LIFE-NET NEWS

by Ret Z.

Covering Poverty Widely in a Net of Many Voices

2004 June 16	No Profit; No Proceeds
Volume 8 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."

Protests Erupt Over New Russian Welfare Scheme

Thousands of trade union supporters across Russia took to the streets Thursday to protest government plans to replace healthcare and transportation benefits for socially vulnerable groups with nonindexed cash payments, and called for higher salaries for low-paid state employees. About 1,500 protesters, including doctors, teachers and other state employees, gathered outside the White House in central Moscow, calling for the Cabinet's plan to be scrapped.       Mikhail Shmakov, head of the Federation of Independent Unions, the country's biggest grouping, told protesters, "The government must not meddle with the Labor Code. It must pay wage arrears and increase the minimum [monthly] wage to 2,500 rubles [$85]." He said national strikes could follow in the fall if the bill was not dropped.       Benefits covering subsidized utilities and transportation for millions of Russians would end under the new law, being replaced by cash payments. The State Duma is to consider the bill in a first reading July 2.       Though not large compared with the nationwide wage arrears protests of the 1990s, Thursday's demonstration could well be the first in a series of rallies over the plans, which are to take effect later this year. Success in reducing state employees' salary backlogs has been seen as one of President Vladimir Putin's key achievements in his oft-stated policy of reducing poverty.       The bill's Cabinet sponsors say it is aimed at targeting cash resources to those most in need. But the proposed legislation has drawn massive criticism from affected groups like pensioners and the disabled, who fear that the proposed 800 to 3,500 ruble monthly supplement to pensions and allowances will not cover the value of privileges they now receive, and they are worried that the cash allowances will not keep pace with hikes in charges for electricity and gas supplies, as Russia seeks to meet its commitments to the European Union on energy prices, agreed to last month as part of the negotiations for its accession to the World Trade Organization.       The average monthly pension is now 1,760 rubles ($60), less than the official poverty line of about $75 per month. Demonstrations were also held in dozens of cities nationwide from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, Interfax reported.       Source:  Moscow Times

Civil Rights: The Next Generation

The National Hip-Hop Political Convention begins today in Newark. That agenda will address quality of life issues like jobs, education and crime.       While older civil rights leaders and new hip-hop activists are fighting for the same things, there is an acknowledged tension between the generations. The newer generation intend to become players in the political arena, but the music and image they present raises questions from their predecessors. The older leaders wonder whether hip-hop can be used politically, given the vivid descriptions of killings, graphic sexual images and misogyny that have become standard on commercial hip-hop records.       Another issue is the basic obstacles each group confronted. "During the civil rights movement, black people in the South couldn't vote, had to sit at the back of the bus, had substandard schools and were regularly shot, attacked and lynched. This is not on par with that," said David Bositis, a senior analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington think tank that focuses on black issues.       Rappers often have touched on issues affecting the black community earlier than some politicians, said Todd Boyd, a cinema-television professor at the University of Southern California.       In 1982, Grandmaster Flash's hip-hop classic "The Message" talked about the terrible conditions in America's ghettos. The rap group NWA brought the issue of police brutality up in the 1980s. Public Enemy talked about the crisis of black men in the prison system on their albums more than a decade ago. Talib Kweli's 2003 song "Get By" talks about the things people do to survive in urban America.       "A lot of my generation grew up in poverty-stricken communities and violent schools taken over by the state," said convention co-chairman Baye Wilson, 35. "We are attracted to hip-hop because it's about struggle and overcoming odds."       Source:  Newark Star-Ledger       More Info:  National Hip-Hop Political Convention

