Review: China Cannot Stop Smoking

Tittle of the Article: New Antismoking Signs are almost Visible through the Haze
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/world/asia/23smoking.html?ref=world
Author: ANDREW JACOBS
Date of Publication: July 23, 2008

Gabriela Garcia Fernandez

In China, where one in four people smoke, a decade of public campaigns against tobacco have gain very little succes. The most recognisible achivemnet in this fight is the ban against cigarrettes in school, railway stations and other public places, in Beijing due to the Olympic Games. Furthermore, Chinese athletes were not permitted to accept tobacco company sponsorship and cigarrettes advertising on billboards were restricted.
About 350 million of China’s 1.3 billion people are regular smokers, and eventhough 1.2 million people die each year from smoking-related causes, there is some widespread belife that cigarrettes hold some health benefits. Unlike cigarrettes in much of the world, Chinese brands carry no health warning on labels.
“Cigarrettes have an extra value in China that helps improve many social interactions”, said Tang Weidrang, a researcher at the China Tobacco Museum in Shangai, a pro-smoking institution finaced by China’s Tobacco Industry. We have to take into account that the nation’s lukeswarm efforts to curb smoking are complicated by the government’s control over the tobacco industry, which provides about $31 billion in taxes each year, about a 8% of the governmet’s revenue. China produces a third of the world’s tobacco. Zhang Baazhen, a vice director of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, warned that “without cigarrettes the country’s stability will be affected”.
Early this year, Beijing announced a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, but the proposal quickly died. It does not help that cigarrettes are extremely cheap. Along with all the little succes in fighting against smoking, Chinese people have started to assumed that more than addicted they are dependant on cigarretes, and so does China’s government in supporting smoking as it does.

Review: The Peaceful Pill Handbook

Title of the article: In Tijuana, a Market for Death in a Bottle
Source: The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/world/americas/21tijuana.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087&em&en=7a39725c70e25908&ex=1216958400
Date of Publication: July 21, 2008
Author: MARC LACEY.

Garcia Fernandez, Gabriela.

It would be rather difficult to believe that you can find advices of how to commit suicide in a book, but it is true. “The Peaceful Pill Handbook” by Phillip Nitschke, is a book that lays out methods to end one’s life. Its author is the founder of Exit International, an Australian group that helps people who want to end their lives. It is banned in Australia and in New Zeeland. Anyway, its advices have already “helped” many people to commit suicide.
One of the book’s most popular advices is to buy Mexican Pentobarbital, a barbiturate commonly known as Nembutal. The drug, literally takes a person’s breath away and it can kill by putting people to sleep. It is tightly regulated in most countries but in Mexico, the drug is “readily available” says P. Nietschke in his book.
It is no surprising how easy is to buy the drug in Mexico, if we take into account that it is a country which has a huge problem of contraband. It is precisely in Tijuana pets’ shops where Nembutal can be bought in small bottles of its concentrated liquid form. Once widely available as a sleep aid, this drug is now used mostly to anesthetize animals for surgery and to euthanize them.
Considered as “the most trouble-free and painless form of suicide” by P.Nitschke, Nembutal goes in brand names like Sedal-Vet, Sedalphorte and Barbithal. People who buy the drug are known as “death tourists”. They visit the veterinary pharmacies in Tijuana, Mexico, paying as little as 30 dollars for a dose. Some of them show the shops’ owners one of the many photos of bottles of Nembutal provided in Mr. Nitschke’s book. And although pet shops owners acknowledge that foreigners regularly inquire about the drug, they assumed “the customers were using it to end the lives of their animals”.
This situation changed after an article published by “El Norte”, a regional newspaper, detailed how easy was to buy pentobarbital and how foreigners intended to use it. Consequently, local authorities are seeking to clamp down on unauthorized purchases and shops are now supposed to sell the drug only to licensed veterinarians who present a prescription.
A second step to solve this problem should be, in my opinion to reconsider Mr. Nitschke’s book as a threat to people willing to die. The book not only offers advices of the best ways to commit suicide but it also tells people where to buy the drugs to do it. This is totally immoral and it may also be considered a crime, taking into that what Mr. Nitschke is doing is a form of “assisted suicide”, which is illegal in many countries.

