So it is a very very dark time in Myanmar–with tens of thousands dead from Cyclone Nargis, which made landfall on May 2nd.
Along with all the dark truth about how this is going to very negatively affect rather a lot of people in Burma, which is #132 out of 177 on the Human Development Index, especially in light of the current developing world food crisis, as well as some truth about the extent to which such a storm is a result of climate change, I think there’s a lot of puzzle pieces which point to hope:
See for instance, this list in the International Herald Tribune, with pledges of US$12 million and lots of logistical aid from 15 different nations. Here’s the really crazy thing. The population of Burma in 1900 was 10 million. Now it’s 55 million. If the disaster had taken place in 1900:
I don’t have the beginnings of an answer to any of these questions (ask someone with an appropriate Ph.D.). But I have a strong suspicion that the changes between the answers for “In 1900″ and “In 2008″ are solid grounds for a little joy and hope in the midst of heart-wrenching disaster.
Yesterday in the news, Eli Estrada, a landscaper in Long Beach, California, found a Bank of America money bag with $140,000 in unmarked twenty dollar bills on the ground. The bag had been lost on March 11 by Brinks Armored truck drivers. Forty year old Eli said “I think I was nuts, but I know in my gut that to keep that money would be wrong.” He turned it over to the police, and later received a $2000 reward from Brinks.
So the big question is: what would *you* do if you found that much money?
Posted in Ethics, News Reports | 8 Comments »Been pondering the whole Michael Vick story quite a bit. I find I have lots of questions and few answers.
Did you know that the name of Vick’s dogfighting operation, Bad Newz Kennels, is taken from a slang name for the very poor neighborhood in east Newport News where Vick grew up? Reporter David Ress decribed the area in 2007 for the Richmond Times Dispatch this way
950-plus units of public-housing projects crammed into an area of about a dozen blocks. Row after row of aging two-story apartment buildings, pressed close to the Interstate 664 bridge and looming black piles of coal. Close enough to the water for a whiff from the seafood packing plants but not for a fresh breeze. Just enough space for a walkway and clotheslines between the buildings, but not for a basketball court…not a dog in sight.
If I were George Bush, I would pardon Mr. Vick today.
Posted in Animal Rights, Criminal Justice, News Reports | 10 Comments »
Thanks to the good folks at the Wittenburg Door for this iconic poster, created by Peter Cohen in 1990 for the Coalition For The Homeless in New York City.
Mr. Cohen envisions a Jesus who identified with the poor and needy and who, as we are told in Matthew 8:20, had “no place to lay his head.” But according to this article from the National Post, the Rev. Creflo Dollar disagrees.
Posted in News Reports, Poverty | 11 Comments »John Blake, Cox Newspapers — Christians gather around the world each Christmas to sing about “poor baby Jesus” asleep in the manger with no crib for his bed.
But Reverend Creflo Dollar looks inside that manger, and he doesn’t see a poor baby at all.
He sees a baby born into wealth because the kings visiting him gave him gold, frankincense and myrrh. He sees a Messiah with so much money that he needed an accountant to track it. He sees a Saviour who wore clothes so expensive that the Roman soldiers who crucified him gambled for them.
Rev. Dollar sees a rich Jesus. read the full article
Growing up in the UK, I was always given to understand that ‘our’ news sources were reliable, dependable and objective. The BBC represented the pinnacle of news journalism.
Going abroad I suddenly saw for myself that the news that others saw was not the news I saw. I became aware that my diet of news was very self-centred, so that important issues to others were under-reported or ignored altogether. I realised - by reading news from other perspectives on the internet - that I was being fed a form of propaganda which coloured my understanding of what was happening in my own country and the wider world.
There was a very interesting example of this last week. Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, was reported in Haaretz, the liberal left-of-centre Israeli daily newspaper, to be considering a new peace plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This was repeated around the world. Soon afterwards his office issued a press release saying that he wasn’t thinking of anything of the kind, but was barely mentioned in the international media. It appeared that he had invented an amazing magic trick where he could appear to be offering and not-offering something at the same time.
I just learned this morning about a tragic fire that has impacted our friend Shane Claiborne and his community the Simple Way. This from the Simple Way website…
6/20/07 12:30PM
This morning, a 7-alarm fire consumed an abandoned warehouse in our Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia. The Simple Way Community Center at 3200 Potter Street was destroyed as well as at least eight of our neighbors’ homes. Over 100 people were evacuated from their homes, and 400 families are currently without power. Despite this developing tragedy, we are incredibly thankful to share that all of our community members and every one of our neighbors is safely out of harm’s way.
This fire will forever change the fabric of our community. Eight families are currently homeless, and in many cases have lost their vehicles as well as their homes. One of our neighbors, the Mahaias Family, lost their three cars as well as the equipment one family member uses for her massage therapy business. Teenager Brian Mahaias is devastated not because he has lost his belongings, but because he fears that this fire will force him to move away from this neighborhood that is his family as well as his home.
The Simple Way has lost a community center that was home to our Yes! And… afterschool program, community arts center, and Cottage Printworks t-shirt micro-business as well as to two of our community members. Community members Shane Claiborne and Jesce Walz have lost all of their belongings, Yes! And…’s after school studio and library were ruined, and community member Justin Donner’s Cottage Printworks equipment and t-shirts were destroyed. more
Posted in News Reports | 8 Comments »Newsweek ran an insightful article this last week about how the war in Iraq is causing some U.S. soldiers to lose their Christian faith. The piece centers on the story of army chaplain Roger Benimoff, who shared with Newsweek the personal journal he kept through two deployments in Iraq and his current service as a chaplain at Walter Reed Medical Center. Roger has gone through what sounds like quite a wrenching of his faith, as he had to perform more memorial services than regular chapel services. He saw that the reality of war forced many soldiers to reevaluate the faith they had embraced back in the relative wealth and security of the United States.
Some quotes:
[He] begins his time in Iraq brimming with faith and a sense of devotion that carries him into a second tour. “My heart is filled with prayer and God is giving me a discerning spirit,” he writes at the start of that later deployment. “The spiritual battle I am engaged in is a minute-by-minute war.” He is “on fire for God.”Countless soldiers—not just chaplains—have struggled with how to reconcile a God of love with a God who allows the terror of conflict. For centuries theologians and philosophers have grappled with ideas of “just war”: thou shalt not kill, but under certain conditions—to prevent wider bloodshed and suffering—slaughter by armies is acceptable.
Posted in News Reports, War | 12 Comments »Read the rest of this news item »
Holocaust survivor dies saving his class
Wednesday, April 18th, 2007LA Times/Washington Post — If you were lucky enough to have a choice, there were only two ways to go on the campus of Virginia Tech on Monday morning: away from danger or toward it. Engineering professor Liviu Librescu chose the second one, saved a classroom full of students and became a hero — at the cost of his life.
As a child, he had survived the Holocaust. As an adult, he had survived persecution for defying Romania’s brutal communist regime during the Cold War. At last, with their children grown, he and his wife, Marlena, seemed to have found a safe haven on a quiet university campus in rural Virginia.
But on Monday, trouble found him once more. With bursts of gunfire rattling through the second floor of Norris Hall, Librescu, 76, closed his classroom door and urged his students to escape out the windows, recalled senior Caroline Merrey of Baltimore, the third student to jump.
As they fled, Librescu held the door shut with his body as the gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, tried to force his way in. Moments after the last student leapt to safety, Cho apparently succeeded in forcing the door open and shot Librescu to death.
Posted in News Reports | 6 Comments »
Silent Victims: What will become of Iraq’s children?
Tuesday, March 20th, 2007BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Mustafa Karim, a fourth-grader, now lives with family members in a squalid camp in eastern Baghdad where displaced Shias go after fleeing their homes, often after relatives have been killed.
The young boy’s eyes fill with tears when he recalls the circumstances that led to his exile.
“They killed my father and uncle in front of my eyes,” he says.
He then breaks down sobbing. He can no longer speak. The anguish is unbearable.
Such stories are not uncommon in Iraq four years after the U.S.-led invasion. Health officials say the daily hardships — bomb blasts, gunfire, killings of family members and sectarian violence — are taking an increasing toll on Iraq’s children.
Posted in News Reports, War | 3 Comments »|