Flood Risk: Two Billion People By 2050, Study Says

More than two billion people could be at risk of flood devastation by 2050, according to research released on Monday. One billion people are already at risk from the kind of floods that might occur every 100 years. But with global warming, that number could double in two generations, according to United Nations University researchers.       Floods already affect more than 520 million people worldwide every year. Torrential rains and rising rivers damage crops, sweep away roads and bridges, flood homes and claim around 25,000 lives. Many more live in the path of once-a-century type floods.       Experts calculate the numbers at risk will more than double because of more frequent extreme weather events linked to global warming: Sea levels will continue to rise as glaciers melt; the clearing of forests means rainfall runs off faster. The scientists also predict that because flood plains tend to have the richest agricultural soils, more people will move into the danger zone by 2050 as the planet's population climbs to an estimated 10 billion.       Floods in Asia (the worst-affected continent) between 1987 and 1997 claimed 228,000 lives and caused economic losses of an estimated $136 billion. In Europe in 2002, once-a-century floods killed 100 people, affected around 450,000, and did $20 billion worth of damage.       Source:  Mail & Guardian (South Africa)

Too Few Minority Folks Visit Doctors

Black and Hispanic patients tend to arrive dangerously late to Newark Community Health Centers' storefront clinics, officials say. When they finally come for care, diabetes has often ravaged their kidneys, or their tumors are swollen and deadly.       "They come to us as a last resort, often when it's too late," said Alvaro Simmons, a director of the federally funded clinics who spoke Saturday at a Newark forum exploring why minorities are more likely than whites to be obese, suffer from asthma, and die young.       Speaker after speaker said minorities are more likely to have health problems because they are less likely to visit doctors. The chief reason is lack of insurance, said Rep Donald Payne (D), adding that he and his Black Caucus colleagues would push for universal health care.       Even with coverage, minorities are often forced to seek care at inner-city hospitals, where overcrowded, chaotic conditions scare them away, said Rep Major Owens (D-NY).       If patients do get care at free neighborhood clinics, like the Newark Community Health Centers, the referral process from one doctor to the next can be dizzying enough to discourage follow-up visits, said Alfred Gaymon of the North Jersey Medical Society. "Whether or not they navigate the system is a matter of certain uncertainty."       Sometimes patients avoid doctors because they don't speak English or because they grew up in households where going to the doctor simply wasn't done, said Diane Brown of the Institute for the Elimination of Health Disparities.       And sometimes, black and Hispanic patients are treated differently from white patients, said Rep Julia Carson (D-IN). "You'll get an African-American woman walking into an emergency room saying she has chest pains, and they want to give her Pepto-Bismol."       The Rev Jethro James of Newark's Paradise Baptist Church said churches, not just politicians and doctors, must respond to the health care crisis. Churches, he said, cannot turn their back on those needing care, be they AIDS patients or unwed mothers. "If God forgives her," he said, "let's get her some prenatal care."       Source:  Newark Star-Ledger

Colombian Humanitarians Jailed As Terrorists

Colombian church workers and others who are working to uphold the basic human rights of Colombia's uprooted poor are themselves under siege, according to Rev Milton Mejia, Executive Secretary of the Presbyterian Church in Colombia. Mejia met recently in Bogotá with a fact-finding delegation, sponsored by Church World Service and the Washington-based US Office on Colombia.       Hundreds of innocent church and human rights workers are currently jailed under the country's sweeping anti-terrorist statutes, and more are under judicial charges, a representative of a US church-related humanitarian organization told the group. "The majority of the detainees are without legal representation," reports Mejia. "Their families are in terrible circumstances ... fearful because they know that those detained are being accused as terrorists or rebels of the State."       Source:  Church World Service

How to Ditch the Dark Side of Gentrification

Jean S. of New York City wrote, "The word 'gentrification' has such a negative connotation but the processes involved in gentrification -- such as the promotion of home ownership and public-private ventures in housing/mixed-use developments -- have gone a long way to revitalize some of the most blighted communities in cities like New York, where I work. How do you approach a development problem where the community vision is at odds with a more market-based development strategy?"       Diana Williams, executive director of Urban Ecology, replied, "Alas, there is no silver bullet for gentrification. As you point out, parts of gentrification are good (money!) and parts are bad (displacement).       "Strategies we recommend include partnerships with community land trusts, ensuring community members have access to banking services that connect them to the financial mainstream (so they can secure loans and capital), and preserving and expanding the supply of affordable housing and homeownership opportunities. Bottom line: Urban Ecology believes development does not have to price out existing families, merchants, and nonprofits -- especially if anti-displacement efforts begin at the outset of revitalization efforts. The best strategy is to start thinking about this before land values start to really heat up."       Source:  Grist

