A win•win path to peace in Kosovo and Yugoslavia
Peaceful warriors the press ignored
Building spiritual bridges in Belgrade
We try to craft a peaceful world, but the tool we use is violence
We The People

Stanislaus Community Assistance Project (SCAP) needs volunteers.

A romp among beheaded cabbage: reply to Vasu Murty

Animal rights and civil rights

Project Censored identifies the 10 most-under-reported stories of 1998

We must break the chains of debt! The Jubilee 2000/USA Campaign

Politics and misinformation won out over needs of lesbian and gay students

Thanne longen folk go on pilgrimages (Chaucer)

LIVING LIGHTLY:

Mud Pies and Purple Onions

Recipe:  Old fashioned apricot jam

Stanislaus cyclists gather to plan a better future

DIALOGUE: LETTERS

By DAN ONORATO

On Thursday, July 22, the Peace/Life Center will feature Barbara Lubin, Executive Director of the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA), in a public talk and discussion about Israel and Iraq. This second in the Center's Peace Issues Forums will take place at 7:00 p.m. in the Stanislaus County Library's auditorium on 16th and "I" in Modesto.Lubin will discuss current relations between Israel and the Palestinians and the prospects for peace under Israel's Prime Minister-elect, Ehud Barak. She will also discuss U.N. sanctions and U.S. foreign policy on Iraq.Lubin founded and has directed MECA since 1988. Since that time the organization has delivered over $3.8 million in direct humanitarian aid to children's clinics and schools in the Occupied Territories, Lebanon, and Iraq. Lubin herself has led twelve delegations to the region and has lectured widely throughout the United States.MECA is committed to working for peace and justice for both Palestinians and Israelis and supports separate states for Palestine and Israel. The organization works to promote the human rights of all people in the region, especially focusing on the rights of children.The San Francisco Bay Guardian named Lubin a "Local Hero" for her tireless efforts as a community organizer and lifelong fighter for equality, compassion, and justice. She has served on the Berkeley Board of Education and on Berkeley's Public Housing Commission, worked to oppose apartheid and nuclear weapons, and as a mother of a child with Down's Syndrome was one of the early promoters of disabled persons' civil rights.

For more information on MECA, follow links from www.igc.org/meca.

The Center's Peace Issues Forum aims to heighten public awareness and education on current conflicts affecting peace, justice, or a sustainable environment. The event is free and all are welcome.

By NORMAN SOLOMON

Creators Syndicate

Once upon a time, in early June of 1999, the man on the throne displayed his moral finery as he complained that "children are being fed a dependable daily dose of violence." The emperor added: "This desensitizes our children to violence and to the consequences of it."

Courtiers and scribes exclaimed that the monarch was resplendent in the garb of wisdom. Reporting his statements with reverence, the journalists of the day were generally impressed. They nodded with appreciation for the popular verities.

Sovereigns had long made a habit of going on parade while wearing pious garments, and this ruler was no exception. His loud costumes proclaimed how deeply he abhorred violence.

Of course, some of the powerful scribes did not care for this particular emperor. They would have preferred the election of a different ruler, cloaked in another style. But they were content to criticize the current ruler for having bad taste in clothing.

Meanwhile, there were many prominent defenders. For instance, a gentleman named Anthony Lewis was one of the bluebloods who found the emperor to be quite presentable. Sir Anthony saw virtues and responsibilities. "We are in the war now," he wrote in the New York Times as the spring neared its end, "and for the most urgent political as well as moral reasons we must win."

On parade, the sovereign walked with dignity as he showed off the golden fabric of his nobility. Along with other influential scribes, Sir Anthony cheered and bowed while the stately procession advanced, imperial flags rippling in the wind. He wrote death sentences like: "NATO air attacks have killed Serbian civilians. That is regrettable. But it is a price that has to be paid when a nation falls in behind a criminal leader."

Somewhere in the crowd stood a little girl and a little boy who were perplexed. They wanted to know why the scribes, so respected and so widely heeded, did not talk about the huge holes in the weave of the emperor’s pronouncements. In fact, watching the parade, they wondered why no one mentioned that the royal highness was just about bare.

The two kids scratched their heads when the emperor denounced some forms of media for stirring up violence among young people. "The boundary between fantasy and reality violence — which is a clear line for most adults — can become very blurred for vulnerable children," the emperor declared at a Rose Garden ceremony.

"Why does he prance around with a few skimpy strands of cloth dangling from his shoulders?" the little girl asked. She became more agitated when the emperor’s wife stepped forward to deplore a "culture of violence that is engulfing American children every day."

