| LIFE-NET NEWS |
| by Ret Z. |
| Covering Poverty Widely in a Net of Many Voices |
| February 13, 2008 | No Profit; No Proceeds |
| Volume 11 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." |
| A Cancerous Cold War Legacy |
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Struan Stevenson, a member of the European Parliament, wants to bring Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, to the world's attention at a time when few people know about the misfortunes that have occurred at the Soviet nuclear testing site. Over the past seven years, Stevenson has visited the 18,000 square-kilometer Semipalatinsk testing site annually.
The 607 atomic weapons exploded in the vast zone in northeastern Kazakhstan leaked unknown amounts of radiation into the air, soil, and water. People who lived nearby were considered "guinea pigs" by the Soviets, who wanted to know how the weapons would affect humans. An estimated 1.5 million people, including many still residing in the region, have experienced adverse physical and mental health effects -- conditions blamed on radiation leaks. In 1999, on the advice of a friend in the Green Party, Stevenson agreed to take a brief meeting in 1999 with a relatively unknown scientist named Kamila Magzieva. As he learned about the Semipalatinsk situation, he became "both horrified and fascinated" by the legacy of "how the Soviets had treated the local population." The site began operating in 1949. Scientists reportedly would wait until the wind was blowing toward villages before setting off bombs. In 1953, 42 men were selected from the village of Karaul and sent to witness an atomic explosion. Only one of them is alive, and he has stomach cancer. In the 1960s, a top-secret institute known as the Brucellosis Dispensary No 4 was set up to keep records of 20,000 people who had been exposed to radiation. None were provided with medical aid. Although the site was closed in 1991, the rate of birth defects in the surrounding region remains three times higher than the rate throughout Kazakhstan. The incidence of cancer is five times higher. Mental retardation and disorders like Down syndrome are widespread. Anemia is almost universal among children. Radiation in the land and water makes agriculture hazardous. With the economic collapse of the region after the Soviets left, there are few alternatives for income. People continue to fish in lakes and plant in contaminated soil. Poverty, depression, and even suicide are common. The Kazakh government provides some material assistance to victims of radiation poisoning, but the process of getting an official certificate proving victim status is long and bureaucratic. The head of the clinic in Znamenka told Stevenson that he had 70 patients suffering from diseases caused by radiation, but only seven of them are recognized officially. The diseases aren't confined to the testing zone. "The people are moving, and their radiation diseases are moving with them," said Magzieva, now Stevenson's partner in projects devoted to Semipalatinsk. "[Local] problems at the former test site, tomorrow can [become a] worldwide problem." "[We have] a moral obligation to help," said Stevenson, because the victims of Soviet nuclear testing are victims of the Cold War with the West. Source: Transitions Online |
| Where the Cops are Too Far Away |
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Across the remote, frozen reaches of Alaska, scores of native villages have no full-fledged police officers at all. Emergency help can be a long way off.
Two years ago in the Eskimo village of Nunam Iqua, a man choked and raped his 13-year-old stepdaughter in front of three younger children in the four hours it took Alaska state troopers to arrive. The man had already beaten his wife with a shotgun and pistol-whipped a friend after an evening drinking home brew. Many of Alaska's villages, often desperately poor with people subsisting on hunting and fishing, can't afford their own police forces. The state can't provide, either, because it doesn't have the manpower to provide an officer to every village. As a result, when serious crimes are committed, many villages must rely on troopers based in towns far away. It can take days for help to arrive if the weather is bad or troopers have more pressing cases. During the attack in Nunam Iqua, a village of 200 on Alaska's western coast, residents had to call troopers in Bethel, 155 miles away. But the troopers' aircraft was being serviced, so they had to charter another to get to Nunam Iqua. Since then, tribal leaders in the village have hired a single public safety officer. But she has no law enforcement training and is unarmed. Nunam Iqua and many other villages are eligible to tap into the state-financed Village Public Safety Officer program and to hire an officer who receives up to 10 weeks of training from the state troopers and carries pepper spray and a Taser, though no gun. Safety officers function as all-round emergency responders in remote communities, answering calls about family disputes, drownings, suicides, fires, and search-and-rescues, and protecting crime scenes until troopers arrive. Most are natives themselves. But the turnover rate among safety officers has been as high as 40%, because the job is stressful, with low pay and little backup. Many villages cannot attract good applicants because of inadequate housing, low wages, and the high cost of living in Alaska's remote communities. Source: Associated Press |
| Progress Slow for Roma Civil Rights |
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EU officials in mid-January were branded "slow" and "lazy" in addressing discrimination faced by the Roma community. Back in April 2005, the EU's only directly elected
institution, the European Parliament (EP), called for a range of measures to improve the status of Roma. More than two-and-a-half years later, the EU's executive, the European Commission, has still not come forward with the requested action plan for tackling the surrounding issues.