Southeast Asia 'A Toxic Dumping Ground'

Southeast Asian nations are fast becoming a toxic dumping ground for waste from developed countries, environmental group Greenpeace said Thursday. The warning came after revelations that nearly 12,000 tons of toxic industrial waste were exported to Malaysia illegally by a company in Taiwan, a case which Greenpeace called "the tip of the iceberg".       Huge volumes of toxic trash were finding their way to the Philippines, Thailand, and Cambodia in the guise of recycling materials. The real purpose is to avoid the high cost of disposal in the countries of origin, the environmental group said in a statement issued in Bangkok.       Greenpeace said all ASEAN member states should ratify the Basel Ban Amendment, which needs signatures from 62 countries before it becomes part of the Basel Convention on the control of trans-border hazardous waste movement. This would help to "effectively place a global prohibition on the export of hazardous wastes from member states of the European Union or the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development." A total of 44 have ratified the ban so far. "A regional consensus among ASEAN member states is urgently needed."       Source:  Agence France-Presse

Mentoring Org Accepts Gays, Gets Insurance Trouble

Some chapters of one of the nation's largest mentoring organizations are having trouble getting liability insurance because they allow homosexuals to be mentors for kids. According to Family News in Focus, several chapters of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA) may be forced to shut down because insurance companies are charging higher premiums or even refusing to write policies because of the gay mentors.       In 2002, BBBSA began requiring its chapters to allow open homosexuals to serve as mentors for children participating in its programs. That policy -- especially in light of the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal -- has led to a hesitancy on the part of some insurers to do business as usual with BBBSA.       Joan McPheron, a director for one BBBSA chapter, told Family News, "Of course, bottom line, the homosexual issue does come into play. Because we're working with kids ... we're dealing with possible abuse issues. [Insurers] recommend at least a million dollars to two million dollars coverage."       Risk management specialist Rob Paris said, "When you put a child with a known homosexual as a mentor, that would be [an additional] risk factor that the insurance company would take into consideration." He said some insurance companies will not insure the chapters at any price because of the homosexual factor.       Source:  American Family Association Journal

