and there are also things to celebrate!

Firsthand accounts from members around the world.
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Whitebird Sings
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and there are also things to celebrate!

Post by Whitebird Sings » May 12th, 2005, 1:17 am

...sometimes, there is good news:

GLOBAL WARMING SOLUTIONS GENERATE EXCITEMENT AT CARBON EXPO
COLOGNE, Germany, May 11, 2005 (ENS) - Limiting emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is serious business, yet the effort took on a festive air today with the opening of Carbon Expo 2005 in Cologne.

_______________________________

SUMMIT ON SUSTAINABILITY: WORLD SUSTAINABILITY LEADERS CAUCUS AT RAINFOREST ALLIANCE EVENTS
NEW YORK, NY, May 11, 2005 --/WORLD-WIRE/-- The Rainforest Alliance hosts a gathering of leaders in the sustainable certification movement from around the world in New York today, after a remarkable year in which green stocks outperformed non-green competitors and certified sustainable production of coffee, wood and other commodities grew rapidly.
________________________________

ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: MAY 11, 2005

2003 Chemical Releases Down Six Percent From Year Before

Dupont Agrees to Replace Ozone Depleting Refrigerant

New York City Adopts Law to Reduce Pesticide Use

Judge Closes 700 Miles of Eldorado National Forest Off-Road Trails

__________________________________


-- these things happened because most people do care...
and because we CAN and DO make a difference

COOL! :)

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Post by judih » May 12th, 2005, 1:27 am

good news. hope the news expands.

how much bad news can a person absorb? need something to hang onto and a new ozone layer is a fine handle.

thanks, whitebird sings. i hear ya

j

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Post by Whitebird Sings » May 13th, 2005, 12:01 am

There is SO MUCH to hold onto judih!

...those in power are doing a great job of controlling us through fear... They work to have us believe that we can't make a difference... Daily they inundate us with lies of scarcity... scarcity of money, work, food, time... you name it... all lies! There is no scarcity!!

How do we battle them... We spread the good news... and we keep on making a difference... :wink:

Here's a link to more good news:

News from India: of positive action, steely endeavour and quiet triumphs ~ news that is little known

http://www.goodnewsindia.com/homepage.php

Namaste!
WB

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Post by Whitebird Sings » May 19th, 2005, 5:58 pm

OUR VOICES DO MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!... especially when we join them!... All that I did was send a letter at the request of the IFAW... along with thousands of others... Signing petitions, sending letters... SOMETIMES DOES WORK!!... YAY!!...

International Fund for Animal Welfare
May 19, 2005

An Important Victory for all Canadians

Dear Whitebird,

Several months ago, I asked you to send a strong message to irresponsible ship operators who illegally dump millions of gallons of bilge oil into our waters, killing a minimum of 300,000 seabirds every year.

Today that message has been heard not only in Canada, but the rest of the world. Loud and clear.

The passage this morning of Bill C-15, amendments to the Migratory Birds Convention Act and the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, not only imposes stricter penalties and minimum fines for those guilty of bilge oil dumping, it signals a major step forward for Canada's environmental movement. A success we can build on for even more wins in the future.

Your efforts will save thousands of seabirds, fish
and other marine life from destruction

This historic victory began in October 2004, when IFAW drafted the minimum fine amendment. After much lobbying, all of the opposition parties finally supported the amendment and adopted it into the Bill at the House of Commons.

In December, the bill was introduced into the Senate where we faced some very stiff competition from the shipping industry. Knowing we needed the support of other major environmental organizations, IFAW led some of the biggest and most well respected NGOs into a long fought battle to pass this bill.

The new law will not impose any new costs or regulatory changes for vessels and ship operators who follow the law. Those shippers who illegally dump bilge oil in Canadian waters however, now face a minimum fine of $100,000 for a summary conviction and $500,000 for an indictable offence.

With the passage of this bill, the waters off Newfoundland and all along the North Eastern Canadian coastal communities will be cleaner and safer for wildlife and people.

A spot of oil the size of a quarter is enough to kill a seabird

When seabirds come into contact with oil in the cold waters of the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, they lose their ability to keep warm and succumb to a long and painful death. Once a seabird's interlocking feathers are breached by oil, hypothermia and drowning are almost assured.

Oil spill prevention is the best way to keep these birds from dying and the passage of this new bill creates a strong incentive for keeping Canada's waters and seabirds safe.

