2010 - on here
Dec 2009 Editorial
This is the last newsletter I shall edit, having been responsible for 87 issues since I began in November 1994. The main topics which are covered this time remain the need for justice for the poor here and overseas and in answering the needs of those seeking asylum here. We still need a more ethical attitude to the arms trade and other ways of building peace and always the overarching requirement is to care for the environment - specifically with climate change.
As I wrote in January 1996, the aim of the newsletter is to educate, inform and encourage readers.
Scripture says:
“This is what Yahweh asks of you;
only this, to act justly, to love tenderly and to walk
humbly with your God.” (Mic. 6:8).
I wonder how often have you heard this as the subject of the homily?
I so agree with Harry Patch, the last soldier to survive WWI who wrote: "The politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised murder."
From The Last Fighting Tommy by Harry Patch 1898-2009.
Finally, thank you for your patience over all these years.
Chris Dove
Note: the views expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily coincide with those of the Commission
Turning the Crisis into an Opportunity
Every crisis brings with it opportunity, and so it is with the financial crisis. A spotlight has been turned on the huge profits enjoyed by the City, and the sparse regulatory framework in which they operate. One area more than any other encapsulates this: the trade in money itself. The currency market is the richest market in the world, worth a staggering US $800,000 billion a year, the equivalent to a pile of $100 bills stretching to the moon and back.
Given these colossal figures it is extraordinary that governments have, to date, exempted this market from any kind of duty. Stamp Out Poverty, a network of more than 50 organisations, is calling on the UK government to implement a tiny Currency Transaction Levy on the foreign exchange market and to use this money to finance development. The proposed rate of 0.005% is too small to alter market behaviour significantly, yet large enough to generate billions in additional finance.
The financial crisis has exacerbated a shortfall in meeting the Millennium Development Goals that will cost millions of lives, yet it has also created unprecedented opportunity for change in how the financial markets operate.
Sign up to the Stamp Out Poverty campaign and help convince the UK government to follow France’s lead and back the Currency Transaction Levy (also known as the Tobin Tax) as a sustainable, reliable and just way to pay for development.
www.stampoutpoverty.org
Shortfall in aid to poorest
The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs has warned that there will be a $4.8bn shortfall in aid for the world's poorest countries, as the recession leaves developed world governments with little cash to spare. Their spokesman compared the shortfall in funding for the world's poorest people with the vast sums spent by the US and UK and other developed countries in bailing out their banks.
"If just a fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars recently committed by governments to private financial institutions were allocated to humanitarian action, these appeals could already be fully funded, and those in need could be getting the best available protection and assistance, on time."
Source: Guardian Weekly 31.07.09
Climate Change in The Anthropocene Age
The Nobel prizewinner Paul Crutzen has coined the word "Anthropocene" to describe the much less stable geological age in which we live, to help us understand how the Earth and human society function together: humanity itself has now become a collective force of nature with far reaching consequences.
The best known global change is the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide and resulting climactic changes. Some of the CO2 in the atmosphere dissolves into oceans, making them more acidic, and this is degrading marine ecosystems - the oceans are more acidic today than they have been for at least 800 millennia. The increase in atmospheric CO2 has also boosted plant growth in some places, changing the world's forests and grasslands and so the global cycling of carbon has been significantly altered.
As the human population has grown so has the pressure to grow enough food. To increase crop yields, more nitrogen is added to ecosystems, through fertiliser use, than is added by all natural processes combined. But fertiliser run-off leads to dead-zones of low-oxygen water that currently affect 245,000 sq km of the world's oceans. Over the last 50 years human numbers have doubled and the global economy increased more than 15-fold. Scientists estimate that each year humans move more rock, sediment and soil than all natural processes; that at last three times as much fresh-water is held in reservoirs than in rivers; and at least a third of all the earth's land has been appropriated for human use.
The result: we are at the leading edge of the sixth mass extinction in earth's history. Extinction rates today are at least 100 times higher than 'background' rates. Previous extinctions, such as that which wiped out the dinosaurs 65m years ago, have been joined by a human-induced loss of life.
Can we learn to manage our own global life support system and avoid crossing dangerous thresholds? Judging by the lack of progress in 14 years of UN climate change talks, probably not!
Source: Simon Lewis Royal Society research fellow at the Earth & Biosphere Institute, University of Leeds.
Guardian Weekly 31/7/09
Working with refugees
Our J&P Commission has become increasingly involved with people seeking asylum in Hull, Stockton and Middlesbrough. On the one hand this is particularly distressing work because we come into contact with so much injustice and suffering; on the other hand we are often humbled and uplifted by the courage, patience, generosity and friendliness of so many of our friends who are aliens and strangers in our land.
Mary (not her real name) is typical of so many of the people the Commission tried to help. With her two small children, she fled from her African country after her husband, a member of the party in opposition to the government, was murdered. Mary herself was raped. Sadly, her story was not believed by the authorities here, because she had no evidence. She and her little girls, one of whom was asthmatic, were sent to a detention centre where she was treated as a criminal. Even so, Mary was terrified of being back to her own country and her friends in the Commission, despite our best efforts, failed to prevent her deportation.
Commission contacts
Barbara Hungin Chair 01642 784398
KateWard Secretary 01642 781676
Nan Saeki Treasurer 01904 783621
Chris Dove Editor 01947 825043
email: dove.whitby@phonecoop.coop
or 22 Blackburns Yard Whitby YO22 4DS
website www.middlesbroughjp.org
GET FAIR
Poverty is not only financial. In rural areas especially, isolation and inadequate transport compound the problems of low income for the elderly and disabled. Free bus passes are no good if there are no buses. Isolation is also a severe difficulty for people seeking asylum. Poverty can hit anybody at any time; it affects all ages and all areas.
Over the past two decades Britain has become richer – but not any fairer. The number of children and pensioners living in poverty and the overall levels of inequality in Britain have gone up. One in three children lives in poverty; that is 3.8 million children. Over 100,000 children are stuck in temporary housing. More than 13.2 million people in the UK overall, live in poverty.
The GET FAIR against poverty campaign launched in September 2008 called on politicians to deliver on their commitments to ending child poverty by 2020 and then to extend this to ending poverty across all generations.
Consider the incredible sums the government is prepared to give to banks - a mere £4 billion could halve child poverty by 2010; improving the take-up of existing benefits would take 500,000 pensioners out of poverty.
But of course, bankers and financiers have much more influence than children or pensioners.
Source: Church Action on Poverty
Arms Trade expansion
World arms trade has expanded by 20% in the last 5 years according to the authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. (SIPRI). The US was the largest arms supplier accounting for 31% of global weapons exports - over a third going to the Middle East. The US also supplied 40% of Pakistan's major conventional weapons systems. Sales of weaponry to countries in the Middle East rose by 38% and included more than 200 US combat aircraft and more than 5,000 guided bombs.
"When the world needs co-operative solutions to global problems, the thriving international market points to a squandering of resources which the international community can ill afford," said Paul Holton head of SIPRI's arms transfer programme.
Source: Guardian Weekly 1/5/9
I do recommend to you the website: ww.costofwar.com to see just how much war costs.
A guide to large numbers
With a unit of one second, a million would be 15.5 days, a billion, 33 years and a trillion, 33,000 years.
"Potential nuclear powers could double soon"
Mohamed El Baradei, the outgoing director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], warned this may well happen unless the major powers take radical steps towards the disarmament. He argued that the only way back from the nuclear abyss was for the nuclear powers to disarm as rapidly as possible. He said it was essential to generate momentum in that direction before the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty comes up for review next April in New York. Source: Guardian Weekly 22.5.09
“The obscene amounts that are spent on national armies and their weaponry suggest that many still believe that the world is made up of us good people and the others who are evil - and that righteous violence is glorious, is not only permissible but commendable, that everybody is at it, so why shouldn't we. It is an anti-Gospel value that assumes we have to do unto others before they do unto us.”
Bishop Donal Mckeown at Pax Christi Ireland Mass for Non-violence
Trident Renewal or Increase Basic State Pension?
