International Bulletin - December 2001
Bits and Pieces
The Earth is out mother, the eagle our cousin. The tree draws blood from us and the grass is growing. Our ancestors told us: Now that we have done all these things, you must watch over them and protect them and ensure that they are forever. It is in this way that human beings became the custodians of the planet. -Gagudju account of creation (Australia)
Plants seem to have been sown with profusion over the Earth like the stars in the sky to invite man by way of pleasure and curiosity to the study of nature.
Jean-Jaques Rosseau, French Philosopher (1712-1778)
It is now widely accepted that food security for local communities means the capacity to access, develop and exchange seeds and produce enough for the households, only selling the surplus to the markets.
Wangari Maathai, Kenyan Environmentalist
Globalization could mean that the women who raise, feed and care for our milk animals earn dividends for stockholders in Geneva.
Veghese Kurien, President of India's National Dairy Development Board.
Privacy: Each step forward in the field of new technologies marks a deeper intrusion into your privacy. This is the price we must supposedly pay for economic efficiency and security. But more and more people are rejecting the tradeoff and the rise of a high-tech surveillance society. In the battle to protect privacy, choose your weapon wisely: legislation, technological tools, activism media and even humor...the choice is yours in shielding that intimate space - personal liberty - where neither government nor corporation has the right to tread.
Importance of teachers: A Montreal teacher visited some 40 elementary schools to find out just how the Internet was being used. She discovered that the students were unable to take in what they were seeing. Students changed sites 15 - 25 times in an hour. After observing 1,000 students, she concluded that they weren't absorbing anything of value. Before the Internet can be of use to anyone, and to prevent it from being an expensive distraction in the classroom, a human scaffolding must be put into place. There may be no filters on the Internet, but in schools, there are filters, and they're called teachers.
Excerpts from and address by Alison Armstrong, Canada.
Last Modified: November 29, 2002