FYI:
News to
be up in arms about
Three cheers for the Million Moms
March!
Katha
Pollitt doesn't like "maternalism" but the
headline on her column in the June 12th issue of
Nation has it exactly right: "Moms to NRA: Grow
up!"
The
march demonstrates that where there's passion --
and an outlet for its expression -- there's
action. We congratulate them all, especially
Donna Dees-Thomases who organized it. And if she
has friends in high places (Hilary Clinton's
close friend is Donna's sister-in-law) that does
not diminish her achievement; we need all the
help we can get, and why are feminists working
so hard to get women into office if not to
overpower old boys' networks like the gun
lobby?
We ought
to be able to summon that same passion to
support issues that seem more abstract to those
of us comfortably ensconced in relatively
prosperous American households. How about a
million moms for bomb control? A million moms
against rape? A million moms (and their sisters)
to protect the glorious resources of the natural
world?
Let's
hope this march is only the beginning. We need
to take back the streets, and be
heard.
BIOPIRACY
WARS
Victory
for Vandana Shiva: India wins patent war over
neem
May 12,
2000
Vandana
Shiva has devoted her life to fighting for
India's indigenous people, especially poor women
whose slim resources are being gobbled up to
fill corporate coffers. She's given strong voice
to opposing biopiracy, and now she's won a major
battle in what still promises to be a long
war.
Scientists,
entrepreneurs and environmentalists have
acclaimed the decision by the European Patent
Office (EPO) to revoke the patent granted by it
for a fungicide derived from the seeds of the
neem tree. Neem has been in use in India since
time immemorial. Union Science and Technology
Minister, Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi was vigorously
applauded when he said the patent amounted to
bio-piracy.
Dr.
Vandana Shiva, Director of the Research
Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology,
which was one of the three parties that had
opposed the patent, said the revocation of the
patent had important implications for amendments
in Indian patents laws regarding biopiracy, and
for the TRIPs review.
http://www.the-hindu.com/stories/02120007.htm
Plea
from Arundhati Roy against Narmada dam
Another
great Indian woman, Arundhati Roy, took her
campaign against the building of the Narmada Dam
to the 53rd Cannes Film Festival this year.
Addressing the audience at the Palais du Cinema,
Ms Roy said, "I have just come from a world
where terrible things are happening and the
lives of millions of people are being ruined."
She added that the dam would be an environmental
disaster for the valley, swamping a 150-mile
stretch of some of the most beautiful and
fertile land in India.
According
to The Guardian, Ms Roy brought "a sharp
dose of reality" to the Festival through her
emotional appeal. The report adds that Ms Roy
arrived there from the Narmada valley "where
farmers have been arrested for protesting
against their land being flooded." She found it
"hard to connect" to the media circus at
Cannes.
http://www1.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/120500/detFOR03.htm
Plea to
save girl babies in India
Doctors
in India are calling for international help to
prevent two million abortions they say are
carried out each year because the unborn babies
are female. In some sections of Indian society,
having daughters is less acceptable than having
sons.
Terminating
a pregnancy purely because of the sex of a child
is illegal in India. But many mothers want boys
not girls, and the Indian Medical Association
says the law is almost impossible to
uphold.
From the
BBC online
http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/English/world/south_asia/newsid_736000/736466.stm
Albania
has become a center for trafficking in young
females
Trafficking
in young girls to serve as prostitutes for
wealthy male tourists has become a mainstay of
the economy in Thailand. According to an article
in the Oct-Nov issue of Ms., this
horrible trend was supported by officials of the
World Bank.
The ugly
phenomenon has spread to war-devastated Eastern
Europe. Women from Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria
face beatings, rape and prostitution when they
arrive in Albania. Many of the women dreamed of
a European Eldorado and did not know they were
to be sold into prostitution, but for hundreds
of young women, some of them still adolescent,
the Albanian port of Vlora is an obligatory
transit point on the way to western Europe.
THE
NATION, Pakistan, 14 May 2000 See
http://www.syberwurx.com/nation/
Plutonium
Peril:
New
Scientific Studies reveal unforeseen dangers
from nuclear waste disposal
New
research reported in Science Magazine
finds that plutonium reacts differently than
previously assumed when exposed to air and
water, and becomes very soluble in water.
The fact
that plutonium can, over time, transition to a
chemical form that will rapidly move into the
biosphere calls into question the viability of
burial as a disposal method.
Plutonium
is present in all nuclear waste that originates
from a nuclear reactor. Current U.S. policy for
nuclear waste disposition is burial. For
"low-level" wastes, this is in shallow trenches
near the surface. Congress is currently
considering a plan to bury highly concentrated
radioactive wastes on sacred Shoshone lands at
Yucca Mountain; see the current S. 1287
Amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. The
plan is opposed by the Shoshone tribe and is
under heavy fire from the Nuclear Information
and Resource Service (NIRS). See their website
at http://www.nirs.org
See
Science Magazine (Vol 287 # 5451,14 January
2000), for the report by chemists Haschke,
Allen, & Morales.
Pollution's
new toll: human intelligence
"The
human brain is now at risk from its own
behavior, and nothing else in the ecosystem is
harming itself in the same way." &endash; Dr.