Now that the public expenditure cuts debate is underway, make your voice heard about your choices. Contrasting two areas paid for by our taxes and ask which one you would choose?
Would it be Trident Renewal likely to cost £95 billion over its 30 year life span? Many politicians and ex-military personnel agree it is irrelevant to the security challenges Britain faces in the next decades where our biggest problems are likely to centre around international terrorism, failed states, pandemic diseases and, above all, the knock-on effects of climate change.
Would it be an increase in the Basic State Pension? More than two million people are currently so poor they find it hard to afford to heat their homes, eat nutritious food or replace household equipment. Millions of older women lack full entitlement to the Basic State Pension. Even as recently as 2004-05 only 30 per cent of women were retiring with a full pension.
Whichever Party wins the General Election next year there will have to be public expenditure cuts.
Source: Our Taxes – Our Lives Campaign
Trident nuclear weapons system
We welcome the move by the government for a reduction in the planned system which is a serious and positive step towards the scrapping of both the current Trident system and its replacement. This will support the current global initiatives towards the elimination of all nuclear weapons led by President Obama and backed by leaders and nations around the world. But the cuts cannot stop here. Opinion polls are consistently showing that a majority of people oppose Trident replacement, a system that retired generals describe as militarily useless and which does nothing to protect against current threats to our security. By failing to disarm, we encourage proliferation and put ourselves – and the whole world – at greater risk.
Source: Kate Hudson Chair of CND
Copenhagen Summit (COP15)
World leaders, environment ministers and officials will be meeting to thrash out a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. Developing countries, including India and China, believe it is the responsibility of wealthy industrialized countries such as the UK and US to set a clear example on cutting carbon emissions and President Obama’s stated intention to achieve an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is encouraging, although there is some doubt that the US Senate will actually vote on its crucial global warming debate before the Copenhagen talks. Kyoto Protocol phase 1 expires in 2012, COP15 needs:
industrialised countries and emerging economies to agree the levels of reductions of greenhouse gases;
strategies and sufficient finance to help developing countries adapt to the impact of climate change; and
the ensuring of the proper management and transparency of that money.
Source: Vocation for Justice August 2009
Ten Ecological Commandments for 2010
1 Don’t fly or drive unnecessarily. Take a bus or train
or a bike or Shank’s pony.
2 Recycle everything, except your granny or the baby
(or even the teenagers).
3 Grow everything, everywhere: in pots, and bags and
beds (tho’ not the sort you sleep on).
4 Eat locally, eat seasonally, eat simply.
5 Eat less meat and cheese, eat and drink Fair Trade.
6 Turn down heating, turn off switches, turn off taps.
7 Don’t be a victim of fashion; buy clothes that last.
Learn to darn and sew on buttons.
8 Don’t waste anything, especially money and time.
9 Share: your car, the produce from your garden,
your time and ideas.
10 Jesus said: “Do not worry about what to wear or
what to eat ….. for where your treasure is, there will
your heart be also.”
Comment - On the war in Afghanistan
The excuse that we are preventing another 9/11 is thin. That event, whose plotting and training were done in the west, will cause the US to spend what Congress puts at $1.3 trillion on wars and related security by 2019. And still no one has arrested bin Laden. It must be the most extravagant punitive expedition to the Asian mainland since Agamemnon set off for Troy.
Simon Jenkins The Guardian Weekly 30.10.09
The Other Real Presence
Am I mistaken, Lord?
Is it temptation to think
You increasingly urge me
To go forth and proclaim
The need and urgency
Of passing
From the Blessed Sacrament
To your other presence,
Just as real,
In the Eucharist of the poor?
Theologians will argue,
A thousand distinctions be advanced
But woe to him who feeds on You
And later has no eyes to see You
To discern you
Foraging for food among the garbage,
Being evicted every other minute,
Living in sub-human conditions
Under the sign of utter insecurity.
By Helder Camara, written out in his own hand by
Cardinal Basil Hume
Postscript:
Shalom, my friends,
Shalom, my friends,
Shalom! Shalom!
The peace of Christ I give you today.
Shalom! Shalom! Shalom! Shalom!
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