The girl began to worry about lacking sophistication. She couldn’t find any consistent thread running through the regal assertions. The royal couple kept saying that the culture of violence was bad. But their great enthusiasm for the present war seemed certain to further inflame it.

"What kind of values are we promoting," the emperor’s wife asked rhetorically, without a hint of irony, "when a child can walk into a store and find video games where you win based on how many people you can kill or how many places you can blow up?"

The little boy tried to sort out the whole situation. "It must be a matter of the difference between pretend and for real," he observed. "The emperor and his wife don’t want us to play at killing people because we might get confused and actually do it without proper authorization. The point is that we should wait till we’re a few years older. Then, we could join the armed forces, and if an emperor wants us to kill some people we could do so, and everybody will praise us."

"I suppose that’s true," said the little girl. "For a while there, I figured the emperor for a stark naked hypocrite. But the scribes don’t seem to see through his finery, so maybe we shouldn’t either. Or at least we ought to keep it to ourselves."

"The emperor’s wearing some fine new clothes after all," said the little boy. "Surely, if he wasn’t wearing a stitch, the wise people of the mass media would point that out."

"That makes sense. After all, who are you going to believe, the news media or your own eyes?"

"Remember the July 4th Fundraiser!"

This stentorian cry rang out from Dan Onorato’s magnificent Victorian bathtub as his rubber duck’s dawdling dingy sank amid thundering waves of bubble bath and popping champagne corks. This, indeed, is the very same tub forecast by former editor and continuing contributor, Fred Herman, to be his final resting place (something about being found belly up).

Happily for us and Mr. Herman (sojourning in Mexico), the event foretold has not come to pass. However, under special arrangement for this year’s potluck fundraiser, the large, illustrious tub (thought once to house Winston Churchill’s floating corpulence) will be offered to the highest bidder on Sunday, July Fourth at the home of Charles Milligan, 1741 W. Hatch, Modesto. The fun begins at 4 p.m. and ends at 10 p.m.

Not to be outdone by Myrtle Osner’s delicious pies or Onorato’s sumptuous Italian food and revelry, local boy George Lucas has donated for auction his third grade notebook, crammed with scribblings decipherable only by protocol droid C3PO. There are, however, some semi-legible ramblings about an obscure kid named Skywalker.

At press time, arduous talks were continuing with Bill Gates for the donation of his $33,000,000 Leonardo da Vinci notebook. Exasperated, chief negotiator and auctioneer, David Rockwell reports that we may have to settle for a copy of Windows 3.1 and a digital copy of the Last Supper. Rockwell has one last bargaining chip up his modem — a direct link to the origins of the Worm.exec.zip virus. Rockwell and Gates are now toe-to-toe, byte-to-byte. A crash appears imminent.

Meanwhile, frank and open discussions regarding Don McMillan’s offer of a box of compost worms have ground to a halt. The worms have fled underground, and McMillan is trying to wiggle out of the deal. A union spokesworm told CONNECTIONS that composting conditions under McMillan’s kitchen sink were intolerable — too much hair in their dirt it seems! McMillan has called in a shovel strike force from Slippery Jim’s Fish & Cut Bait shop. More on tonight’s Nightline with Ted Koppel reporting live from McMillan’s compost heap.

Enough of this frivolity! You can plainly see what is in store for you.

BRING FOOD AND DRINK TO SHARE, FIREWORKS IF YOU LIKE, AND YOUR CHECKBOOK! If you have an auction item (exotic or not) call Dan Onorato ASAP, 526-5436.

—James Costello

By INDIRA CLARK

During the Modesto Peace Center's first couple of years, Martha Webber printed the newsletter (predecessor of STANISLAUS CONNECTIONS) on an old off-set press until she recruited and trained a teenager to take over the job. This, during the darkest days of the Viet Nam War, across the street from the high school in Church of the Brethren office where she was secretary (and many a minister said boss), in the little, dusty, conservative Central Valley town of Modesto.

Martha's generous support, both financial and loving concern, continued through the decades not just for the issues but for the individuals working locally to make the world a better place. Phyllis Harvey wrote in last month's paper about Martha's positive outlook; she always had words of appreciation for work done and encouragement for work needing doing. Her glow enveloped so many, several saying at her memorial service that she loved all the same: her children, neighbors, co-workers, church community, patients, the teenagers whose fights she broke up.

That old, worn (wooden rollers!) printing press has long since been replaced by a photocopier, but the ink of that experience permanently stained my hands and colored my life.

And, in recent years, I thought I detected a extra sparkle to her glow when, on seeing my family, Martha would first scan my rapidly-growing children, looking for my middle daughter, "Where's Martha?!"