Yet, no matter what we do, oil spills can and do happen. The good news is that IFAW is recognized as the world's leader in oil spill response, rescuing and rehabilitating wildlife on an unprecedented scale. But we need your ongoing support to be ready when the next disaster strikes. Please take a moment now to tell others to join the Emergency Relief Network.

I want to personally congratulate you on winning this crucial victory to clean up our waters from deliberate polluters. I know you'll be right there with me as we continue to achieve even more success in creating a better world for animals and people.

Thanks for all you do,

Fred O’Regan
President and CEO

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Post by Whitebird Sings » May 19th, 2005, 6:51 pm

Need more proof that we can make a difference?
PLEASE GO HERE:

http://www.amnesty.ca/about/good_news_stories/


{{{{{Hugs}}}}}

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Post by Whitebird Sings » May 25th, 2005, 11:45 am

Black Brazilians learn from Biko
By Alejandra Martins
BBCMundo.com

Steve Biko sought to set black South Africans free from oppression and he died for it.
He probably never imagined that 30 years on, his message would be setting free the minds of young men and women thousands of kilometres away, in Brazil.

Lazaro Passos: Studying is important, but so is black pride
The Steve Biko Institute in Salvador, the capital of Bahia state, aims to help black Brazilians achieve what many never dared to dream of - to enter university.

Brazil boasts some of the best universities in Latin America, but passing the country's tough university entrance exam, the vestibular, is not an option for most black Brazilians.

They make up almost half the country's population - far more than that in Bahia state - and the majority live in poverty.

"Here in Bahia, 70% of the population is of African descent, but more than 80% of those who graduate from university are white, so you can see clearly there is a situation of exclusion," explains Lazaro Passos, a young mechanical engineer who is the institute's project co-ordinator.

Redressing the balance

Mr Passos says the poor quality of state primary and secondary schools means black students end up with only a remote chance of passing the vestibular.

Many white students, on the other hand, not only grow up in the private school system, but can also afford expensive one-year courses that prepare them for the exam.

Paradoxically, it is mostly these students who secure the coveted places in Brazil's federal universities, which are funded by the federal government and charge no fees.

The Biko institute aims to redress the balance, offering cheap courses to prepare black students.

"Biko is a reference for us because of his activism as a student, and above all, because he saw education as a weapon against oppression", explains Mr Passos. [emphasis added]

The institute's T-shirts bear Biko's words: "The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."

The message has changed the lives of hundreds of students, like young mother Karina de Souza, who attended a course at the institute and is now a university student specialising in literature.

"We grow up seeing only white people having success as professionals. We learn at history lessons in school that black people were brought as slaves, and all they left as a legacy is traditional foods, and dances like samba or capoeira," she says.

"Here at the Biko institute we learn about many blacks who succeeded through education."

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Post by Whitebird Sings » May 25th, 2005, 11:47 am

All the students at the Biko institute attend lessons in "citizenship and black consciousness", where they learn about great black Brazilian engineers such as Andre Rebouca or Teodoro Sampaio.

"Black people need to learn about these figures and many others. It is part of the process of raising their self-esteem," says Mr Passos.

"We realised if we don't work at this very deep level, students never aim to be doctors, or engineers, because they believe they can only apply for less prestigious courses."

Bahia was at the heart of the slave trade that shaped Brazilian history. It is estimated that four million slaves were sent across the Atlantic to shed their sweat and blood in the fields of Brazil, eight times the number of slaves shipped to the US. Their legacy is alive in every corner of Bahia.

'Apartheid'

"Brazil was one of the last countries to abolish slavery in 1888 - you can imagine how this system moulded society. Even now, the black population is suffering the consequences," says Mr Passos.

Students at the institute come from poor backgrounds and most of them are the first ever in their family to aim for university.

"My mother worked very hard washing clothes, selling food on the street. She couldn't finish primary school, but made sure all her kids completed secondary education. I was working from an early age, helping my mother," says Karina.

George Oliveira's future also changed thanks to the Biko institute. When he arrived there he had abandoned his studies and was working, like everyone else in his family, as a cook.

Today he is studying economics at university. He is convinced his country has to overcome what he says is a disguised form of apartheid.

"There are no laws here saying this place is for whites only and that place is for blacks only, but if you go to the rich neighbourhoods you see whites and if you go to the slums you see mainly blacks.