Israeli Barrier Cuts People Off From Normal Living

From a piece by Uri Avneri, leader of Gush Shalom in Tel Aviv, Israel:       From a hill overlooking the infamous Kalandia checkpoint I watched Palestinians trudging towards the checkpoint, squeezing through a narrow road under the blazing sun. Very soon this road will be transformed. It will widen to three lanes, sprout eight-meter high walls on both sides, and carry Israelis only. It will allow the settlers of the Jordan valley to reach Tel Aviv in about an hour. The Palestinians living on either side will be cut off from each other.       I was standing near the edge of a-Ram, which used to be a small village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, on the road north to Ramallah. Since successive Israeli governments have kept the Palestinians in East Jerusalem from building new homes, the severe overcrowding has forced an exodus to a-Ram, which has swelled in population to 60,000. Most people there are officially still Jerusalem residents, carrying the blue identity cards of inhabitants of Israel. This allows them to drive to Jerusalem in 10 minutes, work there, tend to their businesses, and go to the hospitals and universities.       This is about to stop. Along the age-old road from Jerusalem to Ramallah (leading on to Nablus, Damascus and beyond) construction of the eight-meter wall is due to start any minute now -- not across the road, but along the middle of the road, the full length of it. The inhabitants of a-Ram, east of the wall, will not only be completely cut off from Jerusalem, but also from all the townships and villages to their west -- their relatives, the schools which thousands of their children attend, their cemetery, and their workplaces. A small part of a-Ram remains outside the wall; its residents will be cut off from the main part of their own town.       The wall (or in some places a barrier, consisting of a fence, trenches, and roads) will completely surround a-Ram on all sides, leaving only a narrow exit to the Ramallah enclave. For a person from a-Ram to reach Ramallah, it will take a roundabout trip of some 30 kilometers instead of the ten minutes or so it took before the occupation.       Because of its location, a-Ram developed over the last few years into a kind of transshipment point for goods travelling from Israel to the West Bank and vice versa. In a-Ram, Israelis and Palestinians both do business, a flow of ommerce that the wall will block. For many of a-Ram's 60,000 inhabitants, their means of livelihood will vanish.       This species of hardship is happening now all over the West Bank, which is turning into a crazy quilt of walled-in enclaves. Access from enclave to enclave -- via bridges, tunnels or special roads -- will be subject to cutoff at any moment on the whim of the Israeli government or a local army officer. The enclaves' environs will feature Israeli-only roads, expanding settlements, and military installations.       No people on earth would submit to such a life. Thousands and thousands of young Palestinians will prefer to die as human bombs. Sometime in the future this awful structure will be torn down, like the Berlin Wall, which, evil as it was, was much less inhumane.       Source:  Tikkun

Life-Net News Extras

Abstinence Pledges Shown To Curtail Teen Pregnancies

A new report released by the Heritage Foundation reveals that efforts recommending abstinence to teens can pay off in reducing out-of-wedlock births. The report, based on data gathered by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, found that "[y]oung women who take a virginity pledge are about 40% less likely to have a child out of wedlock when compared to similar young women who do not make such a pledge."       Kirk A. Johnson, senior policy analyst in the Center for Data Analysis, wrote in the Heritage report that the finding "strongly suggests the potential for abstinence education programs to reduce teen pregnancy and out-of-wedlock childbearing."       The benefits of reducing such outcomes of early teen sexual experimentation are more than just theoretical. The report noted that children raised by single parents are "seven times more likely to live in poverty than are children raised in intact homes."       The Heritage Foundation study considered other factors such as the girls' family status, religiosity, income, race, etc, and still determined that "the virginity pledge itself was found to have a strong independent effect in predicting lower levels of out-of-wedlock childbearing."       Source:  American Family Association Journal

'No' to All Housing Means Homelessness

As National Homeownership Month highlights a building boom throughout the country, New Jersey's housing shortage is epidemic. Rents are out of reach, averaging $1,100 a month for two bedrooms. The average sale price of a new home ($373,926) is more than twice what the average working family can afford.       Planning for housing "in the right places" without guaranteeing where that is doesn't answer the question of where we will live. And designating growth-area communities without providing them with an added infusion of state aid for infrastructure and schools doesn't sustain the expected quality of life.       Don't be reluctant to support efforts to provide the variety of housing that people in your community need at various stages of their lives, while at the same time you're supporting preservation and environmental initiatives. Say yes to affordable housing for the moderate-income families in your neighborhood. Say yes to a variety of senior housing. Demand your local leaders embrace planning alternatives, such as cluster zoning and high-density centers that would create homes, jobs and open space at no additional costs to taxpayers.       With regard to housing in New Jersey, we cannot close the door, pull up the drawbridge, and say "no more." We all need a place to call home.       Source:  Builders League of South Jersey

Most material here is adapted, not quoted. Views expressed do not

necessarily represent ours. Life-Net News weekly newspage, Club

LIFENET online, the Web site www.lifenetradio.org, and

broadcast Life-Net Radio (where you can star!) together make

up Mr. Ret Z.'s private charitable enterprise. To get Life-Net e-mail

free, or to unsubscribe, just ask:   lifenetradio@broadcast.net

+ Iesous Khristos Theou Huios Soter +