By INDIRA CLARK

Golden is usually used in celebration of 50th anniversaries but the 25th Annual Pancake Breakfast was indeed golden. Savory Corn Pancakes, complete with salsa, are remembered with much lip-smacking; and the special of the year, delicately flavored Golden Pecan, joined the traditional favorites: Blueberry, Scotch Oaties, and Buttermilk. A cool morning, sunshine casting a glow on the breakfasters, and the fresh garden bouquets and plate garnishes rivaled the best of Provence (see Sara Thompson's article page 9).

"How did you make such big changes in just one year!" exclaimed a very surprised, and satisfied, Phyllis Harvey after being served perfectly cooked cakes in a matter of moments. The change in locale and different kitchen equipment did throw us off last year. (As suggested, the kitchen crew all kept our day jobs.) But we were back with some new equipment and a finer-tuned operation. And, despite those half-burned, half-soupy, very sloooow flapjacks last year, people showed up again -- attendance was up as was revenue, a fabulous 40 per cent over last year's all-time high!

The Peace/Life Center's lack of ageism was much in evidence: workers' ages spanned the decades from the young people—including not-yet ten-year-olds—delivering peacecakes and washing dishes to octogenarians faithfully setting up the literature table and talking of peace.

Thanks to all the many, but not enough, workers (et tu, all the ubiquitous forty- and fiftysomethings) and to the College Avenue Congregational Church for hosting the event.

Stanislaus Community Assistance Project (SCAP) needs volunteers

SCAP is looking for volunteers to work in our Hand to Hand program. They will provide practical and emotional support to individuals in our community living with terminal illnesses. (SCAP is the former Stanislaus Aids Project now expanded to other terminal illnesses.)

The first training session of SCAP's five week training program will be on Tuesday July 6 from l to 4 pm. Successive training will be held every Tuesday through August 3.

What do you do with those Spanish-language kids' books?

There is still time to donate Spanish-language books (especially for very young and for learning handicapped children) for the Merced-Somoto sister-city delegate to take to Nicaragua in July.

Contact Shelly Scribner 521-6304 (Modesto) or Betty Stewart 722-0401 (Merced)

By MYRTLE OSNER

Apricots should be very ripe, the squooshier the better. Pit them and grind or chop coarsely.

Place in a large kettle:

6 cups apricots
4 cups sugar
1 cup crushed pineapple with its juice
1/4 cup lemon juice
a few apricot pits (helps to scour pan & adds flavor)

Bring it to a boil, stirring it constantly. Attention: this burns very easily! So don't go off and leave it!

Turn heat down low so it simmers. Stir every few minutes, being sure to scrape the bottom of the pan. Boil until thick.

Since this has no pectin it will not jell, but it tastes 100 per cent better. Real flavor!

By DON MCMILLAN

Stanislaus County isn't living up to its potential as a paradise for bicyclists, many riders believe. "We're blessed with an excellent climate. It doesn't get cold, not when you think of Michigan. It doesn't snow, and it doesn't rain too much. What's more, it's flat," commented one. Many cyclists believe that the county and its cities could save money, create quieter, safer neighborhoods, and provide its citizens with practical outdoor exercise by strategic investments in bicycle facilities, such as bike lanes, secure bicycle parking, safety education for both cyclists and motorists, and increased availability of bike racks on transit.

So a group of cycling advocates has begun to meet to draw up an agenda and to coordinate activities among organizations who share common ground with bicyclists. The group seeks dynamic and resourceful bicyclists county wide to contribute to an emerging vision for the county in which bicycles play a key role in dispersing congestion, preserving air quality, and building community. "Our meetings have consistently drawn six or more people," said spokesperson Don McMillan. "Now is a crucial time for people who want to see bicycling become well integrated as an important element in personal mobility here. Without the combined vision of a broad spectrum of cyclists, our voices are unlikely to be heard."

to renew the special sales tax which funds the Stanislaus County library system.

Heard around STANISLAUS CONNECTIONS paste-up room about what to do with your yard sign:

Don: hmm...shred the sign for your worm compost bedding? I don't know what chemicals might lurk in the paper and ink.

Jim: in an emergency use as a splint and sling cradle. (You never know when an unfortunate cyclist like David Rockwell or George Osner might crash on your block.)

Betty: tack on a right-to-health-care amendment sign to the stake.

Bill: did I hear someone mention steak? My inner chef can't wait to season it.

Dan: sand the stake a bit before using as a handle for your peace-in-Kosovo sign at the vigil

Dan and Barbara: stake up a tomato; try an indeterminate heirloom variety.

Indira: collect a neighborhood's worth of stakes to cobble together a flower drying rack.

Nancy: use the sign as a trivet under big pans at Peace/Life fundraisers, and the stake would come in handy to stir a large pot of summer garden stew.

By DON MCMILLAN

I thank Vasu Murty for his perspective on vegetarianism and non-violence (CONNECTIONS, 4/'99). I respect his commitment to both. I'm also thankful for his fomenting my own consideration of the issue. The result shows my own limitations and is entirely about me and my experience.

Nutritionally, I, too, am vegetarian. A slab of pork or veal appeals about as vainly to my appetite as the manure such slabs pile while still ahoof. But not all vegetarianism is the same just as not all Christians are alike. In my case, resistance to eating meat, fish, or poultry is less a conscious, moral decision than an irrational result of childhood conditioning. Murty lists Ellen White and John Harvey Kellogg among Christian practitioners of vegetarianism. These founders of Seventh-day Adventism's "Health Message" profoundly influenced my childhood. Kellogg's experimental dietary industry which propped corn flakes boxes on American tables like gods of breakfast also set the stage for the vegeburgers and vegelinks I ate as a child. Ellen White's diatribes against killing animals tinged with moral repugnance my slant on neighbors of adjoining ranchettes' slaughter of cattle, swine, goats, and fowl. My mother was so deeply convicted by White's writings as to try dissuading me from these spectacles.

Ironies fractured this childhood and youth of mine. My father conducted often lethal tissue research on animal subjects at the university founded by Ellen White. The church taught me a certain alienation from other forms of animal life. Refraining from eating animals was often for dietary purity, a physiological health concern with scarce compunction against wearing animal skins. I remember being taught a song, pointedly a denial of Darwinism, that ran "I am no kin to the monkey, and the monkey is no kin to me." As a reluctant young churchgoer, I seem to recall in one of those interminable pulpit prayers a plea for the life of the university's then-current celebrity: Baby Fae, kept alive a few days by a heart transplant from a baboon. Belief according to Judeo Christian tradition that God created huMANity for dominion over other creatures justified prolonging the baby's life at the cost of the baboon's.

As an adult, I do not consciously practice Adventist or Christian precepts. But my childhood taboo against eating flesh persists. My diet has changed. I don't see a need to perpetuate denomination-linked food industries like Kellogg pioneered, and I don't buy vegetable protein packaged to suggest meat. Deciding I could live without dairy or eggs allowed me to dispense with a refrigerator which draws, I've read, 15 percent of an ordinary household's electricity—the same percentage as the Modesto Irrigation District traces to nuclear sources for its electric supply. To be sure, I can think of good reasons for continued refraining from eating meat. But my most fundamental resistance is the least rational. It's not primarily about social justice, it's not primarily about kindness; it's about taboo.

I wonder, too, whether it's about delusions that I'm relinquishing—beliefs that I was in control. Refraining from eating meat could be about repressing the mortality of all flesh, including ours. It could be disguised resentment against the powers greater than our own which set us amid so many life forms that eat other life forms and of being in that daedal web as perhaps the only life form in constant dread of ceasing to live, of maybe becoming lunch for some other wight. Though I don't expect to pick up a drumstick suddenly and devour as lustily as I do an ear of sweet corn, I want to let go of the resentment that, if only I could dispense with morticians' embalming toxins, my own flesh someday will nourish the soil.

Christianity seems to insist that that soil wouldn't be the end of me. There's a resurrection and eternal life (or damnation) to be experienced by some being that would be recognized as an extension of my mortal essence, it urges. In a literal sense—the grass and flowers that might burst from soil that my remains nurtured—I cherish that eastern boogeyman of Christian fundamentalism, reincarnation. Still, I don't accept that my present consciousness and perspective will ever reintegrate, though my living will have eternal, yet infinitesimal, influence. Though hardly possessing superhuman courage in the face of death, intellectually, I do not resent that other creatures could enjoy feeding and breeding among my remains. If the worms enjoy pinochle, may my sneezing meld suits for their leisure! (Though the blow that decks me leave decks suited for worms, the poor queen of spades'll unearth no jack o' diamonds from my sepulcher.)

This brings me to one vegetarian's recent moment of leisure in a community garden. The cabbage had all been beheaded—a knife to the throat of something weaker than us? (Can you stomach that figure of speech, Isaac Bashevis Singer?) Among the decapitated plants, white-winged butterflies checkered the cole-rank whiffs. I thought of the young kale across the garden aisle. I thought of the green caterpillars I'd found steamed into stiff, turgid rouleaux among my greens. Doubtless a few such stiffs have escaped my notice and turned me into their "living grave." Then, too, my pitching aside the noticed carcasses didn't prevent their murders; it just spurned their nourishment. I thought about checking such larvae's population by purging prospective parent butterflies' pupation among the spent cabbage.