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Post by Whitebird Sings » May 25th, 2005, 11:53 am

"Even in the media, the soap operas seem to depict life in Europe rather than Brazil."

The education ministry acknowledges that the exclusion of black students is a serious problem in Brazil.

Eliezer Pacheco, president of the National Institute of Educational Research, says: "Poverty in Brazil has a colour, and that colour is black. That´s why the Ministry of Education has been strongly defending the introduction of quotas for black students at university. Even though universities are autonomous according to the constitution and there is a lot of resistance, some universities have started adopting this system."

Empowerment

The Biko institute enrols about 300 students a year, of whom about 35% enter university.

Deep down the message remains like a delayed time bomb: education is the answer

Lazaro Passos

I put it to Lazaro Passos that this is a low success rate.

"Students come here after 11 years of bad schooling, often with their self-esteem at rock bottom. We reach out to human beings and that's what matters. We always leave our mark.

"Often we meet former students who after many years are back at their studies. Deep down the message remained like a delayed time bomb: education is the answer".

The legacy of Steve Biko has empowered people like Karina and George.

Karina is making sure her five-year-old son grows up proud of being black.

George, the first of his family to enter university, wants to become a professor.

For Lazaro Passos, what is at stake is not only the future of students such as George, but the development of Brazil.

"If there are no black students at university then we are excluding minds that could be thinking up a new and more competitive Brazil," he says.

"It's not only a loss for the black population, but for the whole of this country. If blacks don't have access to university then Brazil is excluding 45% of its own people."

_____________________________________________________

Change is happening... it is happening at the grassroots... it is happening because of ordinary people who have a dream and are willing to try!!!... IT IS HAPPENING!!!!

{{{{{HUGS}}}}}

WB

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Post by Whitebird Sings » May 26th, 2005, 11:14 am

Pocket Parks to Be Built Across West Bank, Gaza

Sixteen small pocket parks throughout the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank are to be built or revitalized over the next year by the nonprofit organization CHF International, the group said Wednesday.

CHF International, based in Silver Spring, is a development and humanitarian relief organization that has been active in the West Bank and Gaza for more than 10 years.

The 12 month program of park creation and renewal - the Palestinian American Recreation and Conservation Services Project (PARCS) - is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

In addition to providing greater recreational access and an improved quality of life for over 800,000 community members, PARCS will provide residents with immediate employment opportunities through construction and revitalization projects, CHF said in a statement.

"We are proud to expand our existing housing, infrastructure and extensive lending work in Gaza and the West Bank with a project that will have such a palpable impact on residents' quality of life," said CHF International's Vice President of External Relations John Chromy.

As with all of CHF International's projects around the world, the organization will ensure that all community stakeholders - particularly women, children, youth, the elderly and those with special needs - are active participants in the design and implementation of the project.

Over one million Gazans live crowded into 360 square kilometers, many of them in refugee camps. Streets are made of dirt and mud, houses are made of unfinished cement blocks, and there are no parks or playgrounds anywhere in sight.

"It's so important to provide recreational facilities that will help to counter the detrimental effects of living in conflict, while helping to restore the area's historical beauty," Chromy said.

The construction of urban public parks is one of the development projects that USAID is accelerating as a sign of America's commitment to support the democratically elected Palestinian leadership.

A total of $2 million is set aside for the parks, covering the costs of design, construction, landscaping and maintenance equipment.

Because of urban sprawl, many Palestinians live in heavily congested communities with far too few, if any, green spaces, USAID said. Health experts consider parks to be a powerful antidote to the stress of urban living because they contribute to a sense of well-being and provide space for the relaxation, rest, revitalization and recreation that is essential to stress management.

"Normally, U.S. funded projects for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza concentrate on building urgently needed infrastructure - reservoirs, roads and water networks," said USAID Project Manager Tony Rantissi. "This time we wanted to do a project that would give Palestinian families a place to relax and play together."

All facilities created or upgraded through the PARCS project will provide residents in the West Bank and Gaza with recreational areas that will ensure access for physically challenged community members, while protecting the environment and creatively using local resources.

It sounds like a large task, but CHF International will receive help from architecture students from local universities who will be involved in the parks' design and construction.

The students will gain practical training and exposure to participatory and professional design approaches, while developing a sense of pride and responsibility for their communities.

