| Sunday, May 2, 2004 |  |
| Some Great Library Resources | 0 comments |
| 2 May 2004 @ 23:14 Biodiversity and Human health http://ecology.org/biod/library/ “Materials that occur in nature and are essential or useful to humans…” note: this is from the Worldbanks' perspective. http://www.worldbank.org/html/schools/glossary.htm |
| How Nations Vote In The UN | 1 comment |
| 2 May 2004 @ 23:12 How they vote in UN From The Commodity Trading Forum http://tfc-charts2.w2d.com/forum/index.cgi?noframes;read=291324 Below are the actual voting records of various Arabic/Islamic States which are recorded in both the US State Department and United Nations records: Kuwait votes against the United States 67% of the time. Qatar votes against the United States 67% of the time. Morocco votes against the United States 70% of the time. United Arab Emirates votes against the U. S. 70% of the time. Jordan votes against the United States 71% of the time. Tunisia votes against the United States 71% of the time. Saudi Arabia votes against the United States 73% of the time. Yemen votes against the United States 74% of the time. Algeria votes against the United States 74% of the time. Oman votes against the United States 74% of the time. Sudan votes against the United States 75% of the time. Pakistan votes against the United States 75% of the time. Libya votes against the United States 76% of the time. Egypt votes against the United States 79% of the time. Lebanon votes against the United States 80% of the time. India votes against the United States 81% of the time. Syria votes against the United States 84% of the time. Mauritania votes against the United States 87% of the time. US Foreign Aid to those that hate us: Egypt, for example, after voting 79% of the time against the United States, still receives $2 billion annually in US Foreign Aid. Jordan votes 71% against the United States and receives $192,814,000 annually in US Foreign Aid. Pakistan votes 75% against the United States and receives $6,721,000 annually in US Foreign Aid. India votes 81% against the United States receives $143,699,000 annually Perhaps it is time to get out of the UN and give the tax savings back to the American workers who are having to skimp and sacrifice to pay the taxes. Now they want to cut oil production, We should cut aid to them by 50% to start. Pass it along. Everyone needs to know this. More > |
| 10 Reasons To Legalize All Drugs | 6 comments |
| 2 May 2004 @ 23:08 Comment from Transform: the campaign for effective drug policy 1 Address the real issues For too long policy makers have used prohibition as a smoke screen to avoid addressing the social and economic factors that lead people to use drugs. Most illegal and legal drug use is recreational. Poverty and despair are at the root of most problematic drug use and it is only by addressing these underlying causes that we can hope to significantly decrease the number of problematic users. 2 Eliminate the criminal market place The market for drugs is demand-led and millions of people demand illegal drugs. Making the production, supply and use of some drugs illegal creates a vacuum into which organised crime moves. The profits are worth billions of pounds. Legalisation forces organised crime from the drugs trade, starves them of income and enables us to regulate and control the market (i.e. prescription, licensing, laws on sales to minors, advertising regulations etc.) 3 Massively reduce crime The price of illegal drugs is determined by a demand-led, unregulated market. Using illegal drugs is very expensive. This means that some dependent users resort to stealing to raise funds (accounting for 50% of UK property crime - estimated at £2 billion a year). Most of the violence associated with illegal drug dealing is caused by its illegality Legalisation would enable us to regulate the market, determine a much lower price and remove users need to raise funds through crime. Our legal system would be freed up and our prison population dramatically reduced, saving billions. Because of the low price, cigarette smokers do not have to steal to support their habits. There is also no violence associated with the legal tobacco market. 4 Drug users are a majority Recent research shows that nearly half of all 15-16 year olds have used an illegal drug. Up to one and a half million people use ecstasy every weekend. Amongst young people, illegal drug use is seen as normal. Intensifying the 'war on drugs' is not reducing demand. In Holland, where cannabis laws are far less harsh, drug usage is amongst the lowest in Europe. Legalisation accepts that drug use is normal and that it is a social issue, not a criminal justice one. How we deal with it is up to all of us to decide. In 1970 there were 9000 convictions or cautions for drug offences and 15% of young people had used an illegal drug. In 1995 the figures were 94 000 and 45%. Prohibition doesn't work. 5 Provide access to truthful information and education A wealth of disinformation about drugs and drug use is given to us by ignorant and prejudiced policy-makers and media who peddle myths upon lies for their own ends. This creates many of the risks and dangers associated with drug use. Legalisation would help us to disseminate open, honest and truthful information to users and non-users to help them to make decisions about whether and how to use. We could begin research again on presently illicit drugs to discover all their uses and effects - both positive and negative. 