Below is an article featuring PMC’s electronic game, BREAKAWAY, that was published by Inter Press ServiceTeaching Virtual Resistance to Violence
By Kanya D’Almeida
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53662

What if young boys were imbued with a sense of empathy and fair play to counteract a culture that victimises women? Could they grow up to become part of a generation that renounces gender violence once and for all?

“Breakaway”, an interactive video football game designed by students at the Emergent Media Centre of Champlain College in the U.S. state of Vermont, hopes to be one small part of a larger movement to accomplish just that.
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Thanks to Eric Rimmer for sending me the link to this video. To watch it (16 minutes), see http://e360.yale.edu/feature/when_the_water_ends_africas_climate_conflicts/2331/#video

For thousands of years, nomadic herdsmen have roamed the harsh, semi-arid lowlands that stretch across 80 percent of Kenya and 60 percent of Ethiopia. Descendants of the oldest tribal societies in the world, they survive thanks to the animals they raise and the crops they grow, their travels determined by the search for water and grazing lands.
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Below is an article on PMC that ran in the November 30, 2010 edition of The Burlington Free Press.
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Vermont company’s soap operas promote change
By Tim Johnson
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20101130/NEWS02/101129015/Vermont-company-s-soap-operas-promote-change

Tihitena is in labor and in extreme pain. She pleads with the attending midwife to take her to the hospital, but her tradition-bound husband, Gashaw, will have none of it. He insists on a home birth.

TIHITENA: Oh, I can’t stand it any more! My God! Why won’t you take me to the hospital?

MIDWIFE: Are you afraid? Be brave, woman. Don’t forget that I have helped countless women safely deliver their babies.

GASHAW: She’s just putting on a show!

MIDWIFE: Please, Gashaw! How can you say that while she is in labor?
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Thanks to Jenny Goldie for this article.
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Lebanon, once considered to have an abundance of water, is threatened with acute shortages as the Arab world lurches toward severe water scarcity as early as 2015.

For Lebanon, which has long neglected to take measures to conserve and manage its water resources, the crisis couldn’t come at a worse time: The government is gripped by political crisis that many fear could lead to renewed civil war; the decision-making process has been paralyzed; and a 10-year water plan adopted in 2002 has ground to a halt.

The Cabinet, burdened with a $54 billion public debt, decided recently to delay all discussion on a proposal by Water and Energy Minister Jibran Bassil to build 11 dams on Lebanon’s several rivers.

For full article, visit:
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2010/11/12/Arabs-face-severe-water-crisis-by-2015/UPI-64941289579090/

Thanks to Lester Brown for this book byte.
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Improving Food Security by Strategically Reducing Grain Demand

By Lester R. Brown
Earth Policy Release
Plan B 4.0 Book Byte
November 9, 2010

After several decades of rapid rise in world grain yields, it is now becoming more difficult to raise land productivity fast enough to keep up with the demands of a growing, increasingly affluent, population. From 1950 to 1990, world grainland productivity increased by 2.2 percent per year, but from 1990 until 2009 it went up by only 1.3 percent annually. Despite some impressive local advances, the global loss of momentum in expanding food production is forcing us to think more seriously about reducing demand by stabilizing population, moving down the food chain, and reducing the use of grain to fuel cars.
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Many thanks to Peter Goodchild for sending an abridged copy of his new book, The Coming Chaos. You can download a copy here: https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B5F-idWfw7TeY2U4ZjE3ZmUtYjU5Ny00ZGQ5LTg4YTQtMGVmZjg5ZjQxZGI4&hl=en&authkey=CMDYyYcF

An international poll commissioned by King’s indicates that before nations can tackle several global challenges they first must understand and bridge the gap between their divergent opinions.

The poll, conducted in September by Ipsos MORI, asked a total of 7,055 adults, ages 16 to 64, in eight countries two questions online – to identify ‘the two or three greatest challenges’ that face a) the world, and b) their own country.

Responses varied greatly, with more people in developing nations generally concerned about pollution and global warming and climate change, as global challenges. Residents of western nations were more likely to cite the economy.

For full article, visit:
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/kingsanswers/news/records/pollingresults.aspx

Thanks to the Center for Biological Diversity for this article.
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In a recent survey commissioned by King’s College London, overpopulation came up as the fifth-scariest issue facing the globe. The first-ever “Global Index of Fear,” as some have called it, polled more than 7,000 people in eight nations: Australia, the United States, Britain, Brazil, China, South Africa, India and Saudi Arabia. Climate change and war/terrorism tied for first-place among global fears, followed by poverty, the economy and overpopulation.

What does all this show, besides the fact that the world is shaking in its boots? Certainly it confirms the importance of dealing with global warming without delay. But the survey also provides an important perspective on overpopulation, an issue the Center for Biological Diversity took up in 2009.

For full article, visit:
http://action.biologicaldiversity.org/t/9524/blastContent.jsp?email_blast_KEY=1197092#seven

To the Americans on this email list, I hope you have a Very Happy Thanksgiving. For all on this list, may you experience the four freedoms:

Freedom of Speech
Freedom of Worship
Freedom from Want
Freedom from Fear

For your holiday reading, I send you Al Bartlett’s Reflections on Sustainability, Population Growth, and the Environment. You can download the paper here: https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B5F-idWfw7TeM2Q0ZjQ5OWQtNjU2ZC00ZDJjLWE2MzQtZTJkOGNmNDlkMDUw&hl=en&authkey=CJSTg4MB

Thanks to Steve Kurtz for this article.
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Pope Benedict XVI says that condom use is acceptable “in certain cases”, notably to reduce the risk of HIV infection, in a book due out Tuesday, apparently softening his once hardline stance.

In a series of interviews published in his native German, the 83-year-old Benedict is asked whether “the Catholic Church is not fundamentally against the use of condoms.”

“It of course does not see it as a real and moral solution,” the pope replies.

“In certain cases, where the intention is to reduce the risk of infection, it can nevertheless be a first step on the way to another, more humane sexuality,” said the head of the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics.

For full article, visit:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101121/hl_afp/vaticanreligionpopegermanybooksex