Saving water is not enough
Saving water is not enough
Water is abundant in this world. It has a volume of 1.4 million cubic km, and only 3,000th percent of it has been taken advantage of.
Water can be a blessing to some people but a disaster to others.
Today, Indonesia's most populous island of Java and other places in the country are suffering from a drought.
Farmers and residents of the town of Indramayu in West Java province are fighting for water. Such conflict will arise further if we fail to manage our natural resources well.
A study conducted by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has warned that without environmental preservation, Jakarta would face water shortage in 2010.
The government should thus increase the people's awareness of their environment, for example by stamping out illegal logging and instructing families as well as housing developers how to make absorption wells and water catchments to save clean water for the people's use.
Illegal logging has been occurring almost everywhere in the country since 1998, the onset of the reform era. The dry season will likely end in November and the people should save water. However, it is not enough to save water without concrete efforts to maintain our natural resources.
-- Bisnis Indonesia, Jakarta
Pedophilia in the Catholic Church
For the longest time after the pedophile priest scandal erupted in the Catholic Church, we heard that it was an aberration, just isolated incidents here and there. That other denominations had their skeletons, too.
They do, but that doesn't make the recent report from the Massachusetts attorney general any less damning. The result of 16 months of investigation, the report says more than 1,000 people were molested by priests and other church workers over the last six decades in the Boston Archdiocese alone. ...
... In any event, there's nothing anyone can do to erase the past. The future is another matter. As of last week, Boston has a new archbishop, Sean Patrick O'Malley, who is known as a "Mr. Fix-It" and has been meeting with victims.
Given everything the Catholic Church stands for -- the well- being of children near the top of that list -- we would hope its leaders do as they advise their parishioners: confess their sins, and commit themselves wholeheartedly to doing whatever it takes to ensure that this sorry chapter in the church's history does not repeat itself. Never, never again.
-- Journal Star, Peoria, Illinois
China's missiles
The United States has both a legal and moral obligation to defend the democratic government of the Republic of China on Taiwan from attack from Chinese communists.
That commitment has kept the peace across the Taiwan Strait for 50 years, blocking aggression from the communist Chinese government on the mainland.
However, the status quo of 50 years might soon be challenged by the communists, if current trends continue. ...
The communist government of mainland China is adding as many as 75 missiles a year to its arsenal of 450 already aimed at Taiwan, the report said. Further, the missiles are more sophisticated and accurate than before, with China's army developing longer-range models capable of reaching as far as Okinawa, Japan, where U.S. Marines are based. China also is spending far more on its defense budget than it has acknowledged.
Chinese belligerence is a grave threat to world peace. The U.S. government should do everything it can to dissuade the Beijing gang from this reckless and destabilizing policy.
-- The Advocate, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Arafat at 74
If there is a man who symbolizes the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom from foreign occupation, it is Yasser Arafat.
Barring Cuba's Fidel Castro, Arafat, who has turned 74, is now the world's longest surviving statesman. All his contemporaries have passed into history. But Arafat has carried on, surviving 50 assassination attempts to bring the Palestinian question back to the world's center-stage.
Full of courage, Arafat shot into fame with the battle of Karame (1968), which was Israel's first military setback. Then he led the Palestine Liberation Organization so skillfully that those who had turned the very word Palestine into taboo were forced to recognize it as the key issue in the Middle East.
Utterly indifferent to death, Arafat stayed on in Beirut till the very last moment and left Lebanon's besieged capital only after all his comrades had been evacuated.
Most observers of the international scene had then written off Arafat. However, Israel was shaken to the core when Palestinians in the occupied territories began Intifada, Arafat's "revolution of stone and stick." No wonder those who derided Arafat as a terrorist were forced to negotiate with him and sign a treaty on the lawns of the White House (1993). This "terrorist" then went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
It was a moment of great triumph when Arafat finally entered Al Quds, with Palestinian flags waving all around him. (During the intifada, exhibiting the Palestinian flag was a crime).
Now besieged in Ramallah, Arafat refuses to give up. Abandoned by the Arab-Islamic world, Arafat continues to personify the Palestinian people's aspirations, and all attempts by Ariel Sharon and his patrons to sideline him have failed. One does not know whether a sovereign Palestine with Al Quds as its capital will come into being in his lifetime, but, whenever it does, history will consider Abu Ammar's role as the most important one in articulating his people's urges and leading them with hope even in moments of utter despair.
-- The Dawn, Karachi
Will Powell resign?
If the speculation that Secretary of State Colin Powell would resign if President Bush is reelected was meant as a trial balloon, it flopped horribly.
Powell has disputed the rumors, which were trigged by a report in The Washington Post on Monday. The Post reported that Powell's deputy, Richard L. Armitage told National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that he and Powell will leave on Jan. 21, 2005, the day after the inauguration, quoting "sources familiar with the conversation."
The Post said: "Rice and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz are the leading candidates to replace Powell."
The report triggered feverish speculation. ...
The fact remains that Powell is a pillar of credibility in the administration's foreign policy, despite his appearance Feb. 5 at the U.N. Security Council in which he cited the administration's specifics of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that have since not proven to exist.
Even a hint of Powell leaving has negative repercussions, which the administration must note with some gravity.
-- The Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi