| LIFE-NET NEWS |
| by Ret Z. |
| Covering Poverty Widely in a Net of Many Voices |
| 2003 November 12 | No Profit; No Proceeds |
| Volume 7 Number 18 | All-Volunteer |
| "Give a family a fish, and they'll eat a meal; give them a Net, and they'll have fish for Life." |
| The New Afghan Constitution |
|
In putting the Afghan draft constitution together, the main
objective was "to produce a national document that could
effectively regulate the new social and political life in
Afghanistan and help achieve national unity, democracy and
prosperity after decades of violence and chaos."
Here's the preamble (an unofficial translation): In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate PREAMBLE We the people of Afghanistan:
Source: Draft Constitution of Afghanistan |
| Highest-Rate State Offers $1-a-Day Car Insurance |
|
Nearly half of New Jersey's 600,000 uninsured drivers now
have the option of buying an auto-insurance policy that
covers emergency room treatment and other health-care costs
for as little as a dollar a day. The new initiative,
outlined by state officials Monday at the Molly Pitcher Rest
Stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, is part of a broader effort
to drive down insurance costs for everyone by making sure
all drivers have insurance.
"If you're on the road in New Jersey without auto insurance, you're breaking the law," said Gov. James E. McGreevey. "We knew we had to do more to help those with limited means drive legally. The dollar-a-day policy does that." The policy is available only to those drivers who are eligible for federal Medicaid -- a potential pool of 255,000 New Jersey drivers. The state Department of Banking and Insurance approved forms for the policy Oct. 1 and has been testing it on a trial basis for several weeks. To date, about a dozen policies have been sold. Under the policy, drivers would be covered for $15,000 worth of emergency care and $250,000 for catastrophic injury. The driver's Medicaid benefits would cover any non-emergency medical care. The goal is to ensure that trauma centers are sufficiently reimbursed for treating accident victims. That, in turn, would help reduce the cost of personal injury protection for other drivers who now subsidize treatment for uninsured motorists. "We're tackling the problems of the uninsured drivers," the governor said. "All of this should create downward pressure on premiums." Available through most insurance agencies, the policy costs $360 if you pay up front, or $365 in two installments. The average auto insurance premium in New Jersey is $1,092, the highest level in the nation. Source: Newark Star-Ledger Phone: Personal Automobile Insurance Plan, 800-652-2471 Web Site: Department of Banking and Insurance |
| Rains Spoil Good Life for Chinese Cave-Dwellers |
|
Peasants in Gaoling County, China, say it is wonderful to
live in a cave, except during a torrential rainy season.
"Cool in the summer, warm in the winter," said Hua Chen Min,
whose family has happily occupied a hillside burrow for
generations, but who has begun to question the lifestyle
since this year's rains collapsed a storage cavern next to
his abode.
Hundreds of thousands of poor cave-dwelling farmers in the central province of Shaanxi have become homeless in recent weeks as heavy rains turned solid cliff faces into dangerous cascades of mud, according to Chinese news reports. In one collapse, 12 people were trapped, their fate unknown, after eight cave homes were buried under tons of earth and rocks. Poverty in Shaanxi province breeds a unique combination of ingenuity and optimism in the form of cave-dwellings. Several million people in the province live this way. It is not a throwback to Neanderthal times, though it is hardly luxurious. These caves, dug out of the bottoms of sturdy cliffs, are finished living spaces with plaster walls, brick floors, electricity, a front door -- and an undeniably musty smell. People in Gaoling County are a bit better off than people in isolated regions of the province where there are said to be more than 250,000 people homeless after their caves were damaged or destroyed by rains this autumn. The Ministry of Civil Affairs has earmarked $7.3 million for relief and some localities have allocated funds and gathered quilts and clothing to help victims get through winter, the Chinese media reported. Source: Chicago Tribune |
| Unaffordable Redevelopment |
|
Buddy Brooks may have a bad heart, but his head works just
fine. When Mount Holly, NJ, officials told him and other
folks scheduled to be "redeveloped" out of their homes they
could move to "nice, new apartments" in Camden, Buddy
laughed.
