Having been diagnosed only at 51, here is some general information on manic depression (old term) or bipolar affective disorder (BAD for short and for me, too, though hopefully only for the short term while "they" try, by trial and error, ugh, to fix me up with medications).

I had been on anti-depressants, which were working well as far as I was concerned but seemed to escalate what I now know were problems with "mania".  Unfortunately, twice (once while waiting for psych consult and once in psychiatrist's care), my anti-depressants have been reduced to nothing before there was any mood stabilizer medicine in enough effect to save me from getting very, very depressed.

One time was just before Christmas when neither my family doctor nor the psychiatrist were available; so I spent 7 hours in a locked crisis centre in hospital until they finally provided me with adjusted medication prescriptions. For a time, I thought they weren't going to let me out as they wanted me to stay until the medications were sorted out. I had to get my husband to come and talk to the psychiatrist before they would let me out.

I'd have to say I was the only one voluntarily in the centre, although I had checked in to emergency and was escorted to the crisis centre instead of waiting through usual emergency area. Most everyone else had been brought there by police or distraught family members.

There was an interesting bunch of characters there, including an extremely talkative, nosy pregnant woman who, as a result of becoming very noisy, demanding and belligerant was put in a locked in room (with bed) and later given haldol and subject to a "four-point restraint" - I assume meaning tied hand and foot to her bed by the four "security officers" who went into the room with the two nurses.

There was an elderly woman who wouldn't sit down and wanted to rearrange where the garbage cans were to the end of beds and who was very concerned about a non-existent fan she thought was still on and wanted my husband to figure out how to turn it off.

There was a totally catatonic young man wandering around the halls like a zombie. There was an even younger man who didn't know why he was there (his father called the police because of his behaviour - he wasn't taken his medications at the time and was hearing voices and stomping on the floor). There was a totally alcoholic young woman, who could barely stand up, brought in by her sister, who could not manage her any longer. There was a middle age woman who told my husband that in her dream doctors were telling her to kill her husband.

It was a sad place to be and everyone there just wanted to know when they were getting out. I keep thinking, since my trip there, that some of the money that goes to cancer should go to mental health. Much about mental health disorders and medications is just unknown. Even in a hospital, with nurses and doctors and psychiatrists, it all seems barbaric. There just has to be better ways of treating the mentally ill and better medications to help do it with.

The general information which follows on bipolar disorder is from the Canadian Mental Health Association, though I believe by googling mental health or bipolar, you can find information on it in most countries:

Bipolar Disorder

We all experience changes in mood. Times of sadness or disappointment are natural reactions to the difficulties that occur in our lives. The loss of a loved one, problems at work or a deteriorating relationship can cause us to feel depressed. Similarly, a great success or relief from a problem makes us feel happy and content. Our moods tend to be varied and shifting, but generally we feel as though we have some control over them. However, for people with mood disorders like depression and bipolar disorder, that sense of control is missing and that causes distress.  Anyone who has experienced depression or a manic episode can readily tell you the difference between those illnesses and their own normal feelings of  sadness or happiness. Severe or prolonged depression is an illness that affects not only a person's emotions, but also physical health, relationships and behaviour. At any given time, almost 3 million Canadians have serious depression. It is about twice as common in women. Bipolar disorder, also called manic depression, is an illness in which there are periods of serious depression, followed by episodes of markedly elevated or irritable moods or "highs" (in the absence of drugs or alcohol). These mood swings are not necessarily related to events in the person's life. Bipolar disorder affects approximately 1% of the population; it typically starts in late adolescence or early adulthood and affects men and women equally. Depression and bipolar disorder can be treated. There is good reason for hope. By learning more about these conditions, you can help remove the stigma that prevents many people from seeking help. Bipolar Disorder People with bipolar disorder, or manic depressive disorder, experience alternating mood swings, from emotional highs (mania) to lows (depression). The condition can range from mild to severe. It is not known what causes bipolar disorder. Research suggests that people with the condition have a genetic disposition. It tends to run in families. Drug abuse and stressful or traumatic events may contribute to or trigger episodes. Symptoms of mania include: Feelings of euphoria, extreme optimism, exaggerated self-esteem Rapid speech, racing thoughts Decreased need for sleep Extreme irritability Impulsive and potentially reckless behaviour Symptoms of the depression phase are the same as in major depression, described above. Treatment is Available Depression and bipolar disorder are treatable. Learning to recognize the signs and triggers enables people to work with their doctors, other health professionals, family and friends to prevent recurrences from becoming severe. The great majority of depressed people respond to treatment and nearly all who seek treatment will get some relief from their symptoms. Both medication and some forms of counselling or psychotherapy have been demonstrated to be effective. Bipolar disorder is mainly treated with medication and psychotherapy. Medication helps to stabilize moods, while therapy helps people detect patterns and triggers and develop strategies for managing stress. Sometimes, electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, is used. What Can I Do? Many people do not seek help for depression or bipolar disorder, sometimes because their symptoms prevent them from recognizing the seriousness of their situation. It can also result from the stigma that surrounds both these conditions, making people feel like they are weak or at fault. It is important to know that depression and bipolar disorder are treatable. Friends and family can be supportive by learning all they can about the condition affecting their loved one. You can learn more from support groups and community health associations. Where To Go For More Information For further information, contact a community organization like the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) to find out about support and resources in your community.

