I talked to Anthony Lappe, the Exec-Editor at Guerrilla News Network on the show last week. He's the son of Frances Moore Lappe, the author of the seventies classic, 'Diet for a Small Planet,' and the recently published follow-up to that, 'Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet.' The thrust of that book is a determination to find hope in horrible situations. It's an incredibly powerful book, with an absolutely vital message. Anthony picked up on that, and created a new weekly feature down at GNN...but, he can tell you better than I. - ape
GNN launches new feature: Happy news for gloomy Mondays
Editor’s note: GNN is proud to announce the launch of our newest weekly feature, the Good News Roundup. GNN, like many alternative news outlets, can often feel overly preoccupied with everything that is wrong in the world – war, disease, disaster, corruption. It’s a bull market for negative news these days. So we’re happy to announce we’re going to be focusing on the positive from now on – OK, once a week, but it’s a start.
The Good News Roundup will run every Monday, and is compiled by longtime GNNer Savanna Reid. Savanna, 24, is a student in Las Vegas, Nevada completing her Environmental Studies thesis on groundwater contamination risk assessment. Many of you may know her as gavin_rose. If you have suggestions for a good news story for next week, PM her here.
The Good News Roundup
Mon, 31 Jan 2005 02:03:26 -0600
By Savanna Reid
Since the U.S. army stopped prescribing Lariam last year and improved its mental health support programs for troops serving in Iraq, the suicide rate dropped by half. Read more about the military’s use of Lariam in GNN’s book, True Lies.
Chile’s ex-secret police chief General Manuel Contreras has finally been brought to justice – hundreds of demonstrators cheered his arrest and some pelted him with eggs en route to the jail. He will serve 12 years for the 1975 disappearance of leftist activist Miguel Angel Sandoval, one of thousands tortured, exiled or disappeared under the Pinochet government.
Meanwhile Serbia’s General Vladimir Lazarevic has surrendered to the UN, and will face charges at The Hague next week for war crimes against Kosovo Albanians.
In a long-overdue step back from its policy of unconditionally supporting the Mugabe regime, South Africa’s leading national party the ANC has decided to support a trade union’s delegation to Zimbabwe to highlight the political crisis in a country where allegations of election-rigging have nearly destroyed confidence in the government.
The U.S. has committed an additional $500 million to resolving the Darfur crisis in Sudan, which was not addressed by the recent peace accords between the Sudanese government and rebels in the south.
Natural disaster may have opened the doors to a peace process in Aceh, prompting the Indonesian government to meet with rebel leaders for the first time in two years. Their meeting, held in Finland, was described as constructive but brief. “Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has said he is willing to offer the rebels wide-ranging autonomy and other concessions in return for an end to their campaign,” but that full independence is not an option.
Uganda is moving to expand a papyrus wetland that filters and controls the Nakivubo channel, to reduce the risk of flooding in the capital city of Kampala. This will involve massive garbage removal and revegetation, and will improve the wetland’s ability to clean sewage water before it reaches Lake Victoria.
The South African High Court at Cape Town has pushed back construction approval for a pilot pebble bed nuclear reactor on the grounds that the environmental impact assessment process didn’t involve enough public input. This sets an important precedent, making South Africa’s environmental protection law work for the people most vulnerable to planned environmental impacts, by guaranteeing them a voice in the decision-making process. Earthlife Africa is fighting to force a more public discussion of safety concerns and nuclear waste management plans before construction begins.
A team with the National Energy Technology Laboratory and Carnegie Mellon University has developed a computational model for purifying hydrogen gas which could make the recovery of pure hydrogen from fossil fuel deposits significantly cheaper.
Doctors at Imperial College London and the University of Manchester have succeeded in making damaged retinal cells see light again, by activating melanopsin proteins to serve as photoreceptors. This could lead to the development of prosthetic retinas to provide black-and-white light sensitivity to people blinded by retinal diseases like retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration, which are currently which are currently
untreatable.
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