The Roma, estimated to be seven to nine million, are the continent's largest transnational minority. Commonly known as gypsies, they are believed to have migrated to Europe from India since the 14th century. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled in November against a Czech practice of placing Roma in segregated schools. Such schools have been blamed for offering a lower quality of education. A report published by the European Roma Rights Center (ERRC) in Budapest found that anti-Roma discrimination in the labor market is "endemic and blatant" in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Romania. The ERRC said that despite finding evidence that Roma have been systematically denied jobs, governments have not taken any visible steps to ensure that EU anti-discrimination law is respected. Hungary's Viktória Mohácsi, one of two Roma members in the 785-strong EP, argued that discrimination is rampant in 10 EU member states. "It is common practice to characterize Roma children as mentally disabled and to stigmatize them," she said. "The life expectancy of Roma is 15 years below the European average. And Roma are overrepresented among the unemployed in each and every member state." Guillermo Ruiz, a policy officer with the European Roma Information Office in Brussels, observed that enforced segregation is not yet dealt with by EU anti-discrimination law. Vittorio Agnoletto, an Italian left-wing deputy, said there is a "clear wave of racism and stigmatization" in his country. In Milan, he added, children have been denied the right to go to school because their parents do not have papers that the authorities deem necessary to live in Italy. His MEP compatriot Roberta Angelilli cited estimates that 45% of Roma are under 16 years of age. "In some member states, fewer than 60% of Roma go to school," she said. "That means they will have no future other than needing welfare payments or working on the black market." Source: Inter Press Service |
| Homeless Real World Exploits and Assists |
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A dirty, disheveled Keith Peeler had been living on the streets for nearly a year when a crew of twentysomethings with cameras jumped out of a van and headed straight for him. Some of Peeler's homeless buddies wanted to run. But the young people had an offer: $10 a day, plus close to minimum wage, to appear on what they were calling Homeless Real World, an Internet spoof of MTV's reality show.
Peeler and his pals took the deal. Over several weeks, the producers of the show had the cast members compete to build the best cardboard house, sent them grocery shopping in a well-to-do Denver neighborhood (The homeless got dirty looks) and paid for them to golf on a public course (They got kicked off). The idea has angered some homeless advocates, who said the series exploited the homeless people and mocked them cruelly. Yet the story had a happy ending of sorts: Four of the six cast members, including Peeler, have gotten off the streets with help from the producers. After shooting was completed last spring, ManiaTV's filmmakers drove several cast members to detox centers, some more than once, and drove another to job interviews. "It was time to come in from the cold," Peeler, 53, said recently. He and fellow cast member Johnny "Sgt Stutters" Kibodeaux, 51, have been sober for almost nine months and are living at rehab centers, where they are working as kitchen managers. Producer Darwyn Metzger said the filmmakers became attached to the homeless. "Once you make that personal connection with them, you feel you have to go above and beyond," Metzger said. "I think we were all inspired by the fact they were very honest and had good hearts." Source: Associated Press |
| Arab Stars Collaborate to Help Iraqi Refugees |
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A number of Arab entertainers have launched a worldwide fundraising campaign to assist the more than four million Iraqi refugees. The brainchild of Naseer Shamma, a popular Iraqi musician, the three-month campaign kicked off last month under the slogan "Arabs hand in hand with Iraqis".
