| LIFE-NET NEWS |
| by Ret Z. |
| Covering Poverty Widely in a Net of Many Voices |
| 2004 December 15 | No Profit; No Proceeds |
| Volume 8 Number 20 | All-Volunteer |
| "Give a family a fish, and they'll eat a meal; give them a Net, and they'll have fish for Life." |
| Millions of Textile Workers May Soon Be Displaced |
|
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is to end its Multi-Fibre
Agreement (MFA) at midnight on December 31. Christian Aid
condemned the move, saying almost a million jobs in
Bangladesh alone would be axed.
Supporters of the change claim it will mean increased efficiency and lower costs for Western consumers. They also argue the move will lead to more jobs in India and China. The WTO said that many developing countries support the end of quotas and stressed that funding was available to countries such as Bangladesh to help them make the transition to a fully liberalized market. "Some countries will do better than others but there is no one who is suggesting that no developing country will do well out of this. Some countries where it may appear that orders will dry up have seen orders surging, and there are many companies who will continue with existing trading relationships." The MFA was established in the 1970s to give some protection to the textile industries of industrialized countries facing competition from countries with lower manufacturing costs. Quotas were set up when a surge of imports threatened to cause serious damage to a country's indigenous producers. Since 1995, the WTO has been gradually phasing out quotas to bring trade agreements governing textiles into line with global free trade regulations. Many countries originally supported the WTO policy but are now fearful that China, which joined the WTO in 2001, will overwhelm the market. China now accounts for about 17% of global textile sales; some experts believe this could rise to 50%. Christian Aid in a new report has warned: Millions of jobs will be lost. Many sacked garment workers will end up in far worse jobs. Some of the mainly female workers will be pushed into the sex trade. While the current MFA was not perfect, Christian Aid said, it did allow Third World countries like Bangladesh to get onto the first rung of industrial development. "The losers in this new trade landscape will be some of the most vulnerable workers in countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Nepal," said Andrew Pendleton, Christian Aid's head of trade policy. "We are deeply concerned that the New Year will spell misery for huge numbers of garment workers." Source: BBC |
| Camdenites Join Suburbanites to Preserve Island |
|
Community leaders in Camden have joined environmentalists in
their fight against development of Petty's Island in
Pennsauken. During a news conference yesterday at Camden's
Pyne Poynt Park, directly across from the densely wooded
southern end of the 392-acre island, the activists announced
they will file an application this week to have the island
listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Pennsauken officials have been pushing for a billion-dollar revitalization project on the island. The proposed project includes homes, a hotel, and a golf course. Members of the African American Commission and the South Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance said historic documents show that after the Native Americans who lived there sold the island to European settlers, slavers used it as a trading post. The activists, holding copies of signs that advertised such auctions, said traders avoided paying taxes by selling their slaves at Petty's Island instead of Philadelphia. "This is the first we've heard of any historic significance to Petty's Island," Pennsauken Mayor Rick Taylor said. "I'd like to see that documented." "Any site worthy of designation will be identified during the NJDEP's well-established redevelopment and permitting process," said Richard Ochab, spokesman for developer Cherokee Pennsauken. Sharon Finlayson, chairwoman of the New Jersey Environmental Federation, said environmentalists have collected more than 3,000 signatures in a petition to preserve the island. The island's owner, CITGO Petroleum Corp., offered to donate Petty's Island to the state as a nature preserve to protect a pair of nesting bald eagles and other wildlife. But the state's Natural Lands Trust effectively rejected the offer on Sept. 30. Camden resident-activists Manaliso Davis and Roy Jones said houses built at Petty's Island would sell for more than $250,000, creating an upscale community within a stone's throw of one of the nation's most impoverished cities. "This would be basically a gated community," Jones said. "The working-class people of Camden and the working-class people of Pennsauken will not be able to afford to live on this island. These communities are largely Hispanic and black, so effectively, they're excluding people of color." But Taylor said developers also want to include housing there for senior citizens, low-income residents, and first- time home buyers. "A lot of things must be done before we come up with a final plan, but we truly believe this will be good for the people of Pennsauken and the area." Source: Courier-Post (Camden) |
| US Throws Few Dollars and Less Sense at AIDS |
|
Adapted from a piece by the Denver Group of RESULTS:
In his 2003 State of the Union speech, President Bush said to broad acclaim that he would ask Congress to commit $15 billion, including $10 billion in new money, over five years to fight AIDS in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. The administration should recommit to fulfilling the president's pledge and cooperate with an effective international effort called the Global Fund. After making his commitment, Bush immediately sought a modest $1.9 billion, much of it existing funds shuffled from one budget line to another. In 2004, Congress ponied up about $2 billion, still $1 billion short of the goal. The president's request for 2005 also fell hundreds of millions of dollars short. Uncle Sam has ignored opportunities to get more bang for its bucks by coordinating with the Global Fund [GF]. Under a UN mandate, the GF is a non-profit that works with grassroots organizations in poor countries afflicted by AIDS and by malaria and tuberculosis, two other epidemics that take deadly advantage of HIV infections. The GF, which reaches 128 countries, requires countries to develop comprehensive plans to combat AIDS/HIV, including prevention and treatment. Recently the GF announced its fifth round of grants, totalling $2.7 billion. By contrast, the US often spends haphazardly, reaching only 15 countries directly. US AIDS funding isn't tied to infection rates or to meeting a recipient country's needs. To qualify for US funding, target nations must open their economies to international trade and take other AIDS- irrelevant actions. Moreover, US money often goes to the ruling elites in impoverished countries without any way to track whether the funds actually go to HIV/AIDS prevention or treatment. US policy requires use of expensive, brand-name, American-made drugs and obstructs poor countries' buying of money-saving generics. Three years after Bush made his pledge, the US program has helped fewer than 100,000 of the world's 42 million infected. While US officials say they cooperate with the GF, the outreach has been tepid: Of $2.8 billion in AIDS money Bush sought for 2005, only $400 million was slated for the GF. Yet when the administration cites the number of countries it has helped, it includes figures that reflect the GF's success. Two decades after the virus was identified, it's high time for US policies to reflect the truly alarming threat of the AIDS pandemic. Source: Denver Post |
| Salvation Army May Have Lost Target to Gay Pressure |
|
The official reason given by Target for banning Salvation
Army bell-ringers from in front of its stores has to do with
its policy prohibiting all nonprofit soliciting at Target
locations. Bob Knight of the Culture and Family Institute,
however, is suspicious of the company's explanation.
While it is true that Target has maintained a long-standing policy against soliciting in front of its stores, the company has, until this year, consistently made an exception for The Salvation Army. Knight questions the sudden policy change and says although Target officials claim they just want to make their "no solicitation" policy uniform, his sources indicate there may be more to the story. "We happen to know," the CFI spokesman explains, "that the Target Corporation has been under enormous pressure from homosexual activists to dump The Salvation Army because [it] won't give domestic-partner benefits [to its employees]." In fact, Knight says, homosexual activists have been after The Salvation Army for a long time, and some groups have reportedly stooped to some fairly lowdown tactics. "One homosexual activist group in Michigan, for example, has been distributing counterfeit one-dollar bills and five-dollar bills to be placed in Salvation Army kettles, accusing them of bigotry and prejudice." Also, Rick Garcia, director of the homosexual lobby group Equality Illinois, admitted recently on WYLL's The Walsh Forum radio program that homosexual activists have pressured Target to stop supporting The Salvation Army. Garcia also admitted, in a letter he wrote opposing the Illinois Family Institute's call to boycott Target, that he has long protested and even demonstrated against The Salvation Army. Pete LaBarbera of the Illinois Family Institute (IFI) says homosexual activists like Garcia "talk a good game" about showing tolerance toward religious groups and other opponents of homosexuality. Ultimately, however, he asserts that such "homosexual humbugs" purposely demonize people of faith and pro-family organizations as bigots, haters, homophobes, and hypocrites -- or, as in Garcia's letter criticizing IFI, "charlatans." Report: AgapePress |
| Islamic Economics May Lead to New Bloc |
|
Amid concerns about the Islamist threat, a quieter
revolution is going on in Islam which could ultimately lead
to a new economic bloc in the world. Since the 1970s, an
economic theory has been taking hold in a number of Muslim
countries, backed by a growing Islamic financial system.
Historically, like Judaism and Christianity, Islam forbade usury and advocated "economic" laws. In the Qur'an, to economics there are scant references, which could be used to defend any number of economic policies but have been seen as prescriptive enough to merit a complete Islamic economic theory. Simply stated, the theory rejects both the market economy and socialism, offering a system based on an Islamic worldview. Muslim economists argue that capitalism fails because it reflects a lack of contentment, illustrated by our single-minded pursuit of wealth, rampant consumerism, and preoccupation with sensual pleasure. They say socialism fails because it lacks harmony between its goals and its worldview, which is rooted in post-Enlightenment secular philosophy. The solution propagated is a reallocation of resources and redistribution of wealth, fulfilling a Muslim's moral obligation to be a worthy example. Such Islamization of the economy aspires to spiritual as well as material well-being, thus establishing socioeconomic justice. This means an economy ordered by a divine mandate giving humanity stewardship of the earth's resources, refined through a "moral filter" before being made subject to the discipline of the market. However distant the prospect at present, this is a radical alternative economic system which has found a home in Islam, prescribing a holistic organization of society as an economic system. It is potentially a powerful vision, just as Communism and socialism were. As in socialism, however, Islamic economists fail to establish how the injustices in the existing world order are avoided in their system, or how their redistribution of wealth would be fairer. The theological problem is that Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, takes issue with how we live our lives responsibly in the modern economic world. The latter two religions have long since accepted that one cannot take prescriptively an economic theory from sacred texts, and Islam ought to follow suit. Source: Washington Times |
| How Human Beings Dysfunctional Are Made |
|
Without denying the likelihood that a few children are born
genetically or constitutionally vulnerable, many of us are
quite convinced that most of our human misery and mental
illness are due to the very many, very strange things we do
to the young
beginning with a smoke/drink/drug-filled womb and going on from there to the hi-tech delivery room, hospital nurseries, separate bedrooms, painful (albeit brief) separations, excessive clothing, too little skin contact, pacifiers, inept timing, inadequate parental responses, cribs, playpens, bottles, strollers, walkers, fast food, baby-sitters, day-care centers, dysfunctional families, abuse plus too little exercise, free play, music, poetry, being read-to aloud, and working alongside adults along with demands, pressure, criticism, corporal punishment, questioning, unwanted piano lessons, threats of terror, obscure religions, exhortations, delusions, poverty, racism, poor health care, TV sets, computers, Game Boys and Playstations plus an obsession with success and "preparing" them for a scary future combined with doctors who may give pills instead of dealing with the problems in an over-lawyered, litigious society