I started uprooting it. Aphid residue puffed like ash from among stems now chockablock with stringiness. My palms inexorably wrung metropolises of aphids while my fingerprints enwhorled the suburbs. Body fluids darkened and made tacky my hands. But those aphids who bled in my grasp were the lucky ones. What about those who went on sucking while the roots went dry and the topsy-turvy plants waited in the scorching noon for their turn in the compost pile? Their starvation extended, no doubt, to the larvae of butterflies whose egg-laying larks over the kale I aimed to curtail. Depending on what species we regard too noble to kill, there is no line between vegetarians and microcosmic Auschwitzes. Yes, there is a fine line between eating and perpetrating crimes against what lives, and there, but for the gifts of the universe, go I.

Then I saw a nearby sow thistle jumping rhythmically. I guessed that at its base rasped a gopher tired of eating such fiber-choked slaw as I uprooted. I crept close, remembering how often, during the spring, similar gnawing had claimed young broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage. I eased closer, sure the gopher would hear and flee down its hatch. But the thistle kept thrashing, and I peered down on the fat devourer who paused, sensing me. But as though disoriented it ran into the open. I stepped closer, contemplating my heel coming up from a murderous deed. The gopher sized up the threat, faced me, threw back its head and displayed its four orange incisors. I saw blood rimming its pockets.

I looked at the teeth. I thought of my heels, naked in their sport sandals. If I had worn my cattle-fur-and-Gore-Tex hiking boots like I did during colder months, I'd probably have added the gopher to my vegetarian's Auschwitz. As it was, I ran for something with a blade and handle. When I returned, the gopher had subsided. Like in the Disney nature films I watched as a kid, the cute prey got away.

Aware of the costs to animals (and how do I count plants?) of my own appetites, no longer can I dogmatically exclude as partners carnivorous fellow humans from my efforts to build a healthy, sane social relationship with whatever teems on earth. What, then, is my motivation for considering non-violence towards humans when I know my violence towards non-humans? I finally admit that I see no way but through some speciesism. I do indeed see humans as unique among life forms, though not as masters of our universe. I believe that if we see ourselves as alien to the creation on which our nourishment depends, either as better than or above it, or as wicked and unworthy of it, we are likely to be abusive to other creatures. But in humans I see a vulnerability that I do not see in other creatures. Maybe I overlook it in them, even willfully so. This unique human vulnerability is fundamentally our awareness of and continual preoccupation with (fear of?) mortality. I believe that when I interfere with another human being's resolving their own reality, I show disrespect for that process both in them and in me. Deliberately causing human injury or death presumes control over their term to resolve the issues with which their mortality has freighted them.

When it comes to legislating animal rights, I believe that the web of life will ever baffle human law. Humans designed neither weasels' appetites nor their prey. For me, one of the most liberating events has been my acceptance that I did not invent my appetites. They are gifts—gifts, surely, that I might abuse. But I don't believe that the giver expects me to repress those appetites, rather to enjoy their most thrifty satisfaction within the marvelous web of life. My biggest challenge is resenting that I give back to the web as I have taken. Death, I believe, even though it shocks and scares and bereaves, is that choice boon through which I defray my takings.

By VASU MURTY

In his 1975 book, "Animal Liberation," Australian philosopher Peter Singer writes that the "tyranny of human over nonhuman animals" is "causing an amount of pain and suffering that can only be compared with that which resulted from the centuries of tyranny by white humans over black humans." Abraham Lincoln said: "I care not for a man’s religion whose dog or cat are not the better for it...I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being."

Supporters of civil rights should be supportive of animal rights. Many of the moral and theological arguments used today to oppress animals were once used to oppress blacks. Bucker H. Payne, calling himself "Ariel," wrote in 1867, "the tempter in the Garden of Eden...was a beast, a talking beast...the negro." Ariel argued that since the negro was not part of Noah’s family, he must have been a beast. Eight souls were saved on the ark, therefore, the negro must be a beast, and "consequently he has no soul to be saved."

In her preface to Marjorie Spiegel’s "The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery," Alice Walker, author of "The Color Purple," writes: "The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men..."

At a rally in San Francisco protesting the use of animals in medical research, former Alameda County supervisor John George said, "My people were the first laboratory animals in America." Black Americans suffered at the hands of research scientists just as animals continue to do today.

In 1968, civil rights leader Dick Gregory compared humanity’s treatment of animals to the conditions of America’s inner cities:

"Animals and humans suffer and die alike. If you had to kill your own hog before you ate it, most likely you would not be able to do it. To hear the hog scream, to see the blood spill, to see the baby being taken away from its momma, and to see the look of death in the animal’s eye would turn your stomach. So you get the man at the packing house to do the killing for you.