"Many Arab artists mostly from Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia are taking part in the campaign to raise over $120 million for Iraqi refugees," said Shamma. "Fundraising will be based in Cairo but a group of artists will tour Arab capitals to rally support." In Iraq, the donated funds will be used to build schools and medical facilities for thousands of internally displaced refugees. In neighboring countries, such as Jordan and Syria, where some two million Iraqis have fled, funds will go directly to the governments of the host countries in consultation with the Iraqi government and in coordination with international organizations. A benefit soccer match between Egypt and Iraq -- African and Asian champions in 2007 -- will also be a highlight of the campaign. Shamma added, "Shubair Ahmed Shubair, the former Egyptian renowned goalkeeper, will be responsible for organizing the match." The Arab League, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the WHO, the World Food Program, and the International Committee of the Red Cross have pledged their help. All proceeds and contributions will be deposited in a bank account under the patronage of the Arab League in Cairo. According to organizers, $280,000 was raised on the first day of the campaign with a large number of donations coming from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. The Iraqi government has said it supports the initiative and has pledged to become the greatest contributor to the refugee assistance fund. Iraqi refugee Saad Raheem Abdullah said he hopes the new campaign will deliver on its promises. "I and many Iraqi families are not optimistic to hear about aid or donations as we have lost hope because of the many pledges we always hear from the Iraqi government, the United Nations and the Arabs." Source: Al Jazeera |
| Black Belt Region Seeks National Heritage Status |
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The Black Belt region of Alabama has been a historic center for the state of Alabama and the nation. A grassroots effort is now under way to give the region a brighter future by getting it designated as a National Heritage Area.
The Black Belt, which includes Montgomery, Selma, and parts of 19 counties, is a crescent-shaped swath of dark, prairie soil that bisects central Alabama from Mississippi to Georgia. Nationally the Black Belt region stretches from Virginia to Texas. Originally named for its dark soil, the region has taken on a political and social definition because of its large African American population. Designation as a National Heritage Area -- a congressional decision -- could jump-start tourism in the economically depressed Alabama part of the region, said Tina Naremore Jones, director of the University of West Alabama's Center for the Study of the Black Belt. Designation would make grant money available to help market and develop historical landmarks such as the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where civil rights marchers were beaten and tear-gassed by Alabama state troopers and Dallas County Sheriff's Department deputies on March 7, 1965. The event, known as "Bloody Sunday," brought Dr Martin Luther King to Selma to take part in the historic Selma to Montgomery March. Another landmark, Moundville, was the center of the East Mississippian Indian culture and at one time the largest city in America. In Montgomery, there's the First White House of the Confederacy. The hometown of "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee, Monroeville was the basis for the novel's setting. Poverty is one of the many threads that tie Alabama's Black Belt counties together. US Census Bureau figures updated through 2005 showed 36.6% of the people in Sumter County were living below the national poverty line. In neighboring Hale County, the percentage was 30.4%. Federal relief efforts have been going on since the LBJ administration. If elected officials will put in the necessary work, said Jones, increased tourism would mean more jobs and more opportunity for people to raise their living standards. Source: Montgomery Advertiser |
| Brazil Booming |
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While the US teeters on the edge of a recession, an economic boom and easier credit terms have sent Brazil hurtling into a consumption frenzy as millions of people qualify for loans for the first time. With a stable economy, falling unemployment, booming exports, and low
inflation, banks are seeking a much wider customer base. Well-heeled Brazilians and international corporations are pouring billions of dollars into Latin America's largest
country, which most experts believe is well prepared to weather any global slowdown.