Sure, the apartments that just opened along the waterfront at the old RCA building are nice and new. They also happen to have 14-foot windows, built-in wine racks and rents of up to $2,650 a month. New Jersey, in case you didn't know, is a lousy place to be poor. It's not particularly pleasant to be borderline middle-class here either. This is the most expensive place in the nation to rent a two-bedroom apartment and the fourth most expensive to buy a house. By definition, affordable housing is that which costs 30% or less of your household income when you earn 80% or less of the area's median income. In Camden, Burlington and Gloucester Counties, median income hovers around $68,000 for a family of four. So, make anything less than $54,000 a year, and you're officially in need. Make $34,000 and you're officially low-income and probably sweating. That's because the typical two-bedroom apartment in the state rents for around $900 a month. And the typical house sells for $188,000. In New Jersey, the 650,000 families needing affordable housing include entry-level teachers and rookie cops, bookkeepers, bus drivers, hairdressers, paramedics, and construction workers, according to the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey. "These are people who can't afford to live in the town they grew up in," says Paul Chrystie, who runs the Coalition for Affordable Housing and the Environment. "They're people working real jobs, hard jobs and they can't afford to live in New Jersey." Source: Philadelphia Inquirer |
| Baghdad Rent Hikes Push Families Out Into Cold |
|
"I was thrown out of my apartment after the war. The owners
wanted to increase the rent and I do not have money," said
Um Shawki, 57, who hails from the modest al-Karkh
neighborhood in Baghdad. With no place to go, she found
refuge in a rundown house under construction along the
airport road, known by US soldiers as the "highway of death"
for the repeated anti-coalition guerrilla attacks. "The
only place I could find were these pillars of an unfinished
house," she said. With the help of some other homeless
people, I was able to put corrugated iron as a rooftop to
make the place livable."
Large families crowd small spaces with no furniture, where men, women and children sit, eat and sleep on thin, ragged mats. Openings in the wall that serve as windows are covered with old, multicolored sheets, as holes in the roof are traversed by beams of sunlight that criss-cross the room. When the rains come, water will soak the living area. And even from here they could be expelled. The misery has just started for Um Shawki and many homeless families who faced a similar ordeal after the April 9 fall of the Saddam Hussein regime sent rent prices skyrocketing. "Every day, we receive visitors with documents claiming that they own the land we are living on. They threaten us with expulsion," said Jassim Hassan, a 45-year-old construction employee and a father of six girls and a boy. Hassan, who earns 5,000 Iraqi dinars (three dollars) a day, is adamant: "We have been expelled once. Now they can only do it over my dead body." The year's first bone-chilling wind that swept the capital last week brought further gloom to the homeless families. "Yesterday it was freezing during the night. We huddled together and used blankets, but it did not help a lot," said Hussein Ali, 48, while fixing a corrugated iron roof on his small room. "We were practically sleeping in the open and it is very cold." Iraq's winter season may be short, but temperatures can reach freezing point at night or in the early hours of the morning as the population rises for work. The cold is not the only enemy for Ali, Um Shawki and Jassim, who frequently find themselves caught in the line of fire. "We are always afraid of stray bullets. Two days ago we stayed awake counting rockets flying over our heads," recalls Jassim. Iraqi civilians are frequently victims of the vicious circle of violence. "We are very lucky. There is an Arab proverb that says: 'Who is not killed by the sword will die by another means,'" said Um Shawki. "We have three ways to die: from the cold, the bullets, or expulsion." Source: Middle East Online |
| An Unconventional Candidate in Cumberland County |
|
Vineland resident (and Life-Net News subscriber) Constantino
Rozzo said he was running for New Jersey Assembly in the
First District under the Socialist Party USA banner because
he wants voters to have more choices. "When you have the
two-party system, all the candidates have the same ideas,"
he said. "With other candidates, you get new ideas and can
bring some of these new ideas into light."
More people have to get involved in politics, but are afraid to because there is a feeling of being powerless, he said. One idea would be to have more public questions voted on by residents when it comes to important issues involving their communities. "People should have more to vote for than just candidates," Rozzo suggested. When it comes to economic development, there has to be a "massive cooperative movement," he said. It gives more residents the opportunity to start their own businesses. All too often, communities do not work together and would rather compete against each other. "We have to get rid of home rule," Rozzo stated. He also believes county government should be eliminated, giving control to the municipalities and at the state level. "We need to get rid of redundant government," Rozzo noted. "There are a lot of redundant jobs that pay an excessive amount of money." Affordable housing is an issue Rozzo feels should be strongly addressed. Often they are developing, but not making it accessible for the needy. "It seems like they are building luxury condos," he stated. "Urban renewal is supposed to be about a second chance. Instead, it is about luxury scams." The First District includes Millville, Maurice River Township and Vineland in Cumberland County, parts of Atlantic County and all of Cape May County. It's a safe bet that Rozzo will run for public office again. Source: Bridgeton News |
| Housing Rights Awards Go to Good and Bad |
|
A new global honor -- The Housing Rights Defender Award --
has gone to Rachel Corrie, the US activist killed in Gaza.
Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in March
while protesting against the demolition of a Palestinian
dwelling.
