and the media led to an epidemic of maladjusted comparing of themselves with other girls' looks and academic success.       American advanced capitalism has ruthlessly exploited our comparison instinct. More than that, it encourages grossly pathological ways of comparing, both upward and downward.       As a result, affluent 15-year-old girls are liable to say in all seriousness that they hope to be as successful as Madonna or Posh Spice, directly comparing themselves, and apparently oblivious to the extreme improbability of it ever happening. Feeling they almost know these women, and encouraged by song lyrics and autobiographies that promise "you too can be anyone you want to be," the girls don't think of all the things that would tell them they're not making a fair comparison.       Continual economic growth is only possible if needs are constantly diversifying to create new markets. There is a necessity for ever more diverse needs so that ever more specific products can be devised to meet them. Advanced capitalism maintains itself by fostering spurious individualism, pressuring us to define ourselves through our purchases, with ever more precisely marketed products that create a fetishistic concern to have "this" rather than "that," even when there is no significant practical or aesthetic difference. It profits from the dissatisfaction and rage that are engendered by unreal social comparisons, encouraging us to fill the consequent psychic void with material goods and drugs of solace (alcohol, illegal drugs, food, nicotine).       Money can even be made from restoring the chemical imbalance in our brains that results from these overheated ambitions and false identities--by selling pills and therapeutic services to the damaged and subordinated. Thus today's capitalism prospers at both ends, and our inner lives foot the bill.       Source:  Adbusters

'I Gave At The Meter'

The meter is running on homeless panhandlers in downtown Athens, Georgia. The city unveiled four "homeless contribution meters" early this month in College Square across from the University of Georgia arch.       The devices, made from refurbished traffic meters, accept coin donations that will be given to the Northeast Georgia Homeless Coalition, a nonprofit group that coordinates agencies targeting the homeless population. The money will be used to provide the area's homeless population with meals, clothing and necessities.       While the painted-white homeless meters won't stop all panhandlers, officials hope it will provide for some of their needs and reduce aggressive begging, said Athens-Clarke police officer Gary Epps. "I don't know if we'll ever prevent it," said Epps, who pitched the idea when he heard about a similar program in Nashville, Tenn. "The hope is that it will curb some of the aggressive panhandling."       Epps said many people feel intimidated when they're asked for money, and their contributions often are used for drugs or alcohol. Now the money is guaranteed to go toward providing for basic needs. Also, visitors and residents will be able to go downtown more often without the threat of being attacked by people wanting money.       "It definitely gives people another avenue to say, 'Hey, I've just contributed to your cause,'" Epps said.       Each meter cost about $55, officials have said. Coins will be removed from the meters daily by Downtown Athens Parking employees and transferred into a bank account for the Homeless Coalition.       Source:   Associated Press

Free Humanities Course Lifts Spirits

Lori Parker of Rogers Park, Illinois, was an unemployed former drug addict who had dropped out of college two decades ago and shut the door on higher education. Then she answered what seemed to be a too-good-to-be-true newspaper ad offering free philosophy, literature and art history classes taught by elite university professors in her neighborhood. Now, she and many of the approximately 90 graduates of the Illinois Odyssey Project, a college-level humanities course for low-income adults, say the course was life-altering.       As Odyssey starts its fourth year next month, 40 participants have earned college credit, four have gone on to college, at least 15 have gone on to college prep courses and at least a dozen have improved their employment. Odyssey, a statewide program, is part of the Clemente Course, an international alliance of programs based in New York, where organizers say 44% of participants nationally do not finish the free course. But 41% of the students, who have included immigrants, ex-convicts, the homeless and disabled people, go on to college to improve their lives, national organizers say. The New York program began eight years ago and has spread under different names to 33 cities in the US, Mexico and Australia.       In Odyssey, professors from DePaul University, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, the School of the Art Institute and Shimer College in Waukegan go into neighborhoods to bring the humanities to poor residents who have been "cheated" out of opportunities, organizers say. Applicants are chosen after they write an essay about why they want to attend, but few are turned away.       "The goal is simply to give everyone the opportunity to experience the riches of the humanities," said Phoebe Stein Davis of the Illinois Humanities Council. "The things that make us human."       Source:  Chicago Tribune

Miss HIV Stigma-Free 2003

Amidst cultural dance and drama performances, fourteen HIV-positive women in Botswana paraded down the runway early this month in a beauty pageant aimed at destroying misconceptions about people living with the disease. This was a beauty contest with a difference--the judges were searching for participants who could be ambassadors of HIV/AIDS, and displayed courage, sacrifice and patriotism.       The eventual winner of Miss HIV Stigma-Free, Kgalalelo Ntsepe, told the audience she was living proof that antiretroviral drugs worked. "I was scared to go home, and my parents did not recognise me as the child they once knew," she said. Weighing 48kg before beginning treatment, Ntsepe is now a healthy 75kg beauty queen.       She urged young people not to listen when others tried to discourage them from disclosing their HIV status and seeking treatment. "I want to break stigma with my title by giving lectures where I can tell my story to encourage others. I want to go around the country telling people that HIV-positive people have not done anything wrong, and that they also need care and love," said Ntsepe, who works as a counselor for HIV-positive youth.       Stigma raises its ugly head everywhere in the country. Botswana's AIDS Information Survey, conducted in 2001, found that 60% of men and 57% of women were unwilling to buy vegetables from an HIV-positive vendor. It also established that 47% of men who participated in the survey believed that a teacher living with HIV/AIDS should not continue teaching.       Source:  UN Integrated Regional Information Networks