Review: What Play Means for Children

Title of the article: The Importance of Play
Source: http://www.articlecity.com/articles/family/article_2742.shtml
Author: Judy Hansen
Date of Publication: May, 2008.

Garcia Fernandez, Gabriela.

Most people may think that children play because they are bored, but to play is much more than that. Jude Hasen explains in the article “The Importance of Play” the role that this activity has for children and how play becomes a door to the world for them. For this author, when children play, they are immersed in a world of wonder, exploration and adventure, which gives children the opportunity to learn and experience things themselves. Taking into account her explanation, there’s no doubt that play is vital then, for children’s development.
As any important activity in human life, to play has different stages: the first one during toddler hood, the second stage when children are preschoolers and the third stage during children’s school age. Each stage is adjusted to each age capacities and abilities, and each one adds important experiences to children’s life and development.
What is more amazing than the stages of play, is the fact that play “benefits the child in ways that might be difficult for adults to imagine” as J. Hasen states in the article. To support this opinion, the author explains the most relevant benefits that play has in children’s life. First of all, play brings joy. Apart from that, it “fosters socio-emotional learning” because when playing children display their independence in the decision to embark in play activities. On the other hand, play “hones physical and motor development” since it involves the uses of the sense and the body.
As important as those benefits, is the fact that to play “facilitates cognitive learning”. It is vital to the intellectual development of a child. To play “enhances language development”, “encourage creativity” and “provides bonding experiences”. Taking into account all these benefits explained in the article, it is clear that play is a very important factor in children’s life.
But what is the importance then, in getting to know what play means for children? First of all, to know this, may encourage parents to support their children’s playtime. If parents get to understand play as an extremely beneficial activity for their children, their view over this activity will always be positive, leading to parent’s support to it. And this support is no other thing that a great contribution, and the best contribution, that parents could do to their children life and development.

Review: The Great Ape Project

Title of the article: When Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans
Source: The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/weekinreview/13mcneil.html?pagewanted=1

Garcia Fernandez, Gabriela.

The environment committee of the Spanish Parliament is discussing a new bill which aims to grant limited rights to apes, since they are considered our biological relatives. The discussion is based on The Great Ape Project, which takes into account apes’ human qualities such as to feel fear and happiness, create tools, use language, remember the past and plan the future. The directors of the project are the Princeton ethicist, Peter Singer and the Italian philosopher, Paola Cavalieri, for whom apes are part of a community of equals with humans. If the bill is passed, it would become illegal in Spain to kill apes and torture them, and arbitrary imprisonment would been forbidden. Apes in Spain zoos would not be freed but they would receive better care.
The big question under this project arises when deciding which humans’ rights an ape should be offered. To answer this, Mr. Singer explained that the DNA of a chimpanzee is 95% to 98.7 the same as that of humans. And he demanded in his project only rights that he felt all humans were usually offered, like freedom from torture. Under this project’s point of view, Apes’ status would be akin to that of children.
Lots of debates arise after this project was presented in the Spanish Parliament. While people who protect animals feel that “it is a great start to breaking down the species barrier”, scientists would like to keep using chimpanzees to study AIDS virus. On the other hand, Spanish Catholic bishops attacked the vote as undermining a divine will that placed humans above animals.
The article’s author states his point of view discussing what he considers the basic human right: not to be killed for food. Cannibalism is forbidden to laws of all countries. If we take into account the slide difference between a chimpanzee’s DNA and our, killing them for food as it occurs in Africa, for example, would be a crime, even without The Great Ape Project coming into force.
To conclude, all this matter can simply be seen as all great struggles separating man from beast. In the end, we have to consider that animals cannot protect themselves against humans and that’s what enables us with such superiority over them. That we reconsider our position over animals and that we treat them as equals will remain in my opinion, as something remote, even if the Ape Project is voted by the Spanish Parliament.

Review: A New Discovery around HIV

Title of the article: “Gene Variation May Rise Risk of HIV”
Source: The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/science/17hiv.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Date of Publication: July 17, 2008
Author: NICHOLAS WADE

Garcia Fernandez, Gabriela.