Gross domestic product for Brazil -- also home to the region's biggest economy -- rose an estimated 5% for 2007, and it's expected to grow another 4.5% this year. Underlying the boom is the high global demand for Brazil's vast natural resources: The country is the planet's top exporter of beef, chicken, ethanol, iron ore, sugar, coffee, and orange juice. Brazil comes in a close second to the US for soy exports. And two major offshore finds could turn Brazil into an oil and natural gas exporter and a member of OPEC. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is trumpeting a trickle-down economic impact for the working class as evidence of vast social change. He also expanded a social safety net of food money for the poor, and is promising jobs through a big increase in government-sponsored infrastructure spending. Tax collections have risen markedly in recent years thanks to booming business and beefed up collection efforts in a country notorious for tax evasion. While Brazil adds millionaires at a record pace and the divide between rich and poor remains extreme, working-class Brazilians are acquiring goods that were previously out of reach, said Nuno Camara, a Latin America economist at Dresdner Bank AG. "Once you know you can get there despite your class and your origin, you have hope and you work harder. Before, when you had inflation, you just thought, 'I can't consume, I'll just buy my rice and beans.'" Nearly 46 million people are getting a boost from a program that provides monthly payments for food to poor families that keep their children in school and get them vaccinated. Since families now know they will be able to put food on the table, said UN economist Marcelo Medeiros, they can use their meager earnings for other purchases, turning the program into an informal "microcredit" service. Still, there is no proof that tens of millions of extremely poor Brazilians are benefiting from the boom, he warned. "We have evidence of short-distance mobility -- moving from poor to a little bit over the poverty line -- but you don't move from poor to well-established blue collar." Source: Associated Press |
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| Life-Net News Extras |
| Eighteen Billion Little Feet on the Highway of the Damned |
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Adapted from a piece by author Joe Bageant:
The din of squealing, laughing children is the background white noise of the Third World. In Belize, as in most of the Third World, 45% of all people are under the age of 16. About a dozen of that 45% swarm around me as I cut my toenails under the mango tree. A few are picking on the mangy, quarreling dogs but the majority are drawn in close, giving advise about how to cut gnarly, old man type toenails: "Saw dem off wid a file" seems to be the consensus. What I see are children I help with homework and feed, and admonish about grades unanxious and reasonably happy little members of the human race. They do not look much like a global migration or crushing planetary population pressure. Yet they are among the most incredible wave of both ever in human history. Most families here have five or six kids and their kids will have a similar number. I've yet to meet a native of the village who does not think half a dozen is not a nice round number of offspring. My adopted family has six kids and four adults living on a 100 x 300-foot lot. This does not include the Guatemalan family of five living in a rented cabana at one corner of the lot. Assuming all the children reach adulthood and procreate, the tally in ten years will be about 50 people of all ages trying to exist on this square of sewerage soaked sand. But oh, were it that bright a future. As adults with families, these kids won't even have this spot on which to live at all, much less live as well as they live now. The resorts and condo rackets out of Canada, South Africa and the U.S. are buying up these small plots. Unschooled in western financial concepts and janked by the developers' offers of more money than they have ever seen in their lives, locals sell. Usually they are broke within a year. In any case their semi-literate children will join the next generation's issuance of dispossessed poverty stricken young adults headed for elsewhere. Just what the world does not need, not here in Central America, not in the Middle East, not in Latin America or the U.S. But that's what we've got and that's what we are going to get a lot more of. Population growth is the rhino in the playpen, the root cause of our approaching eco-disaster that that no one honestly talks about. If you care to, go ahead and argue that climate change may or may not destroy us. But uncontrolled population growth is guaranteed to do the job. As an old Idaho rancher told me, "You can't run a hundred head of cattle on half an acre." Most of the developed world remains clueless as to how all this will affect their own lives. But Americans in particular cannot get their head around the impact these billions will have on the lifestyles they are driven like rats in hell to sustain. Meanwhile, both camps of a nation with no sense of history beyond its own state sponsored founding fathers mythology hasn't the slightest notion of how population migrations from areas of scarcity to areas of plenty have shaped human history perhaps more than any other force, including war. Crop production has improved but has not kept up with population, according to the UN's newest report on the planetary condition. World cereal production per person peaked in the 1980s, and has since been decreasing. We have over six billion people now -- there were far less than half that when I was born -- and there will be roughly nine billion people by 2050. It would take a doubling of world food production to feed the current victims of hunger and to feed the additional three billion. And what are the chances of doubling production? We're pretty much out of the phosphate fertilizer that is the foundation of world agriculture. The soil itself is collapsing in terms of human nutrition. And farming has already sucked down the world's water supply to the danger level. Source: Counterpunch |
| Four-Legged Foreclosure Victims |
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Mary Ann D'Amato only has to look as far as the floor of her Minquadale DE home to see an impact of the nation's housing crisis.