College Protest Now Part of the Curriculum

San Francisco's New College of California is offering something for the socially conscious this fall that they'd never get marching in the streets: a college degree in activism.       For $5,500 to $6,000 a semester, the 32-year-old Mission District school is offering bachelor's and master's humanities degrees with a concentration in "activism and social change." While schools from Vermont to Santa Cruz boast versions of do-gooding curricula, degrees in activism are hard to come by.       "Students can shape their own (activist) program at other schools," said Michael Baer, senior vice president at the American Council on Education and former provost at Northeastern University. "But to have it all together--the theoretical and the practical--under one roof and labeled as such is somewhat rare."       Almost as rare is New College's eclectic lineup of activist instructors, a progressive all-star team that includes tree-sitting environmentalist Julia "Butterfly" Hill, "ecofeminist witch" and author Starhawk and San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly. Baer called the program instructors at the 800-student school accomplished and "as competent as any you'd see at a similar-sized school. The difference is, at at a larger school you'd be exposed to a wider array of different perspectives."       New College has tailored this intensive, one-weekend-a- month program to the working activist. Being located in the Bay Area's progressive beehive allows students to hook up easily with any of the region's many nonprofit organizations for a required internship.       Ultimately, school officials would like to build the program into a progressive think tank. For this fall, they're aiming for around a dozen students in both the undergraduate and master's programs.       Students will study everything from anarchist theory to the civil rights movement. The master's program has a course on globalization, the hot topic in progressive circles.       For applicants a little light on the prerequisites--a high school degree and at least 45 units of college credit--New College will consider their "life experience." And no, school officials said, being arrested four times for blocking an intersection isn't what they mean.       Source:  San Francisco Chronicle

Himalayan Glacier Melt Alarms Experts

Environmentalists and climatologists are deeply concerned over the rapid shrinking of the Himalayan glaciers--the origin of most of the rivers in northern India--even as the Indian government seems indifferent to the grim implications of the scenario.       The majority of the 15,000 or so glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world, says a study by the International Commission for Snow and Ice. The director of the glaciology division of the Geological Survey of India (GSI), Mr Deepak Shrivastava, admits that most of the Himalayan glaciers are shrinking, but he says the recession and advancement of glaciers are a natural, cyclical process.       In addition to having possible adverse effects on the regimes of snow rivers, the alarming melting of the Himalayan glaciers might result in outbursts of glacial lakes, ice avalanches, landslides and debris flows, and a rise in water level of the oceans, which could trigger disastrous consequences for human life and property. The recession could also affect climatic conditions besides putting pressure on the fragile ecology of the Himalayas, a mega-biodiversity zone.       The Union mines minister in-charge of the GSI, Mr Ramesh Bais, conceded that the government has "no proposal under its consideration to formulate any special scheme for conservation of the originating sites of snow rivers."       Source:  Hindu Press International

Life-Net News Extras

Lopsided Subsidies Overshadow Stalemated Trade Talks

As predicted, the Fifth World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico, failed Sunday because no agreement could be reached over the key issue under debate: the ending of agricultural subsidies.       Various delegates concurred that the meeting failed because common ground could not be found, even less so on the subject of subsidies; nor did the industrial countries mention any commitment to eliminate their support. The United States, the European Union (EU) and Japan maintained their position towards the Group-22 (of developing countries) that are demanding from the former a larger commitment to opening up their markets to agricultural goods originating from the developing countries.       India, along with export giants Brazil and China, is the core of an upstart alliance of more than 20 developing countries that banded together here to fight against rich-country farm subsidies. The so-called Group of 21 rattled the US and the EU by emerging as a new and powerful force in an institution long dominated by the clout of the world's industrial powers.       Although the so-called Singapore issues sunk the talks, tensions over agriculture had overshadowed the meeting. Many of the WTO's poorest countries were particularly enraged at language in a compromise draft that circulated on Saturday that conceded almost nothing to countries hard hit by huge American and European cotton subsidies. Cotton has become a focal point for how farm subsidies in developed countries can wreck havoc in villages thousands of miles away.       Delegates from four West African countries, some clad in traditional dress, pleaded for the WTO to support an initiative to end all cotton subsidies over three years and pay cotton farmers in the world's poorest countries a total of $250 million a year to get back on their feet. The US spends around $2.5 billion a year and the EU another $700 million helping their cotton farmers, a fact that many say has helped depress cotton prices to historic lows.       But the draft text sided with a US proposal to make the cotton fight part of ongoing negotiations over textiles and to offer no immediate relief to African farmers.       Rich nations, too, found plenty of cause to be unhappy with the compromise text. The EU, for one, adamantly rejected proposals to set a specific date to eliminate agricultural export supports--a longstanding aim of the US. The EU, which spends about $3 billion a year directly subsidizing farm exports, has offered to work towards reducing the subsidies and even eliminate them on certain goods of particular importance to poor nations, but refuses to consider eliminating them all together.       Meanwhile, the developing countries are calling for an end to the $330 billion-plus annual agricultural subsidies from the member countries of the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development, due to the problems these bring to international trade.       Experts consider that the problems of state subsidies for agriculture lie in the fact that these reduce prices on the world market, thus affecting producers in the developing nations and limiting the possibilities of reducing poverty.       Source:  Granma       Source:  Wall Street Journal

