Perhaps They’ll Get The Message

–Some are protesting the pope’s stand on condoms by sending them to him–While traveling in Africa recently, Pope Benedict XVI said that condoms were not the answer to AIDS, though the continent is ravaged by the disease and condoms have been hailed as an effective prevention. His remarks have sparked protest in many circles. One protest, however, deserves mention because it is rare that a protest can manage to make its point with humor. An Italian group on the social networking site, Facebook, is urging people to send condoms to the pope. The packaged product the group proposes is a white plastic packet with the pope’s picture and the caption, I said no. The organizers were expecting some 60,000 condoms to be delivered to the Vatican. Others in Europe and elsewhere have also joined the protest, and it is possible that more condoms would be sent. Some are also sending a picture of a condom via email. Although the Vatican has tried hard to engage in damage control, there’s still the question of what they will do with all these condoms!Perhaps they’ll get the message after all.

Who’s In the Wrong?

–If we want tough on crime policies we have to accept the responsibility of the price tag that goes with them–The saga of who shall control California’s inmates’ healthcare continues. Judge Thelton Henderson has refused the Governor and Attorney General’s motion to oversee inmates’ healthcare as well as construction plans for a medical facility. The state’s officials are objecting to he $8 billion cost and feel that since 2006 when the judge appointed a receiver to oversee the prison system’s healthcare, improvements have been made. The judge thinks that without further changes in place the improvements would stop if there was no receiver. The Attorney General, former governor and presidential candidate Jerry Brown, says that California spends $14,000 a year per inmate per year on medical care, far more than any other state.
Many people still want tough on crime policies, even more want people to serve prison time for a number of offenses and feel that prisons ought not to have gyms or recreation areas. There are even those who are ambivalent about money being spent on health care for inmates. Our attitudes as a whole may be tainted by revenge, however hidden, and the absence of compassion, however expressed. But even leaving the spiritual issues aside, there is something wrong with our attitudes. If we want prisons we need to pay for them. Whether we like it or not our attitudes involve a responsibility, and we need to accept it is a responsibility with a price tag. If not, we’re the ones in the wrong.

The Right To Sanitation

–The lack of basic sanitation is a hidden problem–It’s hard to talk about certain things, but not talking make them worse. It’s true for certain feelings, certain problems and in this case, open defecation. The World Water Forum is meeting In Istanbul and several have already mentioned how not talking about this basic sanitation problem is costing lives since it literally is an open invitation to many diseases. One in five people in the world does not have access to what it would take for them not to be forced into open defecation. The problem would be so easily preventable when one considers that for each dollar spent in installing basic sanitation $9 would be saved on health costs, lost wages and sicknesses. In some areas women have to wake up before dawn and defecate under the darkness of open fields making themselves targets for rape and other attacks. In densely populated areas people defecate in plastic bags which are thrown into rivers and other places where pollution accumulates. The underlying problem is poor water or no access to water at all. In 2002 the number of deaths attributed to poor water, sanitation and hygiene was over 3.5 million. Over 94% of diarrhea cases which kills more than 1.4 million children a year would be preventable if basic sanitation existed.
We can put our bathrooms on our list of what to be grateful for, but we must do more than that, we must educate ourselves so that we can educate others that this problem be no longer hidden. Even more crucial, we must join those who call for water—and sanitation—to be declared a basic human right.

A Misplaced Priority?

–The slow food movement may be popular in some social circles but how can it help world hunger?–I read how the global economic crisis is threatening hunger in several countries. I hear about the President of Sudan trying to expel international aid workers and the consequences for the already destitute and abused in Darfur. I see a documentary on a Cambodian mother teaching her daughter how to retrieve red ants from a bush so that what will be their only source of protein can be mixed into their noodle soup dinner. And then I come upon a TV segment on Alice Waters and her slow food movement. Is she as disconnected from world realities as she seems to me to be? Or, is it I who misses something? Good food, she says, should be a right. Amen! But how is slow food going to feed the hungry, help the half of the world’s population (yes, half) who are either hungry or malnourished? It may be that whatever its merits—and they do exist—the slow food movement is—for some at least—a misplaced priority.