Signs of the times

You can get more information including details of specific cities and towns in the U.S. and Canada where you can join the Life Chain at www.LifeChain.net and www.NationalLifeChain.org.

Life Chain on Oct. 2!

Across the United States this Sunday, October 2, tens of thousands of people will again be forming the Life Chain. Know more about the details, and read the touching account of a woman's life-altering decision after a glimpse of the goings-on in one such event.

You can read all about it at Citizen Link

Going back to the basics

	"Guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh, thrice guilty is he who...drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime!" -The Revolution, 1869 Facts about Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony

"When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton in a letter to Julia Ward Howe, October 16, 1873. Recorded in Howe's diary at Harvard University Library.
	Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The Susan B. Anthony List website is included in this blog's list of links.

Take your pick

News and features on a wide range of topics: a new movie, wars ending, hands-on parents, a book that's making waves, a different scholarship grant, and self-esteem. Just click on what you fancy!

Heaven sent: A life-loving box-office winner
BY Kathryn Jean Lopez

Peace is spreading: the troubling thing is, we don't really know why
BY Niall Ferguson

Fla. mom cracks down on school's sexually explicit required reading
BY Jim Brown

Riches from Botswana
BY Susan Reibel Moore

Peace scholarship looks to resourceful students
BY Kit Nagamura

Running out of self-esteem
BY Carolyn Moynihan

Pep talk from kids

This book is by no means a newly published one, but the time element makes no difference. It contains timeless advice from kids, which -- if taken well -- will show how crucial it really is to see some things from the eyes of a child. That's simplicity for you.

Here's an excerpt:

Advice for a Happy Marriage: From Miss Dietz's Third-Grade Class
By Debi Dietz Crawford and friends

When I told my third-grade class that I was getting married, I wondered how they would take the news. They were happy, then quickly went back about their business. I didn't think it would make much of an impact—my only worry was how they would handle a week with a substitute teacher when I took my honeymoon.

I needn't have worried. While I was away, my class spent their time scheming with their substitute, Sue Theile, and my partner teacher, Sue Johnson, to create my most cherished wedding gift: ADVICE FOR A HAPPY MARRIAGE. Once they heard Ms. Theile's idea, my students raced to impart all of their advice for our marital future. All of their hopes and dreams of marriage, combined with advice that their eight or nine years of careful observance of their parents' marriages spilled out as fast as their pencils could write.

P.S.
Editorial Review from Amazon.com
The author's third-grade class wrote her these homilies of lasting love while she was away on her honeymoon. Here, along with the children's crayon drawings, are dozens of serious and not-too-serious suggestions: "Mostly say yes," "When your husband's grumpy, give him some coffee," and the memorable "Try to have triplets. One child is too few."

Integrity

"It's not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong; not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned; and not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity."

- Francis Bacon, Sr., English lawyer and philosopher (1561-1626)

MIND over heart

Heart doctor advises, inspires colleagues to stay home

First posted 05:23am (Mla time) Sept 25, 2005
By Tessa Salazar
Inquirer News Service


Editor's Note: Published on page A1 of the September 25, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

CARDIOLOGIST Willie T. Ong is not just content with helping heart patients live. He has another passion: teaching young doctors "survival techniques"--how to survive in the Philippines.

At a time when thousands of their colleagues are being lured to work in the United States and other Western countries, Ong and his colleagues have launched a movement to convince other doctors that rewards await those who stay home and serve.

Ong is a co-founder of MIND, the Movement of Idealistic and Nationalistic Doctors, a non-profit organization that seeks to inspire fresh graduates and medical students to "find their niche" in their own country.

And MIND's members include doctors who find fulfillment in working in depressed villages, in strife-torn areas like Sulu, or in evacuation centers packed with refugees.

You can read the full story at the Phil. Daily Inquirer

Courage

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow."

- Mary Anne Radmacher, writer

Fully booked for life

I've stumbled on more news and materials concerning the fight against society's most serious social and moral problems (pornography and the dwindling respect for unborn life, in particular), but I noticed that the last few posts I've placed here revolve around those and related issues. I'm starting to feel the weight of it all -- which normally happens when issues like pornography and abortion "stare me in the face." Decadence, after all, does not uplift.

So, instead of going into details about the materials I came across, here are some resources that I think would be most helpful. There's so much garbage going around in bookstores and newsstands, we might as well spend on reads that will equip us with what we need to help ourselves and our loved ones be better citizens of the world.

PORN GENERATION: How social liberalism is corrupting our future
By Ben Shapiro

Never in our country's history has a generation been so empowered, so wealthy, so privileged - and yet so empty. [The author] shows that legalized and all-pervasive porn is by no means trivial or marginal: it's an integral part of a sustained program by the forces of relativism, radical feminism, and nihilism to destroy our nation's moral foundations and replace moral standards with the idol of personal fulfillment.


SHE CALLS ME DADDY: Celebrating the love between a Father & Daughter
By Robert Wolgemuth

I so wanted to include the different reviews contributed by ordinary readers but I had to pick just one, part of which is the following:

I have three daughters and this book has provided invaluable, practical advice to help me raise them. I was one of three sons and had no clue how to relate to little girls. Robert Wolgemuth does an excellent job of teaching general concepts while also providing specific "how-to's". There is advice for fathers of young girls (mine are 7, 4 and 1) and also for fathers of teenagers (the dreaded dating years!!).


KING ME: What every son wants and needs from his father
By Steve Farrar

Using kings of the Old Testament as character studies, Steve Farrar examines the critical role a father plays in preparing his son to become a godly man. What separated the good kings from the bad kings was a father who made time commitments to mentor his son. Do you want your son to become a man of regal character?

FBI porn squad

Lately there have been huge efforts in the fight against pornography in all its forms -- internet porn, video store materials, TV and advertising fare. Though the following shows yet a more firm resolve to lick the problem, I appreciate it more as a fulfillment of promises made. Read on.
----------------------------------------------------

FBI Team to Take on Obscenity

by Wendy Cloyd, senior editorial coordinator

Experts say the new "porn squad" shows the Justice Department is getting serious about prosecution.

The FBI has formed a new team to aid the Justice Department in the battle against obscenity—a sign, experts say, that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is serious about his promise to prioritize such prosecution.

Gonzales, who told the Senate during his confirmation hearings that he would be tough on pornographers, assigned the FBI the task of forming a team to join the obscenity task force already in place.

The new anti-obscenity team will consist of a supervisor, eight agents and support staff—the squad would gather evidence against "manufacturers and purveyors" of obscenity.

Jan LaRue, chief counsel for Concerned Women for America, said FBI involvement is a necessary part of obscenity enforcement.

Full article at Citizen Link

Is this what we call 'liberation'? She thinks not.

A book has come out. A review has been written.

You see the book cover. Now here's an excerpt from the review, published in the Opinion Journal (The Wall Street Journal's editorial page):

Plainly, the sexual revolution has not brought fulfillment for women. Even its mascots experience boredom, and for the civilians there is distress and heartache.

It may be that, like Ms. Levy, a lot of feminists now regret getting in bed with Mr. Hefner. Yet if you mention the word "modesty" within 20 feet of them their heads spin around like Linda Blair in "The Exorcist." This is where they get stuck. Only if feminism can embrace the more traditional ways that men and women have courted throughout the ages can it have anything practical to offer young women. To the extent that feminists dismiss as worthless anything that is perceived as "backtracking," they only help to perpetuate the "raunch culture"--even as they deplore its effects.

You can read the full review at the Opinion Journal

Less money for the bunny show!

Wow, my first piece of really great news for today!

Here's something demonstrating that giving feedback is always worth the effort. Some results materialize faster than others, but even if it seems like our efforts aren't helping any, be convinced that nothing goes to waste.

Thirty Advertisers Pull Ads from New Playboy TV Show in Response to Complaints

TAMPA, Florida, September 20, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Thirty major companies stopped advertising on the new Entertainment (E!) Channel’s Playboy’s Girls Next Door Show after receiving emails from concerned citizens and faxes from a pro-family lobby group.

You can read the rest here

One man is standing up to them

Here's an excerpt from a Sept. 18 news story from The Sunday Times (The London Times' Sunday edition) that warrants more than a nonchalant glimpse:

Women told how they were held down as doctors jammed needles into them to induce abortions in the seventh or eighth month of pregnancy.

One victim, Li Juan, 23, told Time that she was in the ninth month of pregnancy when a group of men pinned her down on a bed in a local clinic and plunged a poison-filled syringe into her abdomen.

“At first I could feel my child kicking a lot. Then after a while I couldn’t feel her kicking anymore,” she is quoted as saying.

Li’s baby girl appeared to be dead on delivery, but just to make sure the officials held the infant in a bucket of water next to the bed for several minutes.

This happened in Shandong province, China. This -- and more -- is what spurred 34-year-old blind legal activist Chen Guangchen to head for Beijing and talk with American diplomats and the US media. Now he's under house arrest, his TV and computer taken away.