I found this article that goes through the usual (often unrealistic goals we come up with) and instead proposes these five great New Years' resolutions stead. This is from the World Vision website, http://www.worldvision.ca/ContentArchives/content-stories/Pages/5-realistic-new-years-resolutions.aspx .

5 REALISTIC NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

Have you signed up for that gym membership yet?

Perhaps you just bought a fresh supply of nicotine patches.

Or maybe you've made that promise to leave work by 5 o'clock every day come January.

It's that time of year again. Whether motivated by guilt or a renewed zest for life, many of us will be making resolutions to change for the better. And New Year's is the perfect time to bring together our passion for making the world a better place with that age-old tradition of making our yearly resolutions.

Let's face it, many resolutions are not, well, completely realistic. (Do you honestly think you'll get back down to that svelte high-school physique by spring?)  Fortunately, these five New Year's resolutions are different. They are easy to stick to and can have a truly positive impact on the world.

1. I will become better informed about one global issue that moves me.
From saving the rainforests to opposing unfair trade practices, simply read one book or magazine article on your favourite topic.

Next, spend one hour exploring websites or internet resources relating to this issue. You can then look into whether there are easy action steps you can take to help.

2. I will finally take a serious look into child sponsorship.
Instead of grand plans to shape the entire world, start small and discover how you can change a single life for the better. Click here to learn more about World Vision child sponsorship.

If you're already a child sponsor, resolve to encourage three people to explore child sponsorship.  You can explain the difference you have seen it make in the life of your sponsored child and answer any questions that may come up.

3. I will go even greener in my own home and workplace.
As each year goes by, we see the impact of climate change. These changes have the most acute effects on vulnerable individuals in the developing world. You can help in simple ways, like finally replacing all those light bulbs with energy-saving fluorescent bulbs and reducing your weekly garbage to a maximum of two bags.

4. I will express my preference for alternative gifts.
On at least one personal celebration when you expect to receive presents, you can ask people who love you to donate to a charity instead of purchasing a gift you probably don't need.

Click here to browse the World Vision Gift Catalogue.

5. I will start to change the world one person at a time.
Simply invite a neighbour in for coffee (fair-trade coffee, of course). Or host a casual dinner party for friends who need a boost. Or simply smile at just one stranger every day.

From the Winter 2007/08 Child View, World Vision's magazine for child sponsors, this is an article about the tradition of female circumcision and the risks it causes:

SCARRED BY TRADITION
Three million girls undergo circumcision rituals each year. Community awareness is the key to ending this harmful practice that puts their lives at risk.

Story by Nicolette Beharie

As Tadelu Wodajo sits outside her brick schoolhouse, the 19-year-old gracefully raises her hand to shield her face from the sun. It's hard not to notice the black tattooed spots that line her jaw bone, distinctive marks of beauty and womanhood in her rural Ethiopian culture. She was a child, Wodajo has always desired to identify herself with her female peers.

"I forced my family to circumcise me," she says of the rite of passage observed by women in her community. "It was only when I was in Grade 1." Her confession is abrupt and her countenance unflinching. A brief silence, however, indicates there is more. "If I wasn't circumcised, I would be different and they would tease me and insult me."

Then 10 years old, Wodajo persuaded her mother to invite the local circumciser to their home that Easter, the time when circumcision rituals take place in their Orthodox Christian community. Wodajo was the first of several girls to undergo the procedure that day.

Female circumcision, a euphemism used to describe female genital mutilation (FGM), involves the cutting away of one or several parts of the female genitalia for cultural or non-medical reasons. Although the origin of FGM is unclear, this practice predates both Christianity and Islam and is often marked with celebrations.

Untrained traditional midwives, using no anesthetic, typically perform FGM on prepubescent girls. This causes excruciating pain and puts them at risk for infections and hemorrhaging, which can lead to shock or even death.

For those who survive the procedure, the serious health consequences become evident during childbirth. FGM is not only associated with urinary tract infections, but also prolonged and obstructed labour.

In Ethiopia, women face a one in 14 chance of dying during childbirth or from other pregnancy-related causes. Maternal mortality rates are also high across sub-Saharan Africa. UNICEF reports that one out of every 16 women will die as a result of pregnancy or childbirth, compared with one out of every 4,000 in industrialized countries.

When the United Nations presented the Millennium Development Goals in 2000 (see sidebar), this disproportion was at the heart of its fifth goal: improve maternal health. World leaders pledged to reduce by three-quarters the maternal morality ratio by 2015. But in countries where harmful practices like FGM compromise the reproductive health of girls, meeting this goal continues to be a challenge.

Despite international campaigns in recent years to eradicate FGM, it is practised in more than 28 countries in Africa and in parts of the Middle East and Asia; three million girls worldwide undergo the operation each year. In Ethiopia, where 74 per cent of women between the ages of 15 and 49 have experienced FGM, World Vision is working with communities to help reduce maternal deaths by raising awareness about practices like FGM that make women vulnerable to the risks.

Wodajo lives in a World Vision-supported area of Hidhabu Abote, a district northwest of Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. In her community, the tradition is to have girls undergo FGM before they reach puberty. While Wodajo asked for this procedure, she knows her widowed mother would have eventually arranged to have it done. Refusing FGM meant Wodajo would have been ostracized, reducing her chance of marrying.

Although mothers pursue FGM for their daughters, and female midwives typically perform the procedure, men with a preference for women who have undergone FGM is one of the factors that drive the culture that demands it. In many cultures, FGM is practised to decrease a woman's libido and prevent promiscuity.

Myths and superstitions, which vary depending on the country and region, also perpetuate this practice. "I heard people say that if a girl is not circumcised, she will have problems when she gives birth," says Wodajo, who no longer holds this belief and now regrets having the procedure done.

In a recent study conducted by the World Health Organization, researchers found that women who had undergone FGM were more likely to suffer complications during childbirth than women who did not experience FGM. Women who had the procedure done were also more likely to need a Caesarean section, an episiotomy and an extended stay in hospital.

But in a country like Ethiopia, where nearly a quarter of the people lie on less than a dollar a day, many women are unable to access the health care they need for a safe delivery. Only six per cent of women in Ethiopia give birth with a skilled attendant such as a doctor or nurse present.

Rural women who live far from a health facility or can't afford hospital fees often give birth at home with the help of a traditional birthing attendant (TBA), such as 64-year-old Gezu Dese. She's delivered dozens of babies over the past 34 years. Like many TBAs, Dese was taught by her mother to perform FGM.

"When a girl is circumcised, she is considered to be grown-up," explains Dese, who lives near Wodajo's community. "Now she is ready. She can marry at any time." Closely tied to FGM, early marriage - a union in which one or both partners are under the age of 18 - is also a harmful traditional practice that is widespread in parts of Ethiopia.

Most of Wodajo's friends who encouraged her to undergo FGM are now married. "They quit school in Grade 3," she remembers. Premature pregnancy and motherhood are inevitable consequences of early marriage, according to UNICEF, and girls under 15 are five times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth than women in their 20s."Thus a circumcised adolescent girl is doubly disadvantaged," concludes a World Vision report on FGM, based on research conducted in Ethiopia, Kenya and Ghana.

In 2005, World Vision launched its Safe Motherhood project, which aims to increase awareness about harmful practices that affect maternal health, in Ethiopia's Hidhabu Abote and Jeju districts. Through the project, Dese learned about the risks of FGM and how to be a more effective TBA.

Unlike some of her community members, Dese decided to stop practising FGM. She admits, however, that she began having doubts about the procedure a few years before World Vision launched the Safe Motherhood project. What she learned through the training confirmed her suspicions.

"I used to have a lot of problems with the circumcised girls and I started to think it was not good." Dese says of her years as a TBA. .But despite her observations, she continued to practise FGM. "It is not our decision," she says of her former views.

In 2004, Ethiopia's government enacted a law criminalizing FGM, joining at least 16 other African countries in the legal fight against the practice. Today, forcing a woman or child to undergo FGM in Ethiopia can result in fines and imprisonment.

While laws that penalize FGM are strong deterrents, they don't hold the promise that the practice will stop as a result. Husen Feko, a 67-year-old Muslim elder in Jeju district, southeast of Addis Ababa, is still adamant that FGM should continue. A father of 10, whose youngest daughter is four years old, Feko is not convinced that he's alone in his belief.

That's why Lydia Mesfin, World Vision's advocacy coordinator in Ethiopia, is convinced that education is the key to eradicating FGM. "We have to work on the attitudes of people," she says.

In Kenya, World Vision works with communities to establish alternative rites of passage ceremonies that are not harmful to children. In some cases, girls mark the transition into womanhood by learning about the role of women in their society. At the end of the training, the girls participate in a special ceremony to celebrate their new status.

When the Safe Motherhood project rolled out in Dese's community two years ago, World Vision staff members held education sessions targeting community leaders. Building on previous HIV-awareness campaigns, they emphasized that unsterilized blades used for FGM can also spread the virus. This, plus information about the reproductive health risks, was enough to persuade the leaders to seriously consider these issues.

With the signs of tolerance slowly dawning in her community, Dese eventually found the courage to be open about her views concerning FGM. "I told them I didn't want to do it anymore," asserts Dese. Although some opposed her new convictions, she adds that others in the village recently changed their views.

"As a woman, it's a practice that we have to work very hard on," Mesfin says of FGM. "It may take time, but people change." In both Hidhabu Abote and Jeju districts, FGM - a subject that was once taboo to even discuss - is now being discouraged by some religious leaders, is open to debate in classrooms and is the focus of student-led drama presentations.

