|
Brazil: a bank for the poor
Japan: negative interest rates Borrowing money took a new turn in Japan when interest rates (of the Bank
of Japan) fell under zero per cent for the first time in history, in
order to boost Japan's economy. On June 25, 2003, this rate was minus
0.001%, which means creditors will pay interest to their debtors. Since
Japan's banking system is on the brink of total collapse, the bankers
are willing to go against one of their most sacred principles, as a last
resort. Tourists clash with Vatican dress rules On July 16, the newspapers reported the following news: VATICAN CITY –
With temperatures soaring, tempers are flaring as the Vatican's dress
police turn back tourists in shorts and bare shoulders trying to get
into St. Peter's Basilica. Vendors are doing a brisk business selling
paper pants and shirts - turning St. Peter's Square into an open-air
changing room. Enforcement of the Vatican dress code turns into a battle each summer,
but the verbal skirmishes were heightened this July because Rome was in
the grips of a relentless heat wave. For weeks, temperatures had reached
into the 90s, (Fahrenheit), and the thousands of tourists trudging the
streets seemed dressed more for a day at the beach - shorts, miniskirts,
tank tops for both men and women. At the Vatican, authorities have
erected signs showing no one can enter the basilica with bare legs and
bare shoulders. Guards – neatly dressed in shirts and ties – patrol
the entrances. Showing true entrepreneurial spirit, vendors have popped
up at various points around the vast square, keeping one step ahead of
the police. More US troops killed after On August 26, the Pentagon announced that more U.S. soldiers were killed
in Iraq since the end of the war (announced on May 1), than during the
conflict itself, between March 20 and May 1. 277 American soldiers have
been killed since the launch of operation Iraqi Freedom – 138 during
the war, and 139 after President Bush had announced on May 1st that the
“mission had been accomplished” in Iraq and that the war was over. Well, it seems that it is far from being over, with the U.S. military
planning to stay for at least three more years, at a cost of $3.9
billion per month. President Bush asked Congress for an extra $87
billion to finance military operations and reconstruction in Iraq. U.S.
authorities do not want to say what the final cost of this war and
reconstruction will be, but experts say it could amount to $600 billion.
So the real winner in this war seems to be the financial institutions
who will lend all this money, and the losers, all of the American
taxpayers, with the U.S. Government heading this year for a record
deficit of over $450 billion. “What will it take to get us mad?” PEORIA, Illinois (Catholic News Service) — In a passionate call to
defend the Faith that drew sustained applause at an outdoor Mass on
August 24, Bishop Daniel R. Jenky of Peoria, Illinois, declared
contemporary culture is “at war with Jesus Christ”, and asked
Catholics, “What will it take to finally get us mad?” “Will you
tolerate the holiest things of our religion on a daily basis being
mocked and ridiculed on TV, in the press, and in the movies?” he asked
the crowd of 800 worshipping under a tent on the grounds of the city's
annual Irish festival. “Are you in my company a confessing member of my holy Church, or would
you prefer to sell me out to a world that is going straight to hell?”
he asked. “Will American materialism and gross pagan immorality,
disguised as personal autonomy and moral neutrality, finally succeed and
win the hearts of the Irish, where Oliver Cromwell and Great Britain
failed?” Influenced by a secularist world view, American culture today is
“living in direct opposition to the truth of Christ's Gospel, and is
aggressively hostile to the Church,” said Bishop Jenky. While
“convinced secularists” are in the minority, they have used
culture's “command posts” of the national media, entertainment
industry, and university campuses to successfully win acceptance for
such “freedoms” as easy divorce, premarital sex, cohabitation,
out-of-wedlock birth, abortion, and euthanasia. In the face of
“vicious attacks” against the Church in the cultural war, the Bishop
asked, “Why do we as Catholics not stand up and fight and defend our
Faith? What will it take to finally get us mad?” They know where you are
“The new location technology promises an array of benefits: emergency
services that respond better, real-time driving directions to avoid
traffic jams, and better-stocked store shelves offering cheaper goods.
Still, the idea that cellphones and other goods can be trailed unsettles
some people, and analogies to Big Brother are inevitable. Left
unchecked, such technologies `will allow corporations or the Government
to constantly monitor what individual Americans do every day,' the
American Civil Liberties Union warned in a recent report. Wireless
carriers say their systems only pinpoint callers if they've dialed 911
– or if they have explicitly agreed to be found. But privacy advocates
say that the technology will inevitably generate data that a detective,
or an angry spouse's divorce attorney, will demand in court. In short,
the new phones, tags, and chips will keep you from ever getting lost.
The nagging fear is that they'll let others find you, whether you like
it or not. (...) “In five or 10 years, the car seat itself – or the driver's shoe or
sweater – may also have a chip that can be scanned by nearby readers.
The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, created a stir this summer by
saying it wanted crates and pallets of goods arriving at its warehouses
in 2005 to carry radio frequency identification, or RFID, chips. The
tags, which broadcast a burst of data when scanned with a radio signal,
store much more detailed information than conventional bar codes, and
can be read from up to 10 feet away. By making goods easier to identify
and trace, the chips could cut waste, theft, and loss, and drastically
streamline delivery, says retail consultant Scott Lundstrom of AMR
Research. (...) “Pets have them; soon products will too. So why not radio tags for
people? A Florida-based company called Applied Digital Solutions is
injecting a rice-grain-sized ID chip under the skin of a few willing
pioneers, including a Florida family dubbed the ‘Chipsons.’
Acquaintances raised their eyebrows, says mom Leslie Jacobs, 47. ‘But
people thought pacemakers were weird at first.’ “Privacy experts, however, are spooked by the idea that people's
personal data could be scanned without their knowledge. They're even
less comfortable with another Applied Digital Solutions implant, still a
prototype, that would include a global positioning system chip, and
could be tracked remotely.” No need for a national ID card In recent
months, Canada's Citizenship and Immigration Minister Denis Coderre has
been pushing for the establishment of a national ID card with biometric
data, which would not only display your photograph, but also contains,
on a chip, your fingerprints and a scan of your eyes' retinas, under the
pretext that it would help stop terrorism, and avoid events like
September 11, 2001. On September 19, 2003, speaking at a parliamentary
committee studying the issue, Canada's Privacy Commissioner Robert
Marleau said that Coderre's idea for an ID card should be rejected, for
it would be unworkable, unjustified, and cost up to $5 billion to
implement. Terrorists could obtain the card by using false
identification, or simply counterfeit them, he said, adding that such a
card would capture “very very few terrorists.” Moreover, the
commissioner maintained that such a card would favor “the massive
collection, use, and diffusion of personal data,” and represent one of
the most serious problems of confidentiality ever seen in Canada. Liberal MP John Bryden said a compulsory card might actually encourage
identity theft. “We might be creating a situation where people could
actually be killed, eliminated, made to vanish in order to acquire an ID
card that could be used to get a passport, to get all kinds of
services,” he said. In the July 21, 20033 issue of the Montreal French-language daily Le
Devoir, editorialist Michel Venne blasted this concept of a
national ID card: “Even being mandatory, this card would not be efficient. The Canadian
passport is already mandatory to cross borders, which does not prevent
clandestine immigration, white-slave trade, and drug traffic. One may
wonder how a plastic card could have prevented the terrorists of Al
Qaida to commit their crimes on September 11, 2001, since they all had a
legal U.S. status. (...) Moreover, Ottawa has been unable to administer
the system of social insurance cards competently: with a population of
30 million in Canada, 35 million cards were circulating last year. The
scandal of fire arms registration (it was supposed to cost 2 million,
but has now reached $1 billion) should also lead us to prudence before
creating another control measure: such systems are costly and
inefficient. “In 1997, the province of Quebec had consulted the population and
experts on the need for an ID card, and came to the conclusion it was
unnecessary. Even the Quebec Police said they did not need it to improve
controls, that the existing tools (driver's licence, health insurance
card, passport) were more than enough. “There is only one argument
left for Mr. Coderre to justify this stupid project: `The world has
changed since September 11.' Even the Americans have gotten over the
security obsession: immediately after the 9/11 attacks, they supported
the systematic recording of information on every citizen, but now only
26% of them support this kind of measure that looks more like facism.” Many say that it is the U.S. authorities that are pushing Canada to
establish such a system, as well as including biometric data in
passports for Canadians who want to go to the U.S. This article was published in the August-September, 2003 issue of “Michael”. |
On
June 25, 2003, Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
announced the creation of the Popular Bank, aimed at improving the
availability of credit for the poor, and reducing sky-high lending
rates. 25 million Brazilians who live on the minimum wage (240 reals, or
80 US dollars per month) are excluded from the system, since they have
access neither to a bank account nor to loans. President da Silva wants
to keep a 2% interest rate on loans to the poorest, so they can purchase
at least the basic necessities. The day before, he had denounced credit
agencies that ask up to 323% yearly interest from people who want to
borrow 200 reals ($70 U.S.).
The
September 8, 2003 issue of the weekly magazine