that has lost its moorings and accumulated an $8 trillion debt headed up by leaders who seem unable to speak the truth in a world filled with guns and violent images (200,000 acts of violence on TV before age 18) environmental decay, dangerous chemicals, overpopulation, unemployment, and the possibility of nuclear or biological warfare which can frighten our kids while the biggest problem of all is compulsory schooling with its coercion, passivity, obedience, fear, quzzing, testing, rapid forgetting, lost curiosity, undermined creativity, diminished self-esteem, boredom, confusion, propagandizing, homework, nagging, humiliation, report cards, judgments, invidious comparisons, labelling, failure, peer groups, cliques, threats, put-downs and the rage that results from all of this, most of which can, however, ultimately be "blamed" on Mother Nature and our overgrown frontal lobes. True enough. Strangely, though, most children in The Credential Society (where at least 80% of us are, to some degree, emotionally tetched) still want to grow up. They can be trusted to do so if the conditions are decent. Source: Robert E Kay, MD (e-mail) |
| # LNN # Small # Hauls # |
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| Life-Net News Extras |
| Residents Condemn Bergen Square Plan |
|
More than 400 people packed a gymnasium at US Wiggins Elementary School carrying signs and offering catcalls on November 30 to show their opposition to the Bergen Square redevelopment plan before the planning board. The meeting was nearly canceled because of a lack of quorum, and planning board members did not hear a proposal for redevelopment plans for Cooper Plaza and Lanning Square as scheduled. The board also did not vote that night on the Bergen Square plan because not enough people had seen a copy of the proposal, said Rodney Sadler, planning board chairman.
Residents, including those from Lanning and Cooper Plaza who chose to stay for the meeting, accused planning board members of working against the interests of citizens. "This plan is not about taking people's houses. All the redevelopment plans (of the city) are about changing the quality of life," Sadler said. "Do you like drug dealers?" Residents, as with previous redevelopment plans in other neighborhoods, again expressed concerns about relocation. Olga Pomar, an attorney with the nonprofit South Jersey Legal Services Inc., told board members residents were unable to obtain copies of a plan that detail the neighborhood's redevelopment before the meeting. "This is the public's opportunity to hear the plan presented to them," she told board members. "You have not provided that opportunity because you have not allowed them to see the plan." Pomar said the city could fix the neighborhood and accomplish its goals without resorting to eminent domain. She said the neighborhood could be designated as an area in need of rehabilitation instead of redevelopment. A redevelopment zone gives the city the power of eminent domain and to relocate residents. The $1.3 billion redevelopment plan is the third billion-dollar plan the city has proposed this year. The plan would cover the area bound by Pine Street, 3rd Street, Interstate 676 and Atlantic Avenue. Source: Courier-Post (Camden) |
| Firefighter's Dying Wish Comes True |
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The neatly stacked mountain of food sitting in the bay of the Mount Laurel Emergency Medical Services building today represented the generosity of the township's career firefighters and emergency service technicians. It was also a tribute to the legacy of Charlie Kritz, Jr, a township firefighter who died in 1998 after a brave battle against cancer.
The younger Kritz was known for his work preparing holiday meals in his own kitchen for needy families. After the 37-year-old's death, his parents, Charlie and Marie Kritz, decided to carry on his tradition of providing for the needy through Charlie's Kitchen. Charlie's Kitchen is now an annual food and toy drive supported by Mount Laurel's fire, police and EMS departments and municipal employees from other departments. All donations are given to Catholic Charities in Delanco, a nondenominational social-service provider, for distribution at Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year, International Association of Firefighters Local No. 4408, which is made up of the full-time career staff firefighters, fire officers and EMTs from Mount Laurel, raised more than $1,000 to help stock Charlie's Kitchen. This morning, members of the local shopped for everything from cereal to soups, vegetables and pasta. "This is something we have always been involved in and it's a way for us to give back to the community," local president Tom Cimino Jr said. "These guys are all about doing for others. I'm very proud of them, they raised an impressive amount of money." The Burlington County Professional Firefighters Association, IAFF Local 3091, also contributed to Charlie's Kitchen. Charlie Kritz Sr., a 35-year member of the fire and EMS departments, said he was overwhelmed by the large donation. "It's been a banner year," he said. "We're so grateful. "We do this in memory of our son. It was one of his last wishes when he knew the end was near. But we couldn't do it without the help of everyone. We just planted the seed and these guys just ran with it." Source: Burlington County Times |
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