Perspectives on Social Issues
(August 2004)
Sudan's Great Humanitarian Crisis
"International aid agencies are in a 'race against nature' to save some one million people in the Darfur region of Sudan, said a Catholic Relief Services [CRS] official. A lack of adequate security has kept aid from reaching western Sudan, where thousands have been killed and more than a million black Africans have fled a scorched-earth campaign led by Arab militias. The Sudanese government has been under heavy pressure to disarm the militias and allow aid into the region, but the upcoming rainy season could severely hinder aid agencies' ability to deliver aid, said Dan Griffin, CRS's representative for the horn of Africa region. Aid agencies were 'in a race against nature to keep this from falling into an absolutely catastrophic loss of life,' Griffin said. Griffin noted that the United Nations has predicted that 300,000 people may die in Darfur regardless of how quickly aid can be provided. 'That figure can go over one million if we cannot provide an adequate emergency response,' he said."
"Without Aid, Sudan Faces Catastrophic Loss of Life:" Signs of the Times, America July 16-26, 2004.
U.S. Public Perception of Nuclear Weapons
"Seeming is believing, according to the Program on International Policy Attitudes, which released a March 2004 survey of U.S. public perception regarding weapons of mass destruction. Americans think that the United States has 200 nuclear weapons ready to be used on short notice. The actual number is closer to 6,000 active strategic warheads, more than 2,000 of which are on high alert. The study also indicates that Americans prioritize arms control (particularly in relation to Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, and Libya) over capturing Osama bin Laden.
- 92 percent favor giving international inspectors the power to examine biological research laboratories in all countries, including in the United States.
- 74 percent incorrectly assume that the U.S. also favors inspections.
- 87 percent favor U.S. participation in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
- 56 percent incorrectly assume that the United States is already a CTBT signer.
- 91 percent think the United Sates should participate in a world-wide ban of all biological and chemical weapons.
- 82 percent support the U.S. and other nuclear powers agreeing to reduce the number of nuclear weapons on high alert.
- 65% said it is not necessary to develop new types of nuclear weapons.
Source: "Americans on WMD Proliferation," PIPA/Knowledge Networks Poll (April 15, 2004)."
"Mass Perception," Sojourners Magazine, August 2004..
Dead Zones Growing in Oceans
"The number of oxygen-starved areas in oceans and bays around the world has doubled to 146 since 1990, according to Global Environmental Outlook Yearbook 2003, newly released by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Such areas have increased every decade since the 1970s.
These ocean areas, often called 'dead zones' because they are so inhospitable to most forms of life, occur when high concentrations of nitrogen build up in marine waters. Several types of pollution-including excess chemical fertilizers, human waste, airborne industrial waste, and traffic fumes can cause nitrogen concentrations to reach damaging levels. The excess nitrogen sparks rapid growth of microscopic plants called phytoplankton. The growth and decomposition of the phytoplankton can use up much of the oxygen in the water and drive out other marine life. Dead zones range up to 70,000 square kilometers in size, an area larger than Latvia. Scientists believe that global warming will only exacerbate the problem, via rising seawater temperatures and increase flooding...
The dead zones pose a huge threat to fisherman and others who depend on marine resources for their livelihood, a linkage noted by UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer: "Reducing the impacts of agriculture, human wastes, and air pollution on the oceans and seas will be a key component in helping us to meet the Millennium Development Goals and the World Summit on Sustainable Development's Plan of Implementation goals in areas ranging from fisheries and biodiversity loss to sanitation and poverty.'"
"Ocean Dead Zones Multiplying", Environmental Intelligence, World Watch, July/August 2004.
Using Alternative Fuels In Yosemite
"Although national parks have experimented with alternative fuels since Yellowstone Park began using biodiesel trucks in 1995, Yosemite National Park announced in December 2003 that it would become the first to produce its own biodiesel on site. Construction began in early 2004 on a biodiesel production facility that will recycle the park's used cooking oil into fuel for its on-site vehicles, a strategy that will not only reduce the park's dependence on fossil fuels, but will eliminate the transportation and disposal of the park's used oil. 'Our national parks present an ideal place to showcase the benefits of biodiesel,' said Joe Jobe, executive director of the National Biodiesel Board....
Furthermore, in April, Yosemite unveiled a new five-kilowatt fuel cell at the National Park Service Administration Building in Yosemite Valley. The fuel cell uses propane to start the process that generates both electricity and heat, leaving water vapor as the only by-product. The fuel cell will supplement the building's normal power and heat supply while U.S. Army Corps of Engineers studies the feasibility of installing fuel cells throughout the park."
"A Green 2004 for Yosemite Park" Eco Actions, Co-op America Quarterly Summer 2004.
"Sanctions for Evil"
"From ignoring the legal rights of detainees to the strategy of preventive war, people in and out of government were willing, in the interest of national security, to make exceptions to long-held prohibitions, to exempt the United States from international conventions and to exploit legal loopholes as they searched for information about potential terrorist attacks. In the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the appalling results of this moral exceptionalism have become plain for all to see.
Abu Ghraib, however, is only the visible edge of a Boschian landscape of violation of the rights of innocents, prisoners of war and so-called enemy combatants. Since the scandal broke, military and press reports have identified numerous clusters of offenses from Mghanistan to Guantanamo, including other sites in Iraq and a gulag of secret CLA prisons around the world. The torture, abuse and death under interrogation-39 cases of possible homicide are currently under investigation are too widespread and systematic to be explained as the deeds of a few misguided enlistees and noncommissioned officers. They were part of a strategy of counterterrorism aimed at an elusive enemy in an allegedly new type of conflict.
The notion that the war against terror is radically different from any previous conflict was an ideological pre-condition to torture and abuse. The belief that new methods were needed to wage this new war and that customary limits on government and military operations might be lifted opened the way to moral confusion and ultimately, as Abu Ghraib has revealed, to depravity. Social psychologists who study wartime atrocities term such ideas 'sanctions for evi1.'... However lax their training or their superiors' enforcement of rules of conduct, the offenders shared a frame of mind with the makers of policy in Washington."
"Never Again" Editorial, America July 16-26, 2004..
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Gratitude to the Institute for Peace and Justice
for use of their Pope Paul VIth graphic. |
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