Wodajo participates in some of these drama skits and is now promoting awareness to her peers. "I know what happened to me and I also know these are false beliefs," says Wodajo. "So I decided I have to teach others."

Although many of her peers have already experienced FGM and married young, Wodajo has hope for the next generation of girls. "I want to get married and have children," she says, but "only after I finish school and reach where I want t be."

From the Saturday, November 17, 2007, Ideas section, page ID, an article about the Arctic glacier ice melting and what surprises that uncovers:

Arctic in Peril
BIG THAW YIELDS SURPRISES

Receding glacial ice has an upside: A new window on the North's indigenous past

Ed Struzik
Atkinson Fellow

Kusawa Lake, Yukon - High above the green-grey waters of Kusawa Lake in the southern Yukon sits an ancient swath of snow and ice. Biologist Gerry Kuzyk and his wife Kirsten were hiking up this steep, icy mountainside 10 years ago when a powerful barnyard smell led them to a mound of caribou pellets surrounding antlers sticking out of the snow.

Such a find wouldn't draw much attention in many parts of the Yukon. But the last time anyone reported a caribou near the site was 1932. And this was no ordinary pile of dung. More than 300 metres long, 200 metres wide and knee-deep in some places, it also contained the remains of freeze-dried birds, a rotting muskrat, dozens of other animals as well as arrows, darts and spears.

When Yukon caribou biologist Rick Farnell arrived to investigate, he likened the scene to "The Twilight Zone." Tests done by a University of Toronto lab estimated the darts and some of the fecal pellets to be up to 4,000 years old. Melting out of the ancient snow and ice was the accumulation of everything that had died or been deposited on the glacier in that time.

Kuzyk figured he would never see anything like it again.

But two years later, a couple of hunters walked into his Yukon wildlife office with the partial remains of a man they had found melting out of the ice on the British Columbia side of the Yukon border. The iceman wore a squirrel fur cloak and woven hat, similar to what aboriginal people in the region wear today. Researchers later determined that Kwaday Dan Sinchi (Long Ago Person Found) had perished 540 years ago.

Both finds set off an aerial search of the Yukon that produced dozens more archeological sites and a treasure trove of artifacts used by three First Nations groups. The melting, it turns out, is not only unlocking the secrets of the human past, it is also providing scientists with a glimpse of what this world looked like before Europeans arrived.

Most of the world's glaciers are receding. Climate change is melting the European Alps, the snows of Kilimanjaro in Africa and the massive snouts of snow and ice between Banff and Jasper in the Canadian Rockies. Of the 850 glaciers on the eastern slopes of the Rockies that Canadian glaciologist Mike Demuth has been monitoring, 325 have disappeared entirely since the early 1970s.

But new data show the melting of glaciers worldwide is accelerating faster than anyone previously thought. According to the Swiss-based World Glacier Monitoring Service, 30 key international glaciers lost on average 66 centimetres of thickness in 2005. Those glaciers are melting about 1.6 times faster this decade than they were in the 1990s, and about six times faster than in the 1980s. In the last 27 years, they have, on average, thinned by a total of about 10.5 metres.

Nowhere is the meltdown more dramatic than in the sub-Arctic and Arctic region where there are more than 100,000 glaciers.

The Columbia Glacier near Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound has retreated 15 kilometres in the last 25 years. Of the 19 glaciers in the state's Juneau Icefield, 18 are receding. Only one, the Taku Glacier, is advancing.

It's a similar story in northern Canada. In the mid-1960s and 1970s, the Steele was one of a number of glaciers that was growing and tearing through the St. Elias icefields in the southwest corner of the Yukon. At one point, the Steele was moving more than 1.5 billion tonnes of ice at a rate of up to 15 metres per day. But these days, this so-called "Galloping Glacier" is too wasted to make another run. So is the Lowell Glacier, which surged up against Goatherd Mountain 255 years ago and dammed the Alsek River, creating a glacial lake more than 100 kilometres long and 100 metres deep.

The Lowell's retreat may be good news for the Yukon residents of Haines Junction whose homes could be under water if it were to once again surge so spectacularly.

But the retreat of Arctic ice raises some troubling issues.

When the Exxon Valdez ran into a reef in Prince William Sound 18 years ago, for example, it wasn't simply a case of pilot error. The tanker was on an altered course to avoid a dangerous mess of icebergs that had calved off the Columbia Glacier. It resulted in the worst man-made environmental disaster in North American history. Nearly 2,000 kilometres of Alaskan shoreline was contaminated.

The melting of the glaciers also has huge implications for future hydro-electric generation in the north, for commercial navigation on the Mackenzie River, for rare life forms that rely on glaciers, for more southerly weather patterns and for low-lying coastal communities everywhere.

Greenland, for example, has 1.8 million square kilometres of ice that is on average 2.3 kilometres thick. If it were to melt completely, ocean levels would rise by up to seven metres.