Read on.

China shamed by forced abortions

Michael Sheridan, Far East Correspondent

HORRIFYING revelations of forced abortions and compulsory sterilisation in China embarrassed the Beijing government last week just as President Hu Jintao took the international stage. The exposure of practices that break China’s own laws governing birth control was the work of a blind man who has led a campaign to bring officials to justice for their crimes. However, Chen Guancheng, 34, the campaigner, is under house arrest this weekend in Linyi, a city of 10m people where family planning officials have committed the worst abuses documented in recent years. All involve poor people in and around Linyi, which lies in Shandong province, some 400 miles southeast of Beijing. Full story

She and he, not it

A human being is not a commodity

but when people think otherwise,

this

is

what

happens.

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Premature Live Babies Taken from Ukraine Maternity Wards Sold For Body Parts?

KHARKOV, Ukraine, September 12, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A UK report has revealed that the booming unborn baby parts market may have also now spilled over into born babies, with allegations that newborn babies are disappearing from Ukraine maternity wards to fuel the increasing demand.

One Ukrainian research institute advertises foetal body parts, such as “Foetus spleen cells,” and “fragments of foetus spine.” The Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine of the National Academy of Sciences claims all the materials for sale are produced legally from early aborted babies.

In the Ukraine, however, any baby born less than 27 weeks gestational age or weighing under 1 kg (21b 3oz) is registered as an “abortion.” Human rights activists told the UK’s Times on Line they believe the unregistered babies, whether alive or dead are in many instances taken from their mothers and never returned, to be sold for body parts.

Late-term abortions – and correspondingly, babies born alive and not aborted – are considered even more valuable than babies aborted earlier, because their more highly developed tissue and organs are mostly intact. The accounts of the usefulness of partial-birth for foetal tissue sales and the killing of mistakenly live-born infants at abortion mills were confirmed by former abortion provider Eric Harrah. (See the LifeSiteNews.com coverage: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/1999/jul/99070902.html)

Ukraine is changing its definition of live birth in response to international pressure.

See Times on Line coverage:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1773726,00.html

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Price Lists for Aborted Baby Parts
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/1999/aug/990819a.html
U.S Gov't Advertises Aborted Baby Parts For Research
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/1999/sep/99093001.html
Canadian Researchers Named In Report On Baby Parts Market
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/1999/aug/990818a.html

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Private UK Abortuaries Paying Abortionists to Authorize Abortions on Women Never Seen

LONDON, September 12, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – UK abortionists are authorizing abortions on women whom they have never met or examined, contrary to British law that requires a woman seeking an abortion have a medically necessary reason, even if the over-used and meaningless “mental health” excuse is used.

An investigation by the Daily Mail revealed that National Health Service (NHS) abortuaries are using public money to pay abortionists to illegally authorize abortions. A senior London surgeon said, “I know of doctors who charge £14 an hour to sign these approval forms. They are faxed or biked to them, sometimes hundreds of miles away. Can't these people see how dangerous this is? They are blinded by money.” The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said that doctors could authorise abortions without seeing the patient.

Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) spokesman Anthony Ozimic said, “By failing to ensure that women considering abortion are seen by at least one doctor, abortion providers are not only rushing women into the damaging decision to end their child’s life but are also endangering women's health. The total disregard abortion providers show for women's health by rushing women into abortion adds to the growing evidence that abortion hurts women, which includes maternal injury, psychological damage, sterility and death. If abortion providers honestly believe in a ‘right to choose’ as distinct from a ‘duty to abort,’ they should ensure women have a ‘right to know’ the truth about abortion, the innocent human being it kills and women it damages.”

The Daily Mail writer commented, “Such actions are a bitter mockery of the original intentions of Parliament, which can never have meant that abortion would become a form of contraception, with 185,000 terminations each year. MPs should be asked to look again at a law which urgently needs revision, and the Government should provide the time for this to happen.”

The Daily Mail report also revealed that a major abortion provider was offering staff cash bonuses for boosting the number of abortions committed.

See Daily Mail coverage:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/newscomment.html?in_page_id=1787&in_article_id=361991

Hodgepodge

It all started with this morning's link-hopping, which led me to the page on The Merchants of Cool, which is the name of a study conducted by Frontline. Some things I saw:

#1:

Brian: They were talking about the rebelliousness--but it's not rebelling at all. They're capitalizing on the fact that people want to be rebellious, and they're talking about how teachers are nerds and authority figures are laughable. I mean, they're basically saying, "Everybody sucks except for us."