Chris Williams
From a
BBC Science article by environment correspondent
Alex Kirby
Pollution
and other environmental threats are harming the
intelligence of millions of people across the
world, says a United Kingdom review of the
available evidence.
The
causes are poisons such as lead, PCBs
(polychlorinated biphenyls, synthetic compounds
used in electrical equipment), and radiation.
A
further problem is the loss of micro nutrients
like iron and iodine through soil erosion,
impoverishing food crops. According to
scientists, it is hard to know the full extent
of the problem, because of the difficulty of
gathering data.
The
author, Dr. Chris Williams, a social scientist
at the Institute of Education, London
University, said one problem could compound
another, with iron deficiency in children, for
example, able to increase their lead uptake.
"We only
have single-substance science, which does not
account for compounding effects. So the overall
scale of the problem is far greater than
previously estimated."
One of
his most disturbing findings is that
epidemiologists have detected a statistically
significant increase in the birth of children
with Down's Syndrome which is linked to
radiation from the explosion of the Chernobyl
nuclear reactor.
http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/English/sci/tech/newsid%5F722000/722907.stm
Alerts
from The National Organization for Women
(NOW)
NOW is
launching a new interactive political World Wide
Web page that will allow readers to quickly send
messages on these issues to their Members of
Congress. http://www.capweb.net/now/ Some NOW
alerts are summarized below.
1. At
last! Congress moves forward with
VAWA!
Congress
is finally moving forward with reauthorization
of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) after
years of stonewalling.
The
House Judiciary subcommittee on Crime began
mark-up of the VAWA Reauthorization bill, (H.R.
1248), on March 4th, with the suggestion that
the bill would go to the House floor by July.
There is
a rumor that the bill may be attached to another
measure, perhaps a crime bill as was the case in
1994 when VAWA was first passed. But Chair Orrin
Hatch has proposed linking VAWA with the
Religious Liberty Protection Act, which would
protect religious liberty but would also an
undermining of state and local laws on child
protection and domestic violence, local land use
zoning and environment protection laws, teen
access to health care services and various
housing and public accommodations laws affecting
single and pregnant women, gays, lesbians and
people of color.
A number
of VAWA programs have already expired, with more
due to expire this summer. The pressure should
be kept up on House Members to move quickly in
the reauthorization process. All messages should
oppose linking the Violence Against Women Act
with the Religious Liberty Protection Act. The
need for action is immediate.
ACTION
NEEDED:
http://www.now.org/congress/LegAlert.morph?LegAlert_id=261
2.
Schakowsky introduces battered immigrant women
bill
Congresswoman
Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) introduced a bill that
would provide greater protection and assistance
to immigrants who are victims of domestic
violence. This legislation, the Battered
Immigrant Women Protection Act, would go a long
way toward extending the services provided under
VAWA to this undeserved group and correcting the
mistreatment of battered immigrant women that
has been permitted under recent immigration
"reform" legislation.
ACTION
NEEDED:
http://www.now.org/congress/LegAlert.morph?LegAlert_id=262
3.
Proposed bill protects human rights of lesbians
and gays
Rep. Tom
Lantos (D-CA) introduced a concurrent resolution
(H. Con. Res. 259) in March that would put the
United States on record against human rights
violations based on sexual orientation. The
resolution would recognize that the protection
of sexual orientation and gender identity is not
a special category of human rights, but is
included in the overall human rights norms
defined in international conventions. It would
condemn all human rights violations based on
sexual orientation and recognize that such
violations should be equally punished without
discrimination.
ACTION
NEEDED:
http://www.now.org/congress/LegAlert.morph?LegAlert_id=263
CONSUMER
WARNING
Your
microwave oven may be dangerous to your
health
From
"Ten Reasons to Throw out your Microwave Oven"
by Anthony Wayne and Lawrence Newell
Based on
the conclusions of Swiss, Russian and German
scientific clinical studies, the authors
conclude that microwave ovens are dangerous for
the following reasons:
1).
Continually eating food processed from a
microwave oven causes long term - permanent -
brain damage by "shorting out" electrical
impulses in the brain [depolarizing or
demagnetizing the brain tissue].
2). The
human body cannot metabolize [break
down] the unknown byproducts created in
microwaved food.
3). Male
and female hormone production is shut down
and/or altered by continually eating microwaved
foods.
4). The
effects of microwaved food byproducts are
residual.
5).
Minerals, vitamins, and nutrients of all
microwaved food is reduced or altered so that
the human body gets little or no benefit.
6). The
minerals in vegetables are altered into
cancerous free radicals when cooked in microwave
ovens.
7).
Microwaved foods cause stomach and intestinal
cancerous growths. This may explain the rapidly
increased rate of colon cancer in
America.
8). The
prolonged eating of microwaved foods causes
cancerous cells to increase in human
blood.
9).
Continual ingestion of microwaved food causes
immune system deficiencies through lymph gland
and blood serum alterations.
10).
Eating microwaved food causes loss of memory,
concentration, emotional instability, and a
decrease of intelligence.
Please
check the web page and draw your own
conclusions.
http://www.herbalhealer.com/microwave.html
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