That's not going to happen any time soon. But scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder recently found that glaciers and ice caps, more than Greenland or Antarctica, are mostly responsible for the ice in the world's oceans. They estimate that glaciers and ice caps are contributing about 417 cubic kilometres of ice, as much water as there is in Lake Erie, each year.

Not only has this flow of ice been steady, it's rising by about 12.5 cubic kilometres per year. If it continues to rise at that rate, many of the 104 million people who live within a metre of sea level may have to move by the end of the century.

The possibility is no longer just theoretical. A small rise in sea level has already forced the Alaska government to consider evacuating the entire Eskimo village of Shishmaref, which lies on a tiny island on the edge of the Arctic Circle. It's also why four other coastal communities - Kivalina, Koyukuk, and Newtok in Alaska and Tuktoyaktuk in Canada - may have to be evacuated as well within the next 50 years.

Mike Demuth won't deny he had ancient animals and Stone Age hunters like those found by the Kuzyks in mind when he got the idea of skiing across the Brintnell Glacier in the spring of 2007.

But the glaciologist's main goal, he said when he invited me along, was to determine how quickly the icefield north of Nahanni National Park in the Northwest Territories has been retreating, and what impact is is having.

"My wife Margie and I found the bones of caribou scattered across the Brintnell Glacier when we were planting poles in the ice (to measure changes in depth) last summer," said Demuth, who works for the Geological Survey of Canada. "But those looked relatively fresh, like they had just been killed by pack of wolves. But who knows? They may be a lot older than they looked."

Shrouded in fog or clouds for most of the spring and summer, the Brintnell is one of the most remote and difficult places to reach in the western Arctic.

But the sun was burning bright when we began an afternoon ascent to find the four poles the Demuths had planted the summer before. There were four of us on the expedition: Demuth, Canadian biologist Steve Bertollo, Matt Beedle, an Alaskan native who was doing a PhD in glaciology, and me.

Despite the sun, a nasty storm front was moving in from the valley below. Within the hour we were in and out of the clouds and snow, sweating buckets one minutes and then pulling up our hoods the next to stay warm.

We never did find any sign of ancient life. But thanks to a global positioning device, it didn't take too long to find the first of the four poles. It was sticking a metre out of the ice beneath another metre of snow that Bertollo had shovelled off.

The fact that a metre of ice had melted off the surface of the glacier in the six weeks it took for the deep autumn freeze to set in was no surprise to Demuth. Satellite images and a 58-year-old aerial photograph had already told him that the entire icefield in the Ragged Range has been shrinking fast.

Most Canadian glaciers are small compared with the massive sheets of ice that cover Greenland and Antarctica. But that makes them more sensitive to climate change. Roy Koerner, the dean of glaciology in Canada, sees them as the proverbial canary in the coal mine, an early warning to the rest of the world of the consequences of climate change.

This spring, Koerner was shocked when he and David Burgess, the scientist who is taking over his position at the Geological Survey, set off across the Melville ice cap high in the western half of the Arctic Archipelago.

"It's a small glacier," says Koerner. "I thought I knew every inch of it until we came across this big lump that was sticking out. I couldn't figure out what it was until Dave took a look and realized that it was not ice but earth and rock under that snow. The glacier had melted back so much that parts of it were now gone."

Over in Greenland, the glaciers are also shrinking. Coastal glaciers there are melting into the Atlantic Ocean twice as fast as previously believed. But snow and ice have also been building up in the interior.

This has led climate change skeptics to claim that the ice sheet is now thawing.

Thanks to radio echo data and 10 years of radar information, scientists have recently confirmed that the Greenland Ice Sheet is, in fact, slimming dramatically.

The data show that the annual loss of mass has risen from 90 cubic kilometres in 1996 to 150 cubic kilometres in 2005.

Demuth and other glaciologists believe more investment in research and technology is the only way scientists will be able to provide policy makers with the information they need to understand what the melting of Canada's glaciers means for the environment and the economy.

"Up until very recently, we've been relying on pretty rudimentary data," he pointed out at camp one night. "But ... the complexity of the problems we're being asked to investigate involves solutions that can no longer be obtained by one researcher doing things the old way."

thestar.com
For more coverage of this year's Atkinson series on climate change and the Arctic, including a narrated slide by author Ed Struzik, to thestar.com/arctic

I received an email from an organization called United for Peace and Justice about a January 11, 2008, day of action to close Guantanamo Prison. The main event is in Washington, D.C., but there is a link for what is going on elsewhere. If you aren't somewhere where you can get involved, you can wear orange as a sign of support.

Witness Against Torture, a member group of UFPJ, has been a leading force in the efforts to shut down the detention center at Guantánamo. Now they are organizing what promises to be an important day of protest on Friday, January 11, 2008. More information about the plans for activities in Washington, DC, that day -- as well as what you can do locally -- are included in the message below.