"In like manner, if the wealthy aristocrats who are perpetuating conditions in the ghetto actually heard the screams of ghetto suffering, or saw the slow death of hungry little kids, or witnessed the strangulation of manhood and dignity, they could not continue the killing. But the wealthy are protected from such horror...If you can justify killing to eat meat, you can justify the conditions of the ghetto. I cannot justify either one."

Gregory credits the Judeo-Christian ethic and the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with having caused him to become a vegetarian. In 1973, he drew a connection between vegetarianism and nonviolent civil disobedience:

"...the philosophy of nonviolence, which I learned from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during my involvement in the civil rights movement was first responsible for my change in diet. I became a vegetarian in 1965. I had been a participant in all of the ‘major’ and most of the ‘minor’ civil rights demonstrations of the early sixties, including the March on Washington and the Selma to Montgomery March.

"Under the leadership of Dr. King, I became totally committed to nonviolence, and I was convinced that nonviolence meant opposition to killing in any form. I felt the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ applied to human beings not only in their dealings with each other — war, lynching, assassination, murder and the like — but in their practice of killing animals for food or sport.

"Animals and humans suffer and die alike... Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life."

In a 1979 interview, Gregory explained, "I didn’t become a vegetarian for health reasons; I became a vegetarian strictly for moral reasons...Vegetarianism will definitely be a people’s movement."

When asked if humans will ultimately have to answer to a Supreme Being for their exploitation of animals, Gregory replied, "I think we answer for that every time we go to the hospital with cancer and other diseases."

Gregory has also expressed the opinion that the plight of the poor will improve as humans cease to slaughter animals: "I would say that the treatment of animals has something to do with the treatment of people. The Europeans have always regarded their slaves and the people they have colonialized as animals."

Since the 1980s, Dick Gregory has been involved in the anti-drug campaign. Bruce Friedrich of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) reports that under Gregory’s influence, Dexter Scott King — head of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolence in Atlanta, and son of the slain civil rights leader — and King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, have both become committed vegetarians.

Peter Singer concludes in "Animal Liberation" that "by ceasing to rear and kill animals for food, we can make extra food available for humans that, properly distributed, would eliminate starvation and malnutrition from this planet. Animal liberation is human liberation, too." The animal rights movement should be supported by all caring Americans.

Project Censored identifies the 10 most-under-reported stories of 1998

This annual project is conducted by more than 125 faculty, student researchers and interns, and community experts. The final 10 censored stories are ranked in order of significance by a panel of national judges including members of the media, authors and educators.

Program director Peter Phillips said he hopes to see a network of alternative press sharing significant stories the public needs to know since control of mainstream media, and therefore, what most people know, falls into the control of an ever smaller number of corporations.

The top 10 under-reported stories of 1998 are:

1. Secret international trade agreement undermines the sovereignty of nations: The Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) plans protections for foreign investment by giving corporations near equal rights to nations, pressuring nations to relax or nullify human, environmental and labor protection in order to attract investment and trade. Sources: In These Times, "Building the Global Economy," January 11, 1998, by Joel Bleifuss; Democratic Left, "MAI Ties," Spring 1998, by Bill Dixon; Tribune Des Driots Humains, "Human Rights or Corporate Rights?" April 1998, Volume 5, No.’s 1-2.

2. Chemical corporations profit off breast cancer: Leaders in cancer treatment and information are the same chemical companies that produce carcinogenic products. Sources: Rachel's Environment and Health Weekly, "The Truth About Breast Cancer," Dec. 4, 1997, by Peter Montague; The Green Guide, "Profiting Off Breast Cancer" Oct. 1998, by Allison Sloan and Tracy Baxter.

3. Monsanto's genetically modified seeds threaten world production: Delta Land and Pine Company and the US Department of Agriculture have been awarded a patent on a technique that genetically disables seed, causing farmers to buy new seed each year instead of saving old ones. Sources: Mojo Wire, "A Seedy Business" http://www.motherjones.com/news-Wire/broydo.html, April 7, 1998, by Leora Broydo; Third World Resurgence #92, "New Patent Aims to Prevent Farmers From Saving Seed," by Chakravarthi Raghavan Earth Island Journal, "Terminator Seeds Threaten an End to Farming," Fall 1998, by Hope Shand and Pat Mooney; The Ecologist, "Monsanto: A Checkered History" and "Revolving Doors: Monsanto and the Regulators," Sept./Oct. 1998, Vol. 28, No. 5, by Brian Tokar.