CHF International is already implementing an environmental program in the West Bank and Gaza focused on removing solid waste. Through its Palestinian Environmental Improvement/
Vocational Training Program in the West Bank and Gaza, CHF has helped in the removal more than 160,000 tons of solid waste over the past two years. This program has created almost $3 million in income for the participating communities, the organization said.

Founded in 1952, CHF International is a non-profit development organization that has helped families in over 100 countries worldwide improve their economic circumstances, environment, and infrastructure.

The organization provides technical expertise in international development, including critical emergency management following disasters and civil conflict.

from: Environment News Service
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2005 ... -26-02.asp

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Post by Whitebird Sings » May 26th, 2005, 3:43 pm

Santropol Roulant is a volunteer organization established and run by motivated and dynamic young people in the community of Montreal, Canada. They bring people and groups together across cultures and generations through innovative meals-on-wheels service and intergenerational programs.

Santropol Roulant uses food as a vehicle to break social and economic isolation between generations and to strengthen and nourish our local community. They engage a diversity of people to take an active role in their communities through initiatives that address the health and food security needs of seniors and Montrealers living with a loss of autonomy. [paraphrased from the website -- address below]

...they are "building community"!!!


Cool! Cool! Cool! 8)

Here is a link that gives more information...
http://www.oneworld.ca/external/?url=ht ... Fhome.html

What if you started something like this right where you live???
Why not?
Cool! Cool! Cool! 8)

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Post by Whitebird Sings » May 30th, 2005, 3:09 pm

from The New York Times
opinion/editorial

May 28, 2005

Give Peace a Chance

By JOHN TIERNEY

You would never guess it from the news, but we're living in a peculiarly tranquil world. The new edition of "Peace and Conflict," a biennial global survey being published next week by the University of Maryland, shows that the number and intensity of wars and armed conflicts have fallen once again, continuing a steady 15-year decline that has halved the amount of organized violence around the world.

Those statistics are no solace for mourners in Iraq and Darfur. But so many other people are now living in peace that you don't have be a dreamer like John Lennon to take seriously the question raised by Gregg Easterbrook in this week's New Republic cover story, "The End of War?"

I posed that question nearly a decade ago to my favorite prophet, Julian Simon, the economist who spent his career refuting doomsayers' predictions. He was convinced that three horsemen of the apocalypse - famine, pestilence, death - were in rapid retreat, and he suspected that the fourth was in trouble, too.

"I predict that the incidence of war will decline," he told me in 1996, two years before his death. He based his prediction on the principle that there is less and less to be gained economically from war. As people get richer and smarter, their lives and their knowledge become far more valuable than the land, minerals and natural resources they used to fight over.

The Iraq war is sometimes described, by both foes and supporters, as a pragmatic venture to keep oil flowing, but not even the most ruthless accountant can justify the expense. Even before the war, America's military costs in the Persian Gulf were much greater than the value of all the oil it was getting from the region, and now it's spending at least four times what the oil's worth.

Of course, wars are also fought for noneconomic reasons, but those, too, seem to be diminishing. The end of the cold war left the superpowers' proxy armies without patrons, and the spread of democracy made nations less bellicose. (Democracies almost never fight each other.) Mr. Easterbrook calculates that the amount of military spending per capita has declined by a third worldwide since 1985.

Meanwhile, the number of people fighting has plummeted, even though population has grown enormously. "From what we know about war, we can only conclude that it's a much lesser problem today," said Monty Marshall of George Mason University, a co-author of the "Peace and Conflict" report. "War between countries is much less likely than ever, and civil war is less likely than any time since 1960."

These benign trends may be hard to believe, especially if you've been watching pictures from Iraq or listening to warnings about terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons. One explosion could indeed change everything.

But before you dismiss the optimists as hopeless naifs, you might ask yourself if you're suffering from the malaise described in a book by Mr. Easterbrook called "The Progress Paradox": the better life gets, the worse people feel. The more peaceful and wealthy the world becomes, the more time we all have to watch wars and warnings on television.

The only antidote is to look at long-term trends instead of daily horrors. For a really long-term trend, consider that of 59 skeletons found in a Stone Age graveyard, at least 24 died from violence. Or that a quarter of the male population died fighting in some pre-agricultural societies.

In the 20th century, despite two world wars, humans had less than a 2 percent chance of dying in war or a mass killing, according to John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State. Today the risk is lower still - about a quarter the chance of dying in a car accident.

