Faith And The City e.Letter

Dec. 20, 2005
Volume 4, Issue 12

Greetings! Faith And The City offers the following information for your review. Use the associated links to learn more about each topic. For information on a wider range of public issues, visit our home page at http://www.faithandthecity.org.

Systems Thinking Training is Back
Faith And The City
Leadership Institute
December 19, 2005
The Sustainability Institute and the Faith And The City Leadership Institute are pleased to offer a 2-day training session introducing the tools and use of systems thinking in the non-profit, education, public and service sectors. The for-profit business sector has long understood the value of systems thinking to "bottom line" strategies. Here is an opportunity for organizations that serve the common good to explore systems approaches to the bottom lines we serve through social sustainability or what might be called "wellth."
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America Needs a Tax System that Reflects its Values
Opinion by Ted Halstead
The Financial Times
Oct. 27, 2005
America 's current tax system is as wrong-headed as it is backward: it discourages savings, job creation and higher wages, while encouraging energy consumption, waste and environmental degradation.
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Highest Wage States are in the East, Lowest in the South
By Stephen Ohlemacher
Associated Press
Nov. 29, 2005
Americans have been migrating south and west for decades, but it appears they've been leaving some high-paying jobs behind. While there are many pockets of wealth in the South and West, the states with the highest wage earners line the East Coast, according to Census data released Tuesday.
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Why the United States Should Look to Japan for Better Schools
Opinion by Brent Staples
New York Times
Nov. 21, 2005
The United States will become a second-rate economic power unless it can match the educational performance of its rivals abroad and get more of its students to achieve at the highest levels in math, science and literacy.
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All Roads Lead to Cities, Transforming India
By Amy Waldman
New York Times
Dec. 7, 2005
In the rural mind, Surat, in Gujarat state, looms with outsized allure, and its girth is growing to match. In less than 15 years, its population has more than doubled, to an estimated 3.5 million, making it India's ninth largest city. A majority of Surat's residents are migrants, drawn by its two main industries, diamonds and textiles.
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Blowback Revisited: Today's Insurgents in Iraq are Tomorrow's Terrorists
Opinion by Peter Bergen and Alec Reynolds
Foreign Affairs
Nov. 1, 2005
The current war in Iraq will generate a ferocious blowback of its own, which--as a recent classified CIA assessment predicts--could be longer and more powerful than that from Afghanistan. Foreign volunteers fighting U.S. troops in Iraq today will find new targets around the world after the war ends.
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Europe 's Angry Muslims
By Robert S. Leiken
Foreign Affairs
July/August 2005
Summary: Radical Islam is spreading across Europe among descendants of Muslim immigrants. Disenfranchised and disillusioned by the failure of integration, some European Muslims have taken up jihad against the West. They are dangerous and committed -- and can enter the United States without a visa.
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Muslim Leaders Praise Acquittal of High-Profile Professor
By Andrea Useem
Religion News Service
Dec. 7 – Calling it a blow against the guilt-by-association mentality that has dogged the Islamic community since Sept. 11, Muslim leaders are celebrating the acquittal of a Florida professor accused of assisting a violent Palestinian group. Jewish groups, however, expressed disappointment.
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Health Coverage of Young Widens
With States' Aid
By John M. Broder
New York Times
Dec. 4, 2005
The number of American children without health care coverage has been slowly but steadily declining over the past several years even as health care costs continue to rise and fewer employers provide insurance, creating a breach that states have stepped in to fill with new programs and fresh money.
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HIV Study: Rate Down for Blacks; CDC Warns that Progress Elusive
By M.A.J. McKenna
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nov. 18, 2005
The rate at which African-Americans are diagnosed with HIV has declined slightly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. But the health agency hedged the announcement with warnings, cautioning that blacks remain the hardest hit of all population groups – with a rate of new diagnoses more than eight times higher than the white rate.
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Goodbye, New Orleans
By Mike Tidwell
OrionOnline.org
Posted Dec. 9, 2005
Katrina destroyed the Big Easy -- and future Katrinas will do the same – not because of engineering failures but because one million acres of coastal islands and marshland have vanished in Louisiana in the last century due to human interference.
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Metro Commutes Shorter, But Congestion is No Better, Study Shows
By Ariel Hart
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nov. 21, 2005
Atlanta drivers may not believe it. It may not seem possible, given their sluggish, endless commutes. But it's true, according to a new study. Drivers here are driving less.
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Jews, Muslims Join Fight for Christian Christmas
By Andrea Useem
Religion News Service
The movement defending Christmas as a Christian holiday has attracted some unlikely allies: religiously observant Jews and Muslims.
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The Era to Bring Back
By Joel Kotkin
Washington Post
Oct. 9, 2005
Hurricane Katrina did more than drown a city last month. It also exposed how water-logged partisan politics in the United States have become. Dominated by narrow, self-interested elites, America's political parties have built a dysfunctional system that's run aground on the constant conflict between two flawed ideologies.
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Gibson Plans Holocaust Miniseries
Associated Press
Los Angeles , Dec. 7 - Mel Gibson is stirring passions again with his latest project--a nonfiction TV movie set against the backdrop of the Holocaust. Gibson's Con Artist Productions is developing "Flory" for ABC, based on the true story of a Dutch Jew.
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Hindu Monkey God Stars in India's First Animated Feature
By Ramola Talwar Badam
Associated Press Writer
From The Asian Reporter
Nov. 1, 2005
It's a bird. It's a plane. It's ... the superhero monkey god? While Bollywood stars often achieve a mythical status in film-crazy India, the star of India's first animated feature film is a genuine deity drawn from the Hindu pantheon.
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A Media Monster is Eating the Dems
By Flavia Monteiro Colgan
AlterNet
Nov. 19, 2005
If Give-'em-Hell Harry was around today, he would probably blow a gasket when he realized that not only do most Americans rely on a single news source, but whatever source they depend on is most likely slowly congealing into one mega-corporation.
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Rev. Ridiculous – Pat Robertson Rises Up Again
Opinion by Leonard Pitts Jr.
Miami Herald
Posted Nov. 14, 2005
And the Lord did look with discontent upon the town of Dover in the province of Pennsylvania. For Dover was a wicked and prideful place and had turned its back on God. Its people had voted out school board members who tried to introduce intelligent design into schools as an alternative to the theory of evolution.
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Renowned Atheist Says He Believes in God
Associated Press
Dec. 9, 2005
A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe.
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Vatican Publishes Gay Priest Document
Associated Press
November 29, VATICAN CITY – The Vatican published its long-awaited document on gays in the priesthood Tuesday, affirming that men with "deep-seated" gay tendencies should not be ordained but that those with a "transitory problem" could be if they had overcome it for three years.
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Events

Guidelines for Posting Events

Faith And The City posts brief event notices that must include a website address for additional information. Events should be concerned with public issues and/or civic dialogue.

United Nations Holocaust Remembrance Day: From Auschwitz to Darfur, Have We Learned? (Jan. 27)
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