. . . . They're basically telling us what to like and what we should like. They're trying to make money, obviously, and it's not about trying to make anybody happy. It's not a business in that it's trying to help people; it's a business in that it's making money.

Adia: Is pop culture trying to help people?

Laura: No. It's trying to make money. That's the problem, we're a money-making culture.

Tor: It at least pretends that it's trying to help people. Like it offers a solution if you just dumb yourself down enough to accept it. . . .

from the What Teens Think page

--------------------------------------------------

#2:

I can give you a very dramatic example from the world of book publishing. Bantam Books was the second mass market paperback company to be formed in the United States just after World War II. And it was conceived deliberately with large masses of young readers in mind. Books like The Grapes of Wrath, Shakespeare's Greatest Comedies, Jane Eyre, sold for 25 cents with the aim of making sure that young people who weren't rich could get hold of really good books. And it did very well.

Well, by now Bantam Books is part of the Bertelsmann empire, which is the largest book publisher in the world, a commercial entity based in Germany that dominates the American publishing landscape. A couple of years ago, Bantam came out with the Barfarama series for young male readers 12 to 15 with titles like Dog-Doo Afternoon and The Great Puke-Off. These are all brainlessly scatological books that were packaged just to make a buck. Now some of the people who do them claim, "Oh, at least we're getting young people reading." That's a very disingenuous thing to say.

- Mark Crispin Miller, media critic & author of
"Boxed In: The Culture of TV"

from the The Coarsening of Culture page

--------------------------------------------

#3:

I think that we all sort of still crave the kind of quiet, non-commercial space in our lives. We treasure them and whether we're aware of it as adults or whether we just sort of do it spontaneously as kids, I think that there the still those distinctions made in everyone's life that this is all part of MTV and that this is not.

I think if you sort of think about the progress of MTV through the years, it's been to gradually push that boundary so that the quiet, sort of non-commercial space is shrunk more and more and now I think kids social life is made up of commercial culture to a very large degree, whether it's, "Oh, I see you're wearing Tommy Hilfiger," and "Why are you doing that and not wearing, you know, Polo?" Or, you know, "Did you see the Limp Bizkit ad video on MTV?"

I mean these are the reference points. It's no longer, you know, "Do you want to go down and see if we can see some turtles at the lake?" I think that those kinds of experiences are discouraged partly because they're not as exciting and fun and not as many people engage in them, and also because you don't seen them on MTV.

- John Seabrook, writer for The New Yorker & author of
"Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing -- The Marketing of Culture"

from the What's This Doing to Kids? page

---------------------------------------------

These I came across at the site containing THE MERCHANTS OF COOL: A report on the creators and marketers of popular culture for teenagers. There's lots to read, and I tried to trim it down with a hodgepodge of what the site contains by providing the samples above and the links leading to the pages. If you want to feed your mind (with good food), these are materials for you.

Hands-on parenting, he does

Supporters Rally on Behalf of Massachusetts Father
By Emma Elliott

Media turn parental rights into anti-‘gay’ issue.

Members of Concerned Women for America (CWA) and many others rallied on Lexington Green in Massachusetts on Tuesday night in support of a father who was arrested for wanting to be involved in his son’s education.

David Parker went to Lexington’s Joseph Estabrook Elementary School, where his 6-year-old son is a student, on April 27. According to the Boston Globe, he had scheduled a meeting with a school official after his son brought home a book titled Who’s in a Family? by Robert Skutch. Same-sex couples with children are among the “families” depicted in the book.

During the meeting Mr. Parker asked to see the educational materials being used to teach his son about homosexuality. When the official declined, Parker refused to leave the school. He was arrested, spent the night in jail and has been charged with “criminal trespassing.”

Full story at Concerned Women for America

Respect for life, respect for women

From the Feminists for Life new ad series

Unmaking the 'idiot box'

Group lists best and worst in family-friendly advertising
by Wendy Cloyd, senior editorial coordinator

The Parents Television Council identifies companies that support good and bad programming.

The Parents Television Council (PTC) this week released its "Top Ten Best and Worst Advertisers" list, ranking companies that either make an effort to support wholesome television or frequently sponsor shows with violent and vulgar content.

Brent Bozell, president of the PTC, said crude television shows survive because advertisers support them.

"Even though blame for television's increasingly offensive programming is often assigned to producers, writers, networks and even viewers," he said, "sponsors supporting shows with graphic sexual content, foul language and violence share responsibility."