I mention these numbers not to minimize today's tragedies. I plan to be at a parade on Monday honoring the soldiers who have fallen, especially the more than 1,600 in Iraq. But I will also be thinking about the Progress Paradox and the origin of Memorial Day.

It started after the Civil War as Decoration Day, an occasion for widows wearing red poppies to decorate graves and memorials in virtually every town. If a war of that scale happened now, there would be nearly five million graves to tend. Sixteen-hundred is still too many, but if the trend continues, Memorial Day may eventually become a memory itself.



For Further Reading:

“The End of War?: Explaining Fifteen Years of Diminishing Violence” by Gregg Easterbrook. The New Republic, pp. 18-21, May 30, 2005

The Progress Paradox : How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse by Gregg Easterbrook (Random House. 400 pp., November 2003)

Why Isn't There More Violence? By John Mueller. Security Studies 13, p. 191-203, Spring 2004

The Remnants of War by John Mueller. (Cornell University Press, 272 pp., September 2004)

The Ultimate Resource 2 by Julian L. Simon. (Princeton University Press, 778 pp., July 1998)

Peace and Conflict 2005: A Global Survey of Armed Conflicts, Self-Determination Movements, and Democracy by Monty G. Marshall and Ted Robert Gurr

Constant Battles: The Myth of the Noble Savage and a Peaceful Past by Steven A. LeBlanc and Katherine E. Register (Princeton University Press, 778 pp., July 1998)

E-mail: tierney@nytimes.com

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Post by Dave The Dov » May 30th, 2005, 3:34 pm

The more we care for others and the planet will show that the human race is heading in the right direction!!!! :D
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Post by Whitebird Sings » June 9th, 2005, 8:09 am

The New York Times
June 9, 2005

In Balkans, Video Letters Reconcile Lost Friends

By ALAN RIDING

PARIS, June 8 - Documentary film directors are often inspired by a dose of idealism, and even by the belief that their exposure of some atrocity or injustice can stir public outrage and government action. But rare is the case where filmmakers actually set out to do good and can claim to have achieved it. Eric van den Broek and Katarina Rejger are two such directors.

Five years ago, having already made several movies about the aftermath of the Balkan wars of the 1990's, the Dutch couple embarked on an extraordinary project called "Videoletters, " designed to further reconciliation among people from the former Yugoslavia who had once been friends and who had been separated and even alienated by the bloody nationalist conflict.

The idea was simple: someone who had lost touch with, say, a childhood friend or a lifelong neighbor from a different ethnic group was invited to record a message. The directors then traced and showed the video letter to the "lost" friend, who was usually eager to reply. In most cases, the exchange resulted in an emotional reunion.

What has given these experiences political weight, however, is that since April, nine of these video letters have been broadcast by television stations in each of the seven nations that were once Yugoslavia - Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia.

"I think in general the reaction has been very positive," Mr. van den Broek said Monday in a telephone interview from Montenegro, a stop on a bus tour across the former Yugoslavia in which he and his partner are showing video letters in villages. "It's about people and that's what they recognize. It's not about politics."

Six of these video letters will be shown at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival (hrw.org/iff), opening Thursday at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center in New York. It will screen 20 feature movies and documentaries through June 23. "Videoletters," to be shown in two groups between June 19 and 23, is also the winner of the festival's 2005 Nestor Almendros Prize, named after the late Spanish cinematographer. The festival's program includes films set in Northern Ireland, Kenya, Iraq, Brazil, China, Colombia, Peru, Argentina and Palestine as well as the former Yugoslavia - movies that might otherwise never reach a wider public. More fundamentally, though, the festival is itself a declaration of cinema's power to expose human rights abuses and to celebrate those who combat them.

Rather than revisiting horrors, the project seeks to demonstrate that reconciliation is possible, starting with individuals for whom ethnic differences were unimportant - many former Yugoslavs are themselves of mixed extraction - until the conflicts convulsed their lives.

In "Ivana and Senad," one episode to be shown, Ivana Nikolic, a Serb, records a video letter to Senad, a Muslim boy with cerebral palsy whom she informally adopted at a Belgrade hospital and who fled the city when war erupted. After a lengthy search, which leads first to Senad's peasant parents, Mr. van den Broek and Ms. Rejger find the boy in another town and show him Ivana's message. They filmed Ivana's reunion with Senad.

"Emil and Sasa" recounts how the war separated two youths who grew up in Pale, the wartime capital of the Serb-dominated area of Bosnia. Emil, whose father is Muslim, fled to the Netherlands, while Sasa, whose father is Serb, was recruited into the Bosnian Serb Army. Now Sasa reaches out with a video letter, but Emil is troubled by rumors that Sasa killed a Muslim acquaintance in the war. Sasa fervently denies the accusation and Emil finally agrees to talk it all over in person.

Mr. van den Broek said that at first many people were unwilling to make video letters for fear of being rebuffed or of being thought traitors. "It was easier to deliver them because we would tell people they'd received a video letter and ask if they'd like to see it," Mr. van den Broek recalled. "We wouldn't say who sent it, so they were curious. And when they saw it, they'd break down in tears."

Only in two cases, he said, did recipients refuse to respond. In the divided city of Mostar, a Muslim sent a video letter to a Croatian friend who lived nearby but whom he had not seen in nine years. Mr. van den Broek said the Croatian consulted a Catholic priest, who ordered him not to respond. And in a second case, he said, a Serb refused to answer a video letter from a Muslim friend because he feared it would become known that he had fought alongside the Muslims.

Now, bolstered by good television ratings, the project has grown. Its website (videoletters.net) offers guidance and information. Actors and singers have recorded video letters to fellow artists of other nationalities. Across the region, there are 60 places where people can record their own video letters. Bosnian radio stations now announce when a video letter has arrived from Serbia so that, if willing, its addressee can come forward.

Accompanied by a multiethnic team of 25, including a five-piece band, Mr. van den Broek and Ms. Rejger have also begun showing video letters and organizing debates in different communities. "We start the day at school, where children are invited to draw their 'dream flags' instead of national flags," Ms. Rejger said. "Sometimes children bring their parents to the screening. Others come because they have seen the video letters on television."

She says that she and Mr. van den Broek have also been welcomed in towns where once they were not. And in two war-scarred towns, she says, officials are now cooperative. Pale's mayor, for instance, recorded a video letter to mayors across the former Yugoslavia, while the mayor of Srebrenica, where 7,000 Muslims were massacred in 1995, sent a conciliatory message back.

The directors have been approached by the Dutch government with the idea of expanding their project to Israel and Palestine, Russia and Africa. "We don't want to do it ourselves, but we'd like to train people and offer our support," Mr. van den Broek said. "We've become managers of a great team, but we'd like to film again."

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Post by Whitebird Sings » June 9th, 2005, 10:12 am

The New York Times
June 9, 2005

In Africa, Life After AIDS
By DAVID BROOKS
Windhoek, Namibia

Bobwalla is a black woman born in Cape Town and raised under apartheid. She lived in a shack with her husband, who drank and beat her for the first nine years of their marriage. Then she tested positive for H.I.V., and cried for days. It was a death sentence.

But she was lucky enough to find a clinic that could give her antiretroviral drugs. She persuaded her husband, who is also H.I.V.-positive, to get treatment. He stopped drinking as part of the treatment, and has stopped abusing her and sleeping around. Now she counsels pregnant women on how not to pass H.I.V. on to their babies.

"For some, H.I.V. brings death," she says. "For me, H.I.V. brought life into my home."

You come to Southern Africa to visit AIDS hospitals, and you expect, or at least I expected, to find unrelieved sadness. But something positive has happened recently because of the confluence of three factors. The first is the spread of antiretroviral treatment programs. Second, some African governments have gone on the offensive against the disease. And third, the U.S. and other countries are pouring in money to pay for treatments.

So now you run across health workers who have been laboring for years and watching people die, but who suddenly have the means to offer life. You have, amid the ocean of despair, this archipelago of hope, hospitals that are ramping up treatment programs as fast as they can, even while bursting out of their walls. In Namibia, for example, only 500 people were receiving treatment in January 2004. Now over 9,000 people are, and the number is rising rapidly.

Here in Windhoek, Namibia's capital, you run into people like a 6-year-old who was born to parents who were both H.I.V.-positive. They gave her the name Haunapawa, which reflected their mood at the time. It means, "There is no good in the world." But the parents are both still alive, and the girl, once racked by pneumonia, is thriving on the medicine.

You run into scenes like the one I saw at Oshakati Hospital in northern Namibia, by the Angolan border, where a young Zimbabwean doctor, Gram Mutandi, works at his clinic. Patients can wait for eight hours to receive treatment and counseling.