In other awards announced in Geneva last week by the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), "Violator" honors went to Indonesia, Guatemala and Serbia-Montenegro for failing to address a massive problem of homelessness and slums. Scotland was praised for its "rare" protection of the right to housing. COHRE launched the annual Housing Rights Awards in 2002 to focus attention on the plight of more than one billion people worldwide who it said live in slums and some 100 million people who are homeless on any given night. The awards go to "Protector"s, "Violator"s, and now also to "Defender"s. The group chose Indonesia from a short list of about 15 countries for a Housing Rights Violator Award because, it alleged, the government had allowed the violent eviction of people from cities and was guilty of housing-related crimes in the provinces of Aceh and Papua. Guatemala was given the Violator Award because it had ignored various rights to housing and land, according to COHRE. Serbia-Montenegro "continues to discriminate severely against the Roma, many of whom live in conditions far worse than many of the most horrendous slums found in the developing world," said COHRE executive director Scott Leckie in a statement. Last year 10 countries won the dishonourable title, including the USA. Leckie hoped some had been shamed into tidying up their act. In contrast, the Scottish Executive won the Housing Rights Protector Award for the adoption of a new law -- the Homelessness (Scotland) Act 2003 -- which aims to open more doors to people without a roof over their head. This award is to highlight "a government that has taken housing rights seriously, which is often rare," he added. Pakistan and Croatia -- Violator winners in 2002 -- had conducted much closer talks on the issue with COHRE as a result of being blacklisted. "Hopefully that has trickled down to the local level," Leckie continued, "and made a difference to some of the two billion people in the world who don't have housing rights." Source: Al-Jazeera |
| Life-Net News Extras |
| Guantanamo Ex-Detainee Sues Pakistan and US |
|
A man who was imprisoned by the US military at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, is suing the Pakistani and US governments for
damages worth $10.4 million, for his "illegal detention,
torture and humiliation." Pakistani cleric Mohammed Sagheer
was seized by US troops fighting in Afghanistan in 2001. He
spent roughly a year with other suspected al-Qaeda and
Taliban operatives in the US military prison. His lawyers
say he is suing for the mental and physical torture he
endured at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay.
Mr Sagheer filed his suit in an Islamabad court on Tuesday. He has named the US Secretary of State Colin Powell and the Pakistani interior minister as the respondents. Lawyers acting for him said the case could be heard in a Pakistani court because Pakistan's interior ministry is one of the defendants. In the first case of its kind, Mr Sagheer described his arrest by American authorities as illegal and his treatment at the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay as extremely inhuman. He says he was kept for more than a year in a prison cell that was like a cage meant for animals. His lawyer claims that "due to illegal arrest and unlawful detention, he suffered mental shock, financial loss, physical victimization, estrangement and religious victimization for about one year". During this period he says he was treated in the worst possible manner and was repeatedly interrogated about his links to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Despite insisting that he has no ties to the Islamic militant group, Mr Sagheer says he was punished by the authorities for what they saw as his lack of co-operation. The court has decided to hold a preliminary hearing for the case in the third week of December. Sagheer will further argue that his family, comprising a wife and nine children, had also undergone physical and mental torture because of his detention. Nearly 600 detainees of various nationalities are being held in Guantanamo without trial. Human rights groups and various governments have criticised their detention as illegal and a violation of their human rights. The Americans say they are holding suspects linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Source: BBC Source: Al-Jazeera |
| Underdeveloped Countries As Job-and-Money Donors |
|
African countries are donors of money, taxes, and jobs to
the developing world, according to President Yoweri Kaguta
Museveni of Uganda. Speaking before the UN General Assembly
on November 3, he used Ugandan raw cotton as an example:
He said Uganda gets about $1.30 a kilogram for the raw cotton, "but if I do the spinning the value goes up three times. If you weave that cotton the value goes up six times. If you produce the garment the value goes up ten times." "So if I export it as lint (cotton) I am a donor, I am a 'mega-donor.' I am donating three or four things. I am donating $9 or $10 out of every kilogram I export. I am donating it to the ones who are doing the value addition. I get one-tenth of the value of my product. I am a donor of money." "Uganda is donating more than money," he added. "Who will do the spinning, who will do the weaving? Somebody else. Who will do the tailoring? Somebody else. So we are donors of jobs. That's why there are no jobs in Uganda." President Museveni said that the lost jobs meant lost taxes, too, as the incomes would be taxed. "Having work means taxes, and having work means buying shampoo, which also would be taxed," he said. He said the price for raw materials will always go down, because of changing demand, oversupply, and "because of the subsidies of United States, Europe and Japan." He said one solution is diversification, but the "real answer" is to "transform the economy, so that it becomes an economy that adds value to this material and goes and links with the consumer." Such transformation, he said, would also aid the developed West, since Africa's 800 million population is a large potential market. "We have the stomach; we don't have the money. We don't have the money because there are no jobs. But remember the jobs were donated. If you donated a job, you don't have a job. If you don't have a job, you have no money. If you have no money you don't consume," he said. Source: United Nations |
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