Bozell said many corporations that enforce strict sexual harassment policies turn around and underwrite broadcast material which would violate that same harassment policy if the material were communicated by one employee to another.

"In equal measure, it should be noted that family-friendly television programming is on as a result of advertising support," he added. "And these corporate sponsors should be commended."

The top ten advertisers who run commercials during family-friendly programming are: The Campbell's Soup Company, J.M. Smuckers Company, Merck & Co., Clorox, Colgate Palmolive, Sears, General Mills, Coca-Cola, Mars and Wal-Mart.

Know more at CitizenLink

Talk about women's rights

A boost to African families

In the 1980s came Live Aid, that initiative spearheaded by British musician Bob Geldof aimed at raising funds to help alleviate the famine then sweeping Ethiopia. The project was supported by dozens of other singers from the UK and spawned a similar effort from artists in the American music industry as well.

The succeeding decades have seen many other programs that addressed various problems that Africans have been experiencing -- from land mines and lack of potable water to malnutrition and AIDS. Experts offered varied solutions; organizations worked to deliver. Many times, the people in need of aid were reduced -- albeit unwittingly -- to the status of mere mouths to be fed, bodies to be rid of disease or packs to be shipped off by the truckload to more livable locations. Their survival indeed was extended, but human dignity was sometimes forgotten -- as is sometimes the case when material welfare becomes the end-all and be-all.

At a recent congress held in Nairobi, Kenya which was represented by 10 African nations and others from the Americas and Europe, new insights were brought forth on just what it takes to realize authentic development in Africa and to eliminate the ravages of poverty, disease and war.

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Fighting AIDS by bolstering African families

Written by Carolyn Moynihan

Friday, 26 August 2005

Strengthening the family is the answer to many of Africa's ailments, says Kenyan paediatrician, mother and award-winning novelist Margaret Ogola. The West is obsessed with saving Africa. From street protests to political summits, from condoms to rock concerts, everything has been tried, or so it seems. But one thing always seems to be overlooked – how the family, the basic social unit, is faring. Now there is a movement from within the region to put the family at the centre of all efforts to promote development and eradicate the scourges of poverty, disease and war. Last weekend people from ten African nations, together with supporters from the Americas and Europe, met in Nairobi, Kenya, for a congress geared to strengthening family life in the continent. At the conclusion they launched a new umbrella group, Voice of the Family, to coordinate further initiatives. This will be a group to watch. One of the keynote speakers at the congress was Dr Margaret Ogola of Kenya, a paediatrician and mother, with four children of her own and a growing number of adopted children. Dr Ogola, founder and medical director of the Cottolengo Hospice in Nairobi for HIV-positive orphans, heads the Commission for Health and Family Life of the Catholic Church in Kenya. In her spare time she writes books: her 1999 novel, The River and the Source, which tells the story of four generations of African women, won the 1995 Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature and the 1995 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. A sequel, I Swear by Apollo, was published in 2003. As the congress got under way, Carolyn Moynihan asked Dr Ogola what has been happening to the African family and what it needs for the future. She responded with a combination of gravity and optimism that inspires confidence in her belief that “good things are going to happen in Africa”. Read the full article at MercatorNet

Plumpy'nut

Hunger fades with Plumpy'nut
(Photo: WorldChanging)

(Reuters) It’s safe. It’s nutritious. And it’s tasty. It’s the best thing to have happened to tens of thousands of hungry African children.

Michel Lescanne lifts the lid of a giant mixer that stirs peanut paste, sugar and a special vitamin mix into a sticky cream at his small village factory in Malaunay, northern France.

The brown paste, known as Plumpy’nut, has become an elixir of life for tens of thousands of African children.

Aid agencies say it is a huge leap in the fight against hunger, because infants can eat the sweet-smelling paste — with all the nutritional value of traditional milk formula — at home, rather than in hospital.

“We wanted a product that doesn’t need to be mixed with water and fulfils all nutritional needs,” Lescanne said at the factory in a picturesque village as workers filled Plumpy’nut paste into cereal bar-sized packages.

“We also believe food should taste good. Maybe that’s a French thing.”

After making milk formulas and other food products for use in humanitarian crises, he hit on the idea for the paste after a colleague had Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread for breakfast.

Plumpy’nut came out some seven years ago but production has risen sharply in recent months after food crises in Sudan’s Darfur region, and now in Niger, put it in the spotlight.

Lescanne said about 250,000 children will be fed this year with Plumpy’nut — a name combining plump and peanut — compared with 100,000 in 2004.

Full story at GulfNews

Read more about Plumpy'nut at WorldChanging