| LIFE-NET NEWS |
| by Ret Z. |
| Covering Poverty Widely in a Net of Many Voices |
| 2005 October 19 | No Profit; No Proceeds |
| Volume 9 Number 13 | All-Volunteer |
| "Give a family a fish, and they'll eat a meal; give them a Net, and they'll have fish for Life." |
| How Not to Roll Back Malaria |
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Seven years ago, with much fanfare, international health and development agencies unveiled the Roll Back Malaria campaign, which was supposed to cut malaria deaths in half by 2010. Progress has been worse than sluggish: There are indications that more people suffer from malaria now than when the campaign started.
Malaria, a mosquito-borne disease, kills more than one million people a year, mostly children. It sickens hundreds of millions more and imposes $12 billion a year in economic costs on sub-Saharan Africa. After failed attempts to eradicate malaria, the emphasis today is on control, by spraying insecticides on interior walls, covering sleeping children with insecticide-treated mosquito nets, and using curative drugs. These simple tactics work well, but they are not being put into action at anything near the promised rate. Five years ago African leaders resolved that by the end of 2005, at least 60% of the vulnerable populations would have insecticide-treated mosquito nets and appropriate medicines. The targets for nets have been reached only in a few areas. Otherwise, distribution is lagging, and many of those who get the nets have not been taught to use them regularly. Most shocking has been a reluctance to use the right drugs. For decades malaria fighters relied on chloroquine, a pill so cheap it is often popped like aspirin at the first sign of high fever. Unfortunately chloroquine and another standard drug have lost their effectiveness in many parts of Africa. The best treatments are drug combinations whose core ingredient, artemisinin, a plant extract long used in Chinese herbal medicine, is buttressed by an additional medication. Such combination treatments work in the vast majority of cases and have yet to encounter resistance. But because they cost 10 to 20 times as much as the standard drugs, international agencies have been slow to change. Last year, an article in The Lancet, a British medical journal, accused the World Health Organization and Roll Back Malaria of medical malpractice for providing ineffective drugs to malaria victims. Only then did the effort to provide the new, effective drugs quicken. Some 33 African countries have now officially adopted combination therapy, but only 11 have begun to roll out the drugs. Only a few have done so nationally. While start-up financing is available, many African leaders are reluctant to commit to higher-cost drugs with no assurance of adequate funding to keep buying them indefinitely. International donors have a history of greater generosity with pledges than with money. Even if the money comes, it won't do its best without improvements in administration. The Roll Back Malaria campaign, launched by the World Health Organization and other UN agencies, has grown into an unwieldy partnership that includes nonprofits, corporations, malaria-stricken countries, and donor nations, including the US. Medical journal writers have lambasted the campaign for failing to move more aggressively, but no one seems accountable. Many African governments have not met their own promises for increasing health expenditures. Analysts have complained that the US Agency for International Development spends most of its money on consultants and technical help, not on needed materials. The core UN agencies that started Roll Back Malaria can be pushed for faster results. Kofi Annan should name a malaria czar to apportion tasks and take the heat if goals are not met. Source: Associated Press |
| States Prepare to Help More Heat-Needy Households |
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With fuel bills expected to rise sharply this winter, states are setting aside extra money for the poor. They're dispensing energy-conservation tips. They're pleading for federal aid to help Americans keep the heat on when the
weather turns cold.
Wisconsin has more than doubled funding to $16 million for a program that weatherproofs homes and businesses and helps the poor pay their bills. Ohio Governor Bob Taft ordered $75 million added to the state's $100 million heating aid program, and the income limits will be raised so that more families can receive money to pay for their heat. Iowa officials set up a Web site to give people advice on how to save energy and get aid, but they acknowledged that may not be enough. People "can only turn the thermostat so low before it affects your health and well-being," said Jerry McKim, chief of Iowa's Bureau of Energy Assistance, which helps poor families pay their utility bills. "This is a life-or-death matter. I have serious anxiety about what folks will face this winter." Last week the Energy Department predicted winter heating bills will range a third to a half higher than last year for most families across the country -- an average of $350 more for natural gas users and $378 more for fuel oil users. The rising prices are blamed largely on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which damaged oil and natural gas installations and disrupted production. More than half of all US households heat with natural gas. Nearly a third of the country relies on electric heat, but those residents may see their bills go up too, because many power plants run on natural gas. This winter could see many more applicants for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program with not enough money to go around. Congress provided $2.2 billion for the program last year, but this year President Bush proposed cutting it to about $2 billion. Source: Associated Press |
| Climate Food Crisis 'To Deepen' |
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Climate change threatens to put far more people at risk of hunger over the next 50 years than previously thought, according to new research. Scientists say expected shifts in rain patterns and temperatures over that time could lead to an extra 50 million people struggling to get enough food. The situation could worsen more if the important cereal crops do not show the improved yields many expect.
US and UK teams reported this assessment at a conference in Dublin. "We expect climate change to aggravate current problems," Professor Martin Parry told the British Association's Festival of Science. "If we accept that broadly 500 million people are at risk today, we expect that to increase by about 10% by the middle part of this century." He said sharp reductions in the emissions of the greenhouse gases thought responsible for global warming could counteract the damaging effects expected on agriculture -- but this would not be achieved under the current climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol. "Climate change as you know has an inertia," he said, "so even if we were to chop emissions off at the knees now we've got 40 or 50 years of warming and drying to go." Parry said this underlined the need for world governments to meet their development goals and lift people out of poverty. Giving them a higher standard of living would enable them to better adapt to the changes, he added. New research from the University of Illinois in the US suggests an even worse scenario. Scientists there have been growing crops in the field and exposing them to elevated levels of carbon dioxide via a system of pipes and valves controlled by computer. Previous greenhouse studies had suggested that higher levels of CO2 -- which plants take out of the atmosphere to make food for themselves -- would actually help boost yields in some places in the coming years. Some assessments have indicated this may actually offset losses projected to come from changes in precipitation and rising temperatures elsewhere on the planet. But the Illinois work points to a more pessimistic outcome, the university's Professor Steve Long told the meeting: "The alarming result is that the yield increase we see due to raised carbon dioxide is only about half that predicted, and in the case of maize -- and last year there was more maize than any other crop in terms of tons globally -- we see no increase at all." These Free Air Concentration Enrichment experiments are among the first that try to replicate real field conditions. They were run on a range of crops such as rice, wheat, maize and soya and showed the hoped-for gains in a CO2-rich world to be unachievable in all of them. Parry commented that if the Illinois work was correct then crop losses across Africa currently projected to be 2.5-5% over the next 50 years could actually be as high as 10%. Source: BBC |
| 'Millions More' Rally Addresses Broad Range of Issues |
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Thousands of African-Americans thronged the Mall in Washington on Saturday and demanded action to overcome poverty, injustice, joblessness, and the effects of substandard schools in black communities. They call it the
Millions More Movement.
Speakers, led by Minister Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, embraced an agenda of self-help, celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March on Washington, demanded reparations for the descendants of black slaves, and floated the idea of a new political party to put more power into the hands of blacks and other minority groups. Farrakhan urged the crowd to mobilize support for progressive social policies. "The government will never do for the poor of this nation until and unless we organize effectively to make government respond to the needs of the poor," said Farrakhan in an 80-minute speech delivered from the west front of the Capitol. "We must go back home and organize as never before." Farrakhan said the delayed relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina showed that poor people and blacks could not depend on the federal government. "For five days," he said, "the government did not act. Lives were lost. We charge America with criminal neglect." Farrakhan's criticism of America and its leaders went much deeper. "We want more than an apology for slavery," he said. "We want more than a monument. We want America to acknowledge her wickedness to the indigenous people of this hemisphere; acknowledge the wickedness of slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade; acknowledge what you did in robbing our fathers of their names, their language, their culture, their religion." Farrakhan denounced the domestic, economic and foreign policies of the Bush administration. "We need regime change in the United States," he said. He accused President Bush of lying to the American people and "raping the Treasury" to pay for the war in Iraq, and he said the president had been deluded by "the neoconservative idea of an imperialist America." He caustically criticized Democrats as well. "We need to think about a new political party," he said. "The Democrats have used us and abused us. They look at the black and the brown and the poor like this is a plantation, and our Democratic leaders are like the house Negro". In his wide-ranging speech, he combined fundraising appeals with overtures to Africa, denunciations of pharmaceutical companies, criticism of the nation's schools, and a harsh evaluation of wealthy whites, who he said were trying to preserve their privileged position in American society. Other speakers included civil rights leaders, Hispanics, poor people, politicians, clergymen, professors, hip-hop musicians, and American Indians. Source: New York Times |
| Airlift to Supply Basic Needs of Gaza Evictees |
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Instant poverty has gripped not only victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Pakistan earthquake but also people evicted from Gaza. A Los Angeles campaign to airlift clothes and needed items for expulsion victims has taken off into a world-wide relief effort stretching from Canada to Australia.
Dr Daryl Temkin, a 52-year-old psychologist and Jewish leader involved with teaching people about Israel, said he learned a few hours after the Rosh Hashanah holiday that the airlift was feasible. The Israel Homeless Association told him that it could get a charity rate from El Al and British Airways for clothes, toys, computers, school supplies and other items. "The excitement over this has been mainly because this is a unique opportunity for Jews to be helpful for their fellow Israeli Jews," said Temkin. "I received 400 e-mails within a few days. One man called and said he has multiple truckloads of aid for Katrina victims which were unable to be accepted. "One manufacturer is donating 200 pairs of jeans and others contributed supplies of children's clothing and hundreds of shoes," he added. Another manufacturer is sending an "extraordinary number" of winter coats. Many of the expulsion victims lived in Gush Katif for up to 30 years and are not equipped for cold and wet weather. They have tried to stay in the southern area, but the government has forced many of them into temporary hotels and makeshift guest houses in Jerusalem and in the north, where heavy rains and occasional snow fall as early as November. Compounding the former residents' dilemma is the location and condition of thousands of containers the government provided to store their personal property. Evictees later discovered that they have to pay for the containers, which often are almost impossible to find, hundreds of them all looking alike on a huge and open storage lot. Temperatures inside the containers have reached 190 degrees, and many possessions have been ruined or stolen. Hundreds of families have been living for weeks in cramped hotel rooms without normal family recreational and cultural facilities. Temkin said he hoped the Los Angeles airlift will be in on its way to Israel by the end of this month. He is helping others to organize airlifts in other cities and is looking for people to help store donations in cities that are served by El Al and British Airways. "The airlift will be met when it lands in Tel Aviv and the cargo will be organized and distributed to the proper people within hours," he said. "These solutions were made possible thanks to the Israel Homeless Association which will be handling this airlift. It is now up to us to make [it] an historic success." Source: Israel National News |
| Prisoners Have Right to Vote -- But Not in the US |
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The US has the worst record in the democratic world when it comes to stripping convicted felons of the right to vote. Of the nearly five million people who were barred from participating in the last presidential election, for example, most if not all would have been free to vote if they had been citizens of any one of dozens of other nations. Many of those nations cherish the franchise so deeply that they let inmates vote from their prison cells.
Courts outside this country are actually expanding the rights of prison inmates to cast ballots, on the theory that the right to vote is a basic human right that should be abridged only after careful deliberation and under the rarest circumstances. That message was underscored early this month in a strong ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which has jurisdiction in the nations that are parties to the European Convention, a rights charter drafted more than a half-century ago. The European court overturned a British law that banned all convicted prison inmates from voting. The British law, however, is far less onerous than laws in the US, which imprisons people at five times the rate of Britain and disenfranchises millions, many of them permanently. The European court recognized that nations have the right to limit voting in some cases, but it condemned blanket prohibitions as unacceptable. This ruling includes a clear warning to the dozen other European Convention countries that prohibit voting for convicted prisoners or have no provisions for allowing inmates to participate in elections. Laws that deny citizens access to the polls should be employed only after painstaking deliberation -- if at all -- and never in a fashion that bars an entire class of people from the polls. This issue deserves a full hearing in the US. The "land of the free" shows less regard for the rights of prisoners and ex-offenders than just about any of its peers. Source: New York Times |
| # LNN # Small # Hauls # |
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| Life-Net News Extras |
| Federal Budget 2006 'Morally Bankrupt' |
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Adapted from an action alert by Call to Renewal:
Budgets are moral documents. So far the federal budget currently under consideration is morally bankrupt. Many in Congress claim that Hurricane Katrina has driven congressional spending and budgets out of control, and that sweeping cuts to vital social services are justified because of these increases. This claim couldn't be further from the truth. Fiction: Government spending is dangerously high. Fact: Even with new Katrina funds, federal spending as a percentage of the economy is below the 30-year average. Arguments like these are driven by an ideological determination to shrink government, not reality. Fiction: Deficits are spinning out of control because of reckless spending and new Katrina relief. Fact: The root of the problem of skyrocketing deficits is new tax cuts for the very wealthy, not new spending. For the past three years, tax revenues as a percentage of the economy are at a 30-year low. Nevertheless, many in Congress will stop at nothing to enact new tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. Between now and 2010, the cost of the Bush tax cuts (if extended) will total $1.7 trillion. Katrina relief -- even when you amount interest costs, is projected at $240 billion -- less than 15% of what the tax cuts will cost. And yet there is momentum behind a plan this year to add an additional $70 billion in new tax cuts -- mostly for the very wealthy. Simply put, this plan is out of touch with our values. Call Congress now. Tell them to get their priorities straight! Dial 800-426-8073, a toll-free service of the American Friends Service Committee. Ask to speak to one of the senators from your state. When the senator's phone is answered, say politely something like, "My name is _____, and I live in [your town/city]. As a person of faith, I would like Senator [name] to oppose budget cuts to Medicaid, Food Stamps, and other vital services, and to oppose more tax cuts for the very rich. Needs of poor families should be a moral priority at this time, not tax cuts for the wealthy." After you're done, please call your other senator, followed by your representative. "Speak up for those who cannot speak." (Proverbs 31:8) |
| A Dynamic Dozen 'Do's for the Household Environmentalist |
Umbra Fisk compared and contrasted a pile of top-ten lists on protect-the-environment lifestyle changes that work:
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