For Yom Kippur: Our Valuable Words

Sometime more than two thousand years ago, Jews stopped pronouncing the four-letter name of God used in the Torah. For some time, the sound of the Name was probably kept alive in mystical groups; but it has long vanished. When the Second Temple stood in Jerusalem, the Name was pronounced on Yom Kippur by the Kohen Gadol, the Chief Priest, on the one day of the year when he would enter the innermost holy place within the Temple. The people gathered in the courtyards of the Temple could hear it. But even then, the Kohen as he said the Name would see only a cloud of incense, obscuring the ark and its covering, a reminder of the tablets engraved with God's original words from atop Mt. Sinai.       Words lose their edge, their punch, as they are used and reused. This year's arresting call to action becomes next year's cliche. Our most important words lose their lustre with much repetition. And when that happens, our ideas and visions become cloudy, if not dull. Our ancestors had the insight to remove the divine Name from circulation even among the learned and pious, to prevent it from becoming corrupted. Each year, in the most holy place, the Name would be recalled. Not just the word but the reality of God would be reglorified and renewed in the process. Somehow, the community would have to live for as long as it could off the pure sound of the Name, before the notion of God would once again become routine and cloudy.       We may not want to remove certain words from our daily use, but we ought to fear for the corruption of our best words and the visions they are supposed to capture. As Jews, we have words like tikkun olam, tzedakah, chesed, brit. As activists in the English-speaking world, we have a corresponding vocabulary about justice, action, service, community. We see these words corrupted all the time. Any act of volunteering is called "repairing the world", even when the volunteers never question why people are suffering and what can be done to change those conditions. Any gift of money to any good cause is called tzedakah, whether the beneficiaries are poor or not, whether the work promotes justice or not.       And it isn't just "others" who do the corrupting. Those of us who tend to be on the political left often lend our words and their credibility too quickly or too certainly to whatever is going as "progressive", "liberal", or "pro-peace" at a given time.       Periodically, we need to restore the force and essence of the fundamental words we use in Jewish service and activism. Maybe some words or concepts need a rest--has tikkun olam become so popular that it can be used for almost anything? Or maybe not rest, but recalibration--we resolve only to say "community" when people are actually meeting, talking, looking one another in the eye. Perhaps it is time to rescue overlooked meanings--chesed not just as good deeds and "lovingkindness", but as the challenging combination of caring and duty.       The matter of the hidden Name, recited only in the Holy of Holies, teaches us to respect and protect the words we rely on, as our tools and as our vision.       Source:  SocialAction.com

Lawyer to Sue Jews for Biblical 'Plunder'

An Egyptian lawyer said Wednesday he was planning to sue the world's Jews for "plundering" gold during the Exodus from Pharaonic Egypt thousands of years ago, based on information in the Bible. Nabil Hilmi, dean of the law faculty at Egypt's al-Zaqaziq University, said the legal basis for the case was under study by a group of lawyers in Egypt and Europe. "This is serious, and should not be misread as being political against any race. We are just investigating if a debt is owed," Hilmi told Reuters in a telephone interview.       The relevant passage, Exodus 12:35-36, reads: "The Israelites had done as Moses told them; they had asked the Egyptians for jewelry of silver and gold, and for clothing. ... And so they plundered the Egyptians." (NRSV)       Some Jewish commentators say that while the Biblical passage may be fact, the Hebrews were enslaved by the Egyptians and therefore had a right to claim compensation for wages. "Hilmi's assertion that the Hebrew Bible is fact has given Israel and Jews the world over a reason to rejoice. He has opened the door for all Jews to sue Egypt for over 400 years of slavery," writer Beth Goodman told Reuters.       Tareq Zaghoul, a lawyer at the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights in Cairo, said it would be difficult to prove historical fact in the passage that would stand up in court. "This needs historical documents and evidence to back it up. It is rather far-fetched."       Hilmi said Egyptian and European historical and religious experts were trying to establish if the biblical passage could be taken as fact, and hence form the basis for a lawsuit. He said the argument that Jews could sue Egypt for enslaving them was also being studied by experts.       Hilmi gave no details of which court he planned to file the case in or whether he thought such a case would be exempt from the sort of statute of limitations that in many countries rules out legal cases after a certain period of time. He also declined to put a value on the goods "plundered."       Source:  Reuters

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