"His name is Panda," she said. "He came from a man who lost his home."
Uncounted dogs and cats are being surrendered -- or left to die in empty houses -- as a result of the country's foreclosure crisis, experts say. Shelters nationwide are becoming swamped as families lose their houses and move into apartments and other living arrangements that do not allow animals. "The pets were the first thing I thought of when I started seeing the foreclosure problem on the news," said D'Amato, outreach manager for the nonprofit Kent County SPCA. "We see it regularly with this economy, and we are concerned about it getting worse," said Jane Pierantozzi, executive director of the nonprofit Faithful Friends. The economy also has slowed pet adoptions among families that can't afford the fees and accelerated the public use of low-cost clinics for basics such as rabies shots, said J Kevin Usilton, executive director of the Delaware Humane Association in Wilmington. He said the situation in Delaware, where the economy and housing market have fared better, is not as bad as much of the country, where disturbing reports are increasing of pets being left in empty houses vacated after foreclosures, according to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). "It's the worst thing you can do," said Martin Montorfano of the HSUS. Disturbed by these reports -- along with graphic photographs circulating on the Internet -- leaders of the 10-million member group early this month urged foreclosure victims to be responsible pet owners. Consider the case of a pit bull puppy that was left behind in a cage after foreclosure on a house in Wilton, New Castle County: Found starved to skin and bones, sick and crippled by malnutrition and dehydration, infested with parasites, and surviving by eating his own skin, the puppy still was friendly and licked the hands of rescuers who treated him before veterinarians said he was too far gone. "No one likes to think of leaving their pet at a shelter," said HSUS outreach director Stephanie Shain, "but if you can't take him with you, it is by far more humane than leaving them in an apartment or a house alone." Source: Wilmington News Journal |
| Families Take Government Handouts, Quit Zapatistas |
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Nearly 200 families have abandoned the Zapatista rebel movement in one of its strongholds, turning to the government for aid at a time when the insurgents are complaining about the loss of outside support. On February 6, each family received initial payments of $43 in a ceremony with Salvador Escobedo, a top official with the federal government's Social Development Department. The government is promising similar payments every two months, as well as a school and medical center. The ceremony in Polho, long a backbone of the Zapatista movement, appeared to be the most prominent desertion from the insurgency since 2004, when about 400 families in the unofficial rebel capital of La Realidad broke away to accept government help, dividing the village in two.