6 Make all drug use safer Prohibition has led to the stigmatisation and marginalisation of drug users. Countries that operate ultra-prohibitionist policies have very high rates of HIV infection amongst injecting users. Hepatitis C rates amongst users in the UK are increasing substantially. In the UK in the '80's clean needles for injecting users and safer sex education for young people were made available in response to fears of HIV. Harm reduction policies are in direct opposition to prohibitionist laws. 7 Restore our rights and responsibilities Prohibition unnecessarily criminalises millions of otherwise law-abiding people. It removes the responsibility for distribution of drugs from policy makers and hands it over to unregulated, sometimes violent dealers. Legalisation restores our right to use drugs responsibly to change the way we think and feel. It enables controls and regulations to be put in place to protect the vulnerable. 8 Race and Drugs Black people are over ten times more likely to be imprisoned for drug offences than whites. Arrests for drug offences are notoriously discretionary allowing enforcement to easily target a particular ethnic group. Prohibition has fostered this stereotyping of black people. Legalisation removes a whole set of laws that are used to disproportionately bring black people into contact with the criminal justice system. It would help to redress the over representation of black drug offenders in prison. 9 Global Implications The illegal drugs market makes up 8% of all world trade (around £300 billion a year). Whole countries are run under the corrupting influence of drug cartels. Prohibition also enables developed countries to wield vast political power over producer nations under the auspices of drug control programmes. Legalisation returns lost revenue to the legitimate taxed economy and removes some of the high-level corruption. It also removes a tool of political interference by foreign countries against producer nations. 10 Prohibition doesn't work There is no evidence to show that prohibition is succeeding. The question we must ask ourselves is, "What are the benefits of criminalising any drug?" If, after examining all the available evidence, we find that the costs outweigh the benefits, then we must seek an alternative policy. Legalisation is not a cure-all but it does allow us to address many of the problems associated with drug use, and those created by prohibition. The time has come for an effective and pragmatic drug policy. "If the (drug) problem continues advancing as it is at the moment, we're going to be faced with some very frightening options. Either you have a massive reduction in civil rights or you have to look at some radical solutions. The issue has to be, can a criminal justice system solve this particular problem?" Commander John Grieve, Criminal Intelligence Unit, Scotland Yard, Channel 4 1997 Copyright Transform Campaign for effective drug policy Easton Business Centre Felix Road Easton Bristol BS1 0HE Telephone: +44 (0) 117 941 5810 Facsimile: +44 (0) 117 941 5809 Email: rae@transform-drugs.org.uk web:www.transform-drugs.org.uk More > |
| A New Life For An Ancient FLute | 1 comment |
| 2 May 2004 @ 23:07 Few Chinese people have heard of the yue, an ancient wind instrument that belonged to the flute family. However, this flute used to be an important instrument in many ancient ceremonial rituals. In The Book of Songs (Shi Jing), the most ancient collection of Chinese poetry, which was compiled in the 6th century BCE, yue is the most frequently mentioned wind instrument. After the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) about 1,700 years ago, the yue seemed to have disappeared. The disappearance of the yue was a mystery, and even modern researchers had only a vague idea of what the yue might have been like. In 1986 and 1987, a number of wind instruments made of animal bones were unearthed in Wuyang County, in central China's Henan Province. These instruments, named gudi, are about 20 centimetres long and 1 centimetre in diameter, and could produce a complete seven-note scale. Dating tests indicated that these bone flutes were about 8,000 years old. The discovery pushed the history of Chinese musical instruments back a further 3,000 years, yet musicologists have not found any historical accounts of this instrument, and the blank of several thousand years in the history of Chinese instruments is hard to explain. However, the enigma of the mysterious yue and the bone flutes seemed to explain one another in the eyes of Liu Zhengguo, a scholar of Chinese music history who is also skilled in playing the transverse bamboo flute (dizi) and its vertical twin the xiao. Liu is convinced that the gudi is, in fact, the yue. Liu became interested in the ancient bone flute when he was teaching the history of ancient Chinese music at South China Normal University in 1992. Because Liu himself is a wind instrument player, he wanted to play the ancient bone instrument for his students when he was discussing it in his course. Similar to wind instruments with neither a mouth hole nor a notch, such as the bamboo chou of central China and the ney of the Tajik people, the bone flute has to be played obliquely. Liu always wanted to try the original bone flute but had had no opportunity. The opportunity finally came in 2001, when the archaeology team of the University of Science and Technology of China unearthed another group of ancient bone flutes also at Wuyang, in Henan, and invited Liu to play them. Liu was very excited when he tried the original instruments, playing about 10 tunes on them. "The original guyue had a uniquely sonorous sound because of fossilization," said Liu. "It is really amazing that an instrument 8,000 years old can still be played." In February 2001, Liu gave two concerts with the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra in Hong Kong, where he introduced the ancient bone flute to the audience. Source: China Daily (26 April 2004) More > |