Peace,

Leslie Cagan
National Coordinator, UFPJ

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"Immediately close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,
and either release its inmates or bring them before an impartial tribunal."
â€" United Nations Human Rights Commission

CALL TO ACTION

We declare January 11, 2008, six years after the first prisoners arrived at Guantanamo, an International Day of Action to Shut Down Guantánamo. In Washington, DC, we will hold a permitted demonstration at the National Mall followed by an orange jumpsuit procession to the Supreme Court. There will also be solidarity demonstrations in Chicago, Miami, London and Paris, with more being added every day. We invite you to come to Washington and participate, or else join or plan an action in your own community. We also encourage people around the world to wear orange t-shirts, armbands or other orange clothing on January 11th to mark the date.

JOIN US IN WASHINGTON, DC

Friday, January 11, 11:00am. (National Mall).

The day involves several elements:

Demonstration at the National Mall. Witness Against Torture has teamed up with Amnesty International and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture to hold a permitted demonstration on the National Mall at 11:00am. (Gather at 12th street NW between Madison Dr NW & Jefferson Drive SW - near the Smithsonian Metro Stop.)

"Prisoners of Guantánamo March." Hundreds marched in last year's procession
A provocative street theater performance involving people wearing orange jump suits and black hoods. We will march from the National Mall to the Supreme Court in an orderly silent procession hauntingly evoking the moral disgrace that is Guantánamo. With your help, we will form a prisoner contingent including as many protesters as there are prisoners.

Funeral Ceremony at the Supreme Court. Following the procession to the Supreme Court, we will hold a Funeral Ceremony to remember the four men who died in custody at Guantánamo and to mourn the death of Habeas Corpus. Like last year, some may choose to risk arrest. To participate, please consider attending an orientation meeting on Thursday, 4pm, at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Church (1525 Newton Street, NW) or come early to the National Mall for an orientation and rehearsal at 10:00am. Please let us know in advance if you are willing to participate in either the Prisoners Contingent, Nonviolent Direct Action, or both. Email jan11@witnesstorture.org or call Matt Daloisio at 201-264-4424.

For up-to-date details as well as information about housing, food, rides and directions, legal support and much more, please visit our website at http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=KcnPe1lIjQXPcM%2Fta%2FWEhNcwg%2Bixqqk6.

WEAR ORANGE ON JANUARY 11TH!
Wherever you are on January 11th, we encourage you to wear orange to raise public awareness and strengthen the movement to demand an end to torture and indefinite detention. Consider wearing one of Witness Against Torture's Orange "Shut Down Guantánamo" T-shirts, an ACLU arm band, or even an orange jump suit.

JOIN THE GROWING NUMBER OF LOCAL VIGILS - ATTEND OR ORGANIZE AN ACTION IN YOUR COMMUNITY
If you can't join us in Washington D.C., please consider attending or organizing a vigil, march or a public forum in your community. Actions are currently planned in 30 cities, including New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Miami, London, Paris and elsewhere.

Visit http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=jbIGLMk5uIb00rQWxbVsW5AAAAmDI8X6 for up-to-date details about solidarity events, as well as to find ideas for actions, to post to our calendar, or to download flyers and other resources.

WHO WE ARE
Two years ago Witness Against Torture drew international attention after it walked to Guantánamo to visit the prisoners. Upon its return, the group has organized vigils, marches, nonviolent direct actions and educational events to expose and decry the administration's lawlessness, build awareness about torture and indefinite detention, and forge human ties with the prisoners at Guantánamo and their families.

Some of the organizations endorsing the Jan 11 Day of Action include:

    Act Against Torture
    Bill of Rights Defense Committee
    The Catholic Worker
    Center for Constitutional Rights
    CodePink
    Declaration of Peace
    International Federation of Human Rights
    National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance
    Network of Spiritual Progressives
    Pax Christi USA
    Peace Action
    School of the Americas Watch
    Torture Abolition and Survivors Coalition
    United for Peace and Justice
    US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
    Voices For Creative Nonviolence
    War Resisters League
    World Can't Wait
    ...and more. See a full list of endorsers.

DONATE
Please make a contribution to help cover the costs of the January 11th event. You can donate online or send a check made out to "Witness Against Torture" to Mary House Catholic Worker, 55 E. Third Street, New York, NY 10003.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Zk68A9FOKSO0ek%2FrkZZayJAAAAmDI8X6

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Help us continue to do this critical work: Make a donation to UFPJ today.

UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
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From the Ideas section of the Toronto Star, Saturday, November 17, 2007, page ID6, an article about bringing environmental concerns to religious groups:

ECO RELIGION
Greening sacred spaces

Stephen Scharper

Can religious groups decrease the ecological footprint of their worship spaces? And, perhaps more importantly, should they?

A recently established religious initiative, "Greening Sacred Spaces," is helping faith communities across Canada answer both questions affirmatively.

A scion of the Faith and Common Good project (www.faith-commongood), started by United Church ministers Ted Reeve and Bill Phipps, Greening Sacred Spaces views climate change as a deeply spiritual issue, and strives to assist faith groups to move toward eco-friendly places of worship.

According to the group's website, "Climate change is one of the greatest threats to the well-being of our planet today, and as such represents a challenge to all people of faith."