This review is based on an article by Nicholas Wade from the New York Times, which explains the new conclusions reached by scientists in relation to HIV/AIDS. The article is based on a new discovery around the HIV virus found by a group of researchers from Texas and London. The discovery is expected to offer an important insight into the biology of the virus.
According to the article, a genetic variation that once protected people in sub-Saharan Africa from a now extinct form of Malaria may have left them more vulnerable to HIV. This would explain why AIDS is more common there than expected. The genetic variation has been studied in the US, where African-Americans who carried the variation were 50% more likely to acquire HIV than African-Americans who did not.
The geneticist David Goldstein said that “if the new results are comfirmed, it would mean that selection for resistance to Malaria has created a vulnerability to infection with HIV”. The genetic variation involves a change in one unit of DNA. As a consequence of this, red blood cells fail on inserting a certain protein on their surface. This protein is a receptor which receives signals from a hormone known as CCL5, part of the immune system’s regulatory system. The receptor was also used by a Malaria parasite to gain entrance to the red blood cells. More than 90% of people in Africa now lack the receptor on their red blood cells, as do about a 60% of African-Americans.
The Texas-London research team is not certain how lack of the receptor promotes HIV infection, but Dr. Ahuja, who wrote the report, said that “the blood cells act like a sponge for the hormone CCL5”. Because CCL5 is known to obstruct multiplications of the virus, having lots of the hormone in the bloodstream may prevent the infection. Conversely, people whose blood cannot soak up the hormone could be more vulnerable.
Dr. Weiss contribution to the research was the fact that the red blood cell receptor was similar to another receptor, the CCR5. This one occurs on the surface of the white blood cells, which are HIV’s mayor target. A small percentage of Europeans have a mutation that prevents CCR5 receptor from being displayed on the surface of white blood cells, and they are protected against HIV. The absence of the two receptors has the opposite effect: vulnerability to HIV, when the red cell receptor is missing, protection from it, when the white cell receptor is withdrawn.
As it’s often the case with provocative new findings, the researchers may have some way to go before convincing others that their observation is correct. From the time being, this new discovery offers a new possibility to the understanding of the virus, and some answers to the questions that arise around this terrible disease.

What nature gives us back

Date: March 25th
Title: WHAT NATURE GIVES US BACK
Article: Mediterranean drowning in a hidden sea of plastic rubbish.
Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/europe/mediterranean-drowning-in-a-hidden-sea-
Date of publication: 18 July 2007
By Elizabeth Nash
Related links: www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-worlds-rubbish-dump-a-garbage-tip-
www.independent.co.uk/news/science/steve-connor-why-plastic-is-the-scourge-

What nature gives us back.

Since the first industrial revolution in 1750 up to now, industries and people in general have been polluting nature in many ways. Not only did we contaminate the soil but also the air as well as water.

Greenhouse Gases Rising Faster Than UN Forecasts: Report

Review of: Greenhouse Gases Rising Faster Than UN Forecasts: Report

Date of Publication: Thursday, November 15, 2007

Student: Raquel Soria

Link:http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11

The warming deniers are right! The models are in error. They are predicting LESS CO2 and effects than are actually happening. Therefore the global warming theorists are wrong, and global warming isn’t happening! Take that evil Dr. Hansen trying to conquer the world with the evil liberal concept known as scientific method.

Remember the deniers saying that hot year 1998 was caused by the solar cycle, and in 5-6 years when at the minimum again global warming would be a joke? Guess what? We are at the minimum, and we are still setting temp records everywhere. As 2+2 still = 4, add 15 ppm more CO2 between now and the next solar maximum around 2010, and its going to be really effing hot. If that doesn’t get our attention as a global civilization, nothing will.

It probably won’t change our behavior, and things are going to be really bad.

History Shows Climate Changes Led to Famine and War

Review of:History Shows Climate Changes Led to Famine and War
Date of Publication: Thursday, November 22, 2007
Student: Raquel Soria
Link:http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/22/5389/

As all who have researched the ramifications of global warming know, its calamitous effects are self perpetuating as the ice melts thus absorbing more heat, as the tundras melt thus releasing more CO2, and the list goes on. The loss of near shore areas to the sea, spread of tropical diseases to the temperate latitudes, are only the tip the iceberg. Although temperature variations have occurred in the past, they never approached this accelerated rate,

Often overlooked is the fact that the same measures needed to mitigate global warming would be necessary even if it were not an issue. Conservation, alternative energy development, anti- pollution refinements, etc are essential for other vital environmental reforms such as air and water quality, reductions in toxic waste generation, land preservation, etc.

The dangerous manipulation of essential scientific data used by this administration to conceal and derail corrective measures for this threat and other vital environmental reforms has alway been apparent. Contrary to their assertions, measures to reduce greenhouse gases could only improve our economy by lessening our trade deficits, and improving our security by reducing our dependance on foreign oil. We could also regain some of our lost world respect that has resulted from our opposition Kyoto while arrogantly contributing disproportionally to carbon pollution.

The environmental and social damage from our indifference to carbon pollution and related environmental measures can only worsen if we allow these destructive environmental policies of this reckless and unlearned president to continue.

Review of: ‘Climate Change’ or ‘Global Warming’?
Date of Publication: Sunday, December 9, 2007
Student: Raquel Soria
Link: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/09/

GLOBAL WARMING ARROGANCE
The US rejections of Kyoto, then the Bali Conference, & now rephrasing the term, underscore the dangerous control that special interests exercise over this administration’s policies. Their distortions of scientific data typifies their unconscionable war on science. Evidence linking carbon pollution to warming has long been as close to certain as science can be. Its causes, consequences, and mitigation requirements have been documented by many dedicated environmental organizations including The Union of Concerned Scientists.

Special interests argue that the current warming trends follow historic warming cycles, and hence reflect natural weather patterns–but they omit obvious differences: The earlier warming trends developed at slower rates which permitted the ecosystems to adapt. Morever they resulted from temporary natural events, which allowed transitions back to normal temperature patterns–by contrast, the current warming patterns result from artificial causes that will only intensify unless mitigated.

By all indicators, global warming will self perpetuate as the melting ice sheets absorb rather than reflect heat, as the melting permafrost releases more CO2 & methane, and the list goes on. Inundation of low lying areas, spread of tropical diseases to temperate latitudes, sea life destruction from changing ocean chemistry, & currents, are only some potential consequences.

Often overlooked is the fact that, the same measures needed to mitigate global warming would be necessary even if it were no issue. Conservation, alternative energy development, anti- pollution refinements, etc are essential for other vital environmental reforms such as air and water quality, reductions in toxic waste generation, land preservation, etc.

Contrary to right wing assertions, measures to reduce greenhouse gases could only improve our economy by lessening our trade deficits, and improving our security by reducing our dependance on foreign oil. We could also regain some of our lost world respect that has resulted from our rejection of Kyoto while arrogantly contributing disproportionally to carbon pollution. With our participation in international efforts, China & India could no longer use our non-compliance as an excuse for their non-participation.

The environmental and social damage from our indifference to carbon pollution can only worsen if we allow this administration, guided special interests, to continue their war against our planet.

Slave Labour That Shames AmericaAuthor: John Vidal

Review of: Slave Labour That Shames AmericaAuthor: John Vidal
Date of Publication: Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Student: Raquel Soria
Link:http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/19/590/

The idea of “whole foods” is now under exploitation as are the migrant workers, by that profit corporation and its shareholders. It reflects the general concensus: Capitalism is a near-complete disaster.

People, ideas, institutions, land, legacies, works of art, emotions including love and fear, good will, intelligence, thirst, scientific discoveries, languages, religions, birth, growth, sickness, injury, death, disasters, the quest for knowledge and discovery, instinct including procreation and domination, other primitive needs including sleep and food, are all viciously exploited for profit by western-style capitalism.

The answer starts with land and water rights for all. A system in which each citizen holds title to a chunk of land suitable for food security. The program requires the citizen to demonstrate the capability of growing one’s own food on that plot of land, but isn’t required to grow food year after year. It may be rented out, and traded for other plots of land. Buying/selling plots is permitted but sellers retain the right to take back the plot without payment. Of course this strongly deters acquisition. It’s simply a matter of changing the laws.

The way to change the laws is for individuals to shift their exchange/association away from the power centers and toward their local economies. This breaks up the power concentrations and enables the people to exert their will upon the legislatures.

Individuals will seize upon their civic power and responsibility after the brainwashing ends. Parents and teachers have to convey productive messages to the kids to displace the brainwashing. TV, radio, newspaper, magazine and books have to be smashed to instill the proper fear into the content authors to stop the brainwashing.

Slave labor and all the rest go away in the process. You can’t have your cake and social justice too.