One woman, Josephina, had been dying of AIDS. Her mother had already died. So had her sister and brother-in-law, and she was looking after their children. Then she got on the treatment program, and now she has the irrepressible joy of someone who has come back from death.

Next to her was a woman who showed a photograph of herself at the depths of her disease, frail and emaciated. With treatment, she's robust now. "I want to thank Dr. Mutandi," she said. "You saved my life."

You can imagine what this has done for the morale of the health workers. You can imagine how it has helped them in their efforts to get more people tested for H.I.V. Now a positive test is not a death sentence. Something can be done.

Obviously there's a long way to go. You can still go out and visit children in mud huts who are raising themselves because their parents, aunts and uncles are all dead. Only a small fraction of those who need treatment are getting it. At the Lutheran Hospital in Onandjokwe, Namibia, the staff tested 858 women in the first quarter of this year, but could get only five of their male partners to even come in for testing.

But there's something perversely akin here to Silicon Valley in the early 1990's. All these little treatment facilities are trying to get really big really fast. Thanks in part to American money, they're building new wings and desperately scrounging for qualified staff.

They're facing the problems start-ups face: how to offer treatment to hundreds when you have only one sink and one phone, how to use the survivors who suddenly have the rest of their lives to lead.

I came here expecting despair, but now realize that we should be redoubling our efforts out of a sense of opportunity. I came here aware of controversies about abstinence versus condoms in AIDS prevention programs, about U.S. aid versus multilateral aid, and now realize that all that nonsense is irrelevant on the ground.

This is a world of people trying everything, of doctors from Russia, Egypt, Cuba, Germany and Zimbabwe. Many are backed by money from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, finally doing the work they've always dreamed of doing.

We could be on the verge of a recovery boom.

E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com

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Whitebird Sings
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Post by Whitebird Sings » June 9th, 2005, 11:11 am

...while the post above contains some good news, please also realize that

(1) there is still so much more that needs to be done

and

(2) the current superpower on this planet is not doing anywhere near what they could... what they should... Read this:

The New York Times
June 8, 2005

Crumbs for Africa
editorial

President Bush kept a remarkably straight face yesterday when he strode to the microphones with Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, and told the world that the United States would now get around to spending $674 million in emergency aid that Congress had already approved for needy countries. That's it. Not a penny more to buy treated mosquito nets to help save the thousands of children in Sierra Leone who die every year of preventable malaria. Nothing more to train and pay teachers so 11-year-old girls in Kenya may go to school. And not a cent more to help Ghana develop the programs it needs to get legions of young boys off the streets.

Mr. Blair, who will be the host when the G-8, the club of eight leading economic powers, holds its annual meeting next month, is trying to line up pledges to double overall aid for Africa over the next 10 years. That extra $25 billion a year would do all those things, and much more, to raise the continent from dire poverty. Before getting to Washington, Mr. Blair had done very well, securing pledges of large increases from European Union members.

According to a poll, most Americans believe that the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent. As Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist in charge of the United Nations' Millennium Project, put it so well, the notion that there is a flood of American aid going to Africa "is one of our great national myths." [emphasis added by WB]

The United States currently gives just 0.16 percent of its national income to help poor countries, despite signing a United Nations declaration three years ago in which rich countries agreed to increase their aid to 0.7 percent by 2015. Since then, Britain, France and Germany have all announced plans for how to get to 0.7 percent; America has not. The piddling amount Mr. Bush announced yesterday is not even 0.007 percent.

What is 0.7 percent of the American economy? About $80 billion. That is about the amount the Senate just approved for additional military spending, mostly in Iraq. It's not remotely close to the $140 billion corporate tax cut last year. [emphasis added by WB]

This should not be the image Mr. Bush wants to project around a world that is intently watching American actions on this issue. At a time when rich countries are mounting a noble and worthy effort to make poverty history, the Bush administration is showing itself to be completely out of touch by offering such a miserly drop in the bucket. It's no surprise that Mr. Bush's offer was greeted with scorn in television broadcasts and newspaper headlines around the world. "Bush Opposes U.K. Africa Debt Plan," blared the headline on the AllAfrica news service, based in Johannesburg. "Blair's Gambit: Shame Bush Into Paying," chimed in The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia.

The American people have a great heart. President Bush needs to stop concealing it.

{this article was also posted under the G8 thread}

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