The Group cites predictions by the UN panel on climate change that by 2100, Earth's average temperature will have increased by 1.5 to 6 degrees Celsius, with the rate doubling in the Arctic.

It argues that "faith traditions are a key source of wisdom in the great spiritual quest of our time: Healing our beloved Earth. We believe that we are called to re-envision the way that we live."

With support from the Ontario Conservation Bureau and the Toronto Atmospheric Fund, as well as the "sweat equity" of volunteers within the faith communities themselves, the project has developed a how-to resource kit, complete with workshops, posters, and music to help faith groups engage in decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing sustainable living.

According to greening spaces to coordinator Rory O'Brien, more than 100 faith groups, including Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, and Baha'i communities, have become involved in everything from retrofitting energy efficient light bulbs to entire environmental audits and eco-friendly architectural renovations, using the most advanced environmental technologies.

In addition to the actual greening of places of worship, the group hopes that faith communities will become leaders in advancing a more ecologically sensitive way of life, and will team up with activists to engage in local environmental initiatives.

O'Brien also notes that they hope to make the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System) standard a key component of any future design and architectural planning among faith groups in Canada. A showcase for this group is Toronto's St. Gabriel's Catholic Church, the first Gold certified LEED church in North America.

Included in St. Gabriel's state-of-the-art green design features are a solar glass wall on the south face utilizing the energy of the sun. This creates a visual bridge connecting worshippers inside with a naturalized garden outside.

The parking lot has been moved underground, with privileged spaces for hybrid and non-polluting vehicles, and a garden with a cosmological stations of the cross has been installed in front. There is also a "living wall" of foliage over which a thin layer of water constantly flows. The living wall is meant to purify the air of both the entryway gathering space and the main sanctuary.

The greening project is a natural evolution in North American faith groups' growing concern about the state of the Earth's ecology which is asking of all us if we "pray well with others," including the flora and fauna with whom we share our planetary home.

Stephen B. Scharper is an associate professor with the Centre for Environment, University of Toronto. stephen.scharper@utoronto.ca

From the Living section of the Toronto Star, Thursday, January 3, 2008, page L5, an article about a different type of program to deal with troubled teenagers:

Troubled Teens
YOUNG OFFENDERS TURN AROUND WITH TLC

Instead of shipping teen lawbreakers off to jail, Missouri finds success in home-like centres

Todd Lewan
Associated Press

Montgomery City, Mo. - At age 9, Korey Davis came home from school with gang writing on his arm. At 10, he jacked his first car. At 13, he and some buddies got guns, used them to relieve a man of his Jeep, and later, while trying to outrun a police helicopter, smacked their hot wheels into a firehydrant.

David pulled not only a 15-year sentence but got "certified" as an adult offender and shipped off to the St. Louis City workhouse to inspire a change of heart.

It didn't have the desired effect.

"I wasn't wanting to listen to nobody," says Korey, now 19. "If you wasn't my momma, or anybody in my family, I wasn't gonna listen to you, period."

Most states would have written Korey off and begun shuttling him from one adult prison to the next, where he likely would have sat in sterile cells, joined a gang, and spent his days and nights plotting his next crime.

But this is Missouri, where teen offenders are viewed not just as inmates but as works in progress - where troubled kids are rehabilitated in small, homelike settings that stress group therapy and personal development over isolation and punishment.

With prisons around the United States filled to bursting and with states looking to bring down recidivism rates that rise to 70 and 80 per cent, some policy-makers are taking a fresh look at treatment-oriented approaches like Missouri's as a way out of the United States' juvenile justice crisis.

Here, prison-style "gladiator schools" have been replaced by 42 community-based centres spread around the state so that now, even parents of inner-city offenders can easily visit their children and participate in family therapy.

The ratio of staff to kids is low: one to five. Wards, referred to as "clients," are grouped in teams of 10, and rarely separated: They go to classes together, eat together, and bunk in communal "cottages." Evenings, they attend therapy and counselling sessions a group.

Missouri doesn't set timetables for release, a policy that detainees say gives kids an added incentive to take the program seriously.

College students or other volunteers who live in the released youths' community track these youths for three years, helping with job placement, therapy referrals, school issues and drug or alcohol treatment. The results include:

*  About 8.6 percent of teens who complete Missouri's program are incarcerated in adult prisons within three years of release, according to 2006 figures. (In New York, 75 per cent are re-arrested as adults, 42 per cent for a violent felony).

*  Last year, 7.3 per cent of teen offenders released from Missouri's youth facilities were recommited to juvenile centres for new offences. Texas, which spends about 20 percent more to keep a child in juvenile corrections, has a recidivism rate that tops 50 percent.

*  No Missouri teens have committed suicide while in custody since 1983, when the state began overhauling its system. From1995 to 1999 alone, at least 110 young people killed themselves in juvenile facilities nationwide, according to the National Center in Institutions and Alternatives.

Does this "law-and-order" state know something others don't?