4. Recycled radioactive metals may be in your home: Under special government permits, "decontaminated" radioactive metal is sold to manufacture everything from knives and forks and belt buckles to zippers, eyeglasses, dental fillings and IUDs. Source: The Progressive, "Nuclear Spoons," October 1998, by Anne-Marie Cusac

5. U. S. weapons linked to the deaths of a half a million children: Although the United States defames the Iraqi government for damaging the environment and ignoring U.N. Security Council resolutions, it has itself engaged in covert wars and left behind a swath of ecological disasters. Since the Gulf War, about 1.5 million Iraqis have died as a result of US/UN sanctions, about one-third of them children. Sources: San Francisco Bay Guardian, "Made in America," Feb. 25, 1998, by Dennis Bernstein; I.F. Magazine, "Punishing Saddam or the Iraqis, March/April 1998, by Bill Blum; Space and Security News, "Our Continuing War Against Iraq," May 1998, by the Most Rev. Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF (retired).

6. United States nuclear program subverts U.N.'s Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: When India conducted a deep underground test, it was seen as a violation of the United Nation's Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. However, two months before, the United States carried out a test largely unnoticed by the American media. Underground experiments aren't the U.S. Government's only method of subverting the Treaty, says The Nation. On the same day as the U.S. test, Russia conducted a subcritical test at its site at Novaya Zemlya. In defending the experiment, Russian officials pointed to the U.S. test. Source: The Nation, "Virtual Nukes-When is a Test Not a Test?" June 15,1998, by Bill Mesler.

7. Gene transfers linked to dangerous new diseases: A major public health crisis is looming as both emergent and recurring diseases reach new heights of antibiotic resistance. A major factor to the emergence of at least 30 new diseases over the past 20 years might be the transfer of genes between unrelated species of animals and plants through genetic engineering. Sources: Third World Resurgence, #92, "Sowing Diseases, New and Old," by Mae-Wan Ho, and Terje Traavik; The Ecologist, "The Biotechnology Bubble," May/June 1998, Vol. 28, No. 3, by Mae-Wan Ho, Hartmut Meyer and Joe Cummins.

8. Catholic hospital mergers threaten reproductive rights for women: Nationwide hospital mergers with Roman Catholic Church medical facilities are threatening women's access to abortions, sterilization, birth control, in vitro fertilization, fetal tissue experimentation, and assisted suicide. In 1996, over 600 hospitals merged with Catholic institutions in 19 states. Source: Ms., "Women's Health: A Casualty of Hospital Merger Mania?" July/August 1998, by Christine Dinsmore.

9. U. S. tax dollars support death squads in Chiapas: In Jalisco, Mexico, more than a dozen young men were kidnapped and brutally tortured. The group responsible for these atrocities are allegedly members of the Mexican Army Airborne Special Forces Groups (GAFE)-trained by U.S. Army Special Forces. Sources: Slingshot, "Mexico's Military: Made in the USA," Summer 1998, by Slingshot collective; Dark Night Field Notes/Zapatismo, "Bury My Heart At Acteal," by Darrin Wood.

10. Environmental student activists gunned down on Chevron oil facility in Nigeria: On May 28,1998, Nigerian national soldiers were helicoptered by Chevron employees to its oil facility off the Nigerian coast to attack student demonstrators occupying a barge anchored to the facility. After multiple attacks, two students lay dead, and several others wounded. Sources: Era Environmental Testimonies, "Chevron in Nigeria," July 10, 1998, by Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria; Pacifica Radio, "Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship" Pacifica Radio: http: /www.pacifica.org, September 1998, by Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill.

We must break the chains of debt! The Jubilee 2000/USA Campaign

(You may reprint this as a petition and pass it around)

We, the undersigned, believe that the start of the new millennium should be a time to give hope to people living in poverty. We must put behind us the mistakes made by both lenders and borrowers and cancel definitively the crushing international debt of impoverished countries burdened with high levels of human need and environmental distress.

We call upon the leaders of the richest countries, the commercial banks, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, regional development banks and other international financial institutions to write off these debts by the end of the year 2000.

We ask these leaders to cancel the debt in a way that benefits ordinary people and without conditions that perpetuate or deepen poverty and environmental degradation. We ask them to work with governments and civil society to prevent recurring cycles of destructive indebtedness.

By JIM ANDERSON

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA (4 June 1999) - The thirteen California chapters of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) expressed their profound disappointment with the California State Assembly's failure to pass AB 222, The Dignity for Students Act. The bill would have amended state education code to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. GLSEN representatives note that in failing to pass AB 222, legislators missed a key opportunity to take a much-needed step forward in creating school communities that are safe places for every student, regardless of sexual orientation.

(The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network is the largest national organization working to end anti-gay bias in America's schools. For information call (212) 727-0135 or visit www.glsen.org)

By SARA THOMPSON

Good summer reading may include physical and mental travels. Here are five books which can take you to new and different places - places such as: the current mental and emotional scapes inhabited by the young and the old in America; an historic voice which sounds remarkably contemporary on environmental and justice issues; an updated version of Lear or Indian holy men; and more living-the-good-life stories in a sunny agricultural wonderland from Peter Mayle.

Raising Cain by Daniel Kindlan and Michael Thompson was published the same month in which the Littleton shootings took place. The authors, respected child psychologists, had set out to put together the companion book to Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia, the bestselling examination of how and why adolescent girls fail to thrive. Through moving case studies and cutting-edge research, Raising Cain paints a portrait of boys systematically steered away from their emotional lives by adults and by the peer culture of cruelty and toughness. The book combines distressing descriptions of 1990s life for teenage boys with suggestions and hope for some better ways to educate and nurture young men.

Another Country by Mary Pipher is another popular psychology book. It intends to take the reader on a visit to the land of "old-old age," a time in life in which physical infirmities become the major feature of life. Now in their late 80s and 90s, the people whose stories combine to portray this landscape of age grew up in a time which, with the economic depression of the 1930s as a major formative experience, held values and expectations far different than that of their children and grandchildren. Pipher aims to bridge misunderstandings and show us ways to help each other. An encouraging read.

Mary Austin ran with the turn of the century bohemians in Carmel and wrote about the Southwest. Land of Little Rain is a series of essays about the seasons, landscapes, and settlers of the Owens Valley. Earth Horizons, her autobiography, includes examinations of pioneering family life in California which brings up issues surrounding genderal differences which seem remarkably contemporary. It also covers her search for her own personal spirituality, a search which finally settles on the Paiute religion as holding the "firmest path to God." Her language and points of view sound fresh in 1999. In the pantheon of classic California authors, in the company o Jack London, Robinson Jeffers, and Wallace Stegner, why is Austin a surprising name?

What if you woke up one morning and your life had shifted into a new shape? In Larry McMurtry's latest novel Duane's Depressed, the 62-year-old Duane has spent his lifetime traveling in a pickup. One day he parks his truck and begins to walk everywhere. Remember those stories about cultures in which aging successes—kings and princes—walk away from their luxurious lives with begging bowls in hand to find enlightenment? Duane's story seems to be a 1990s Texas version. The vivid characters include a psychiatrist who prescribes reading Proust for depression.

Peter Mayle's Encore Provence: New Adventures in the South of France brings us more stories of the good life in a climate which is very similar to the Central Valley's. One of Mayle's new friends is Jean-Luc Dannly-Nolles, an edible gardener. He sells his vegetables at the Saturday Market in Apt and designs gardens both for beauty and annual eating "all raised . . . without the dubious benefits of chemicals: no pesticides, no weed killers, no cocktails of growth stimulated. . . " Mayle tells Provençal stories in which "peace and silence, which have become endangered commodities in the modern world, are still available." You can read a teasing and alluring excerpt in the June issue of Gourmet magazine.

The author, Acquisitions Librarian for the Stanislaus County Library and a former CONNECTIONS editor, lives the good life in a climate very similar to Provence.

By TIRZA HOLLENHORST

Tirza Hollenhorst of Modesto, a student at Rice University in Houston, Texas, recently returned from a spring study break to Belize. She shares the following observations from her travels:

Belize was awesome. They have the most proactive preservation and restoration programs in Central and South America. There was still incredible destruction and deforestation. Lots of mangrove destructions. We [Tirza traveled with her boyfriend, Chris Johnson] saw an entire cay that had been turned into a golf course. What was once a thick tangle of mangroves surrounding a lush island of life was just a flat manicured green and big hotel. Crazy. The problem with the rainforest is there isn't that much to eat there. Growing populations need food. Food grows in fields and not in the dark wet womb of the forest floor.

I cannot describe what it means to be in a rainforest. Belize is neotropical, so there isn't even the full canopy one would find closer to the equator. I know no words that convey the respect the tree we called "mama" deserved. She towered up over everything. Tangled vines from her and air plants were everywhere. Bugs as big as hummingbirds buzzed by. Eighteen inches of thick rot was at her base. She was an entire ecosystem.

I am about to leave for 15 months of travel. I am going to be working on two projects. I will spend the first 9 weeks in Egypt studying the distribution of costs (environmental, infrastructure, etc.) and benefits of water projects in Egypt. Then I will be studying the relationship of indigenous people to the land (how indigenous people handle common pool resources (fish stocks, etc.) with my boyfriend, Chris. I think it could be very interesting to set up a postcard project with CONNECTIONS. Rainforest preservation means something entirely new to me. We will be going to Ecuador Thailand and New Zealand.