The rebels have forbidden any aid from state or federal officials that they regard as illegitimate. Instead, they have created a series of self-declared autonomous communities such as Polho with their own schools, clinics, and aid networks. Community leader Javier Luna said the families decided to abandon the insurgents because they needed a government school, access to better medical care, and other essentials. They apparently will continue to live in the village of several thousand people, where rebels and non-rebels will go to different schools and clinics -- a pattern in several other towns. The Zapatista rebels staged an armed uprising in 1994 in the southern state of Chiapas and built an international following. After initially battling the Zapatistas, the government turned to offers of negotiations and aid, which have gradually eroded rebel support in many communities. In December, Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos said he was withdrawing to the shadows, ending nearly two years of public appearances aimed at bolstering a grass-roots leftist movement across Mexico. In making the announcement, he complained that the once widespread national and international support for the Zapatistas has been "insignificant or null" recently. Source: Associated Press |
| Bipartisan Proposal Would Protect Money Meant to Help NJ Workers |
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New Jersey voters may get the chance to permanently protect money collected by the state to help injured and unemployed workers. Under a bill proposed by Democratic and Republican Senate leaders, the Legislature and governors would be barred from raiding unemployment, disability and other employee-related funds to help close deficits in the annual state budget.
Governors and lawmakers from both parties have, for instance, used $4.67 billion from the fund meant to pay unemployment benefits to out-of-work New Jerseyans, cutting it so low that at one point a tax increase loomed for NJ employers. The money was taken from the Unemployment Insurance fund between 1993 and 2006 to help hospitals pay for treating the uninsured. Senate Majority Leader Stephen Sweeney and Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr want to ask voters to put a stop to such maneuvers. "We're saying that funds set up for unemployment, disability and other employee issues should be used just for those purposes and that their protection should be backed up by the state constitution," said Sweeney (D-Gloucester). The proposal would ask voters in November to amend the constitution to require any state funds generated by assessments on wages only be used for the reason for which they were created, such as unemployment, disability, or workers' compensation. "Our goal is to enable the people of New Jersey to get involved in restoring our state's fiscal credibility," said Kean (R-Union). "If workers and business owners are contributing their money for a specific purpose, the state should keep its hands off those funds." "Over the last 20 years, literally billions of dollars have been raided from these funds by both Democrats and Republicans to either balance the state budget or pay for whatever emergency of the moment arose," said Sweeney. "This will empower voters to ensure the integrity of these funds." If approved by voters, the measure would take effect on Jan 1, 2009. As a proposed constitutional amendment, the bill needs approval from three-fifths of both the Assembly and the Senate. Source: Associated Press |
| Malaria Vaccine Enters Second Stage |
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A malaria vaccine has performed well in a small clinical trial of adults in Mali, leading to testing being expanded to children. The results of the adult trial -- carried out by Mahamadou Thera and colleagues from the Malaria Research and Training Center of the University of Bamako in Mali, and US universities -- were published on Jan 23 in PLoS One.
Sixty Malian volunteers between the ages of 18 and 55 from Bandiagara, a rural town in northeast Mali where malaria is common, were injected with either a full or half dose of the malaria vaccine or a control rabies vaccine, to distinguish between natural, background immunity and that which is induced by the vaccine. The participants were injected three times over three months, beginning at the end of the malaria transmission season. At the end of the following malaria season, participants receiving the vaccine had up to six times the amount of antibodies to Plasmodium falciparum (the malaria parasite) as they had at the beginning of the study. The vaccine, "FMP2.1/AS02A", is based on a protein of P. falciparum and two immuno-stimulants, including a compound from the soap bark tree, long used in traditional medicines in Latin America. Researchers are now conducting phase I and II clinical trials in the same region, this time among 400 children aged between one and six in the Dogon country outside Bandiagara. Children younger than ten suffer on average two clinical malaria episodes every rainy season, while severe malaria afflicts 1 in 50 children under six years old in the region every year. Sheick Oumar Coulibaly, a malaria researcher at the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, praises the research, but warns that it will be a long time before a vaccine finishes all safety and effectiveness tests, gains regulatory approval, and production is scaled up to become commercially available. "The discovery of an efficient vaccine against malaria will certainly not be made at once, since the parasite is very complex. But with the results of this trial, a new path has been found towards the discovery of an efficient anti-malaria vaccine." Source: Science and Development Network |
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