Hardly, says Mark Steward, who as director of the state's Division of Youth Services from 1987 to 2005, oversaw the development of what many experts regard as the best juvenile rehabilitation system in America.

Says Steward: "It's about giving young people structure and love and attention, and not allowing them to hurt themselves or other people. Pretty basic stuff, really. It's just that a lot of these kids haven't gotten the basic stuff."

Take Korey Davis. He didn't meet his dad until he was 5. He and his siblings we raised largely by aunts and uncles.

If the judge handling his case had left him in county detention centres until he reached adult age - 17, in Missouri - then had him serve the rest of his sentence in prison, few eyebrows would have been raised.

But a change to save a life would have been missed. "In jail, I wouldn't never have changed what I always done," Davis says. "There was no treatment at all." He adds, "Right now, I'd probably be dead."

In Missouri, judges can keep serious felons in the juvenile system until they are 21. That's what happened with Davis. At 15, he was sent to the Montgomery City Project, where robbers, rapists and the like get one last shot.

At first, he didn't want it.

But a year into his stay, two things knocked him back on his heels: the news that his younger brother had been shot and wounded in a gang fight, and an invitation from a counsellor to sit down, after class, to read a book out loud with her.

To a boy accustomed to hiding his illiteracy, the offer felt awkward. But because this woman had given him a chance, he responded, and "when I actually learned how to read, it made everything in the world easier for me."

Three years later, Davis is a group leader. He reads voraciously. He's been accepted by a community technical college, plans to study carpentry. And, he's proud to say, his kid brother has taken to heart this advice:

"Put the guns down."

From  the January 17, 2008, Issue #606, XTRA!, an article about the discriminatory ban on gay men donating organs:

GAY MEN BANNED FROM DONATING ORGANS
Doctors say new rules mean people will die

National News
Krishna Rau

Health Canada's recent decision to ban gay men from donating organs is homophobic and could lead to hundreds of deaths a year, say doctors and politicians.

In December, Health Canada quietly enacted rules that prevent any man who has had sex even once with another man in the past five years from donating organs. Health Canada already bans any man who has had sex with another man even once since 1977 from donating blood.

Gary Levy, the head of Canada's largest tranplant program at Toronto's University Health Network, says he refuses to discriminate on the basis of homosexuality and encourages gay men to continue to donate. Doctors will be able to use organs from gay men if they get the recipient's consent and the doctor signs an "exceptional release" form.

"We will not disquality anyone because of sexual orientation," he says."We could be angry at Health Canada but we shouldn't punish the innocent on either side, those who need organs or those who want to donate. All we'll have is some dead people who weren't able to get organs."

Levy estimates that gay men account for up to 15 percent of organ donations in Canada, both of live donations of kidneys and livers and of deceased donations. He says banning gay men from donating could mean up to 1,000 organs are no longer available year year.

"When you're talking about heart transplants, lung transplants, liver transplants, you're talking about a lot of deaths," says Levy. "The gay community seems to be more giving, much more on a proportional basis than other groups."

Levy says Health Canada should continue to follow the existing guidelines which evaluate organ donations based on risky behaviour. He says doctors currently test donors and talk to them or to their survivors to evalute the risk. Doctors will follow the same procedure under the new regulations to determine sexual orientation.

"Before this legislation came in we had rules that I thought worked very well," says Levy. "They didn't identify groups, they identified behaviour."

Levy says he was not consulted on the new rules and doesn't know any head of a transplant program who was.

Health Canada would not comment on the policy but an email from spokespereson Carole Saindon states, "These regulations are based on risk for safety purposes and not lifestyle choices ... A gay man who has practised abstinence for the five years prior would be acceptable. Likewise a heterosexual man who had had a single sexual encounter with a male within the last five years would not be considered acceptable even though he is he is not gay."

But Philip Berger, who has worked with AIDS patients for decades and is the head of family and community medicine at St Michael's Hospital in Toronto, says the new rules are clearly biased.

"It could easily be that any straight person who has unprotected sex is infected," he says. "Heterosexual women who can have hundreds of sexual partners are never asked. All this does is promote the idea that it's gay men's fault that people get infected. It's this sort of febrile obsession with gay men that's been there since the start of the epidemic."

Levy says he will be representing Ontario health minister George Smitherman in meetings with federal and provincial officials.

"Our plan is to convince the federal government to correct this," he says. "In an ideal world they'd issue an apology as well."

In a letter to EXTRA! Smitherman says he will continue to list himself as an organ donor.

"As a gay man who proudly carries every tissue and organ donation card I have ever received in my wallet, I was outraged by Health Canada's new organ donation regulation," he writes. "Quite simply targeting gay men is ludicrous and ridiculous. As Ontario's Minister of Health I find the new regulations that single out a particular group irrelevant, ignorant and impractical ... Let's be clear: Gay men can and should still continue to sign their organ donor cards and give the gift of life. I will continue to do so."

Joshua Ferguson, codirector of Standing Against Queer Discrimination, a group trying to ban blood donor clinics from the Univesity of Western Ontario campus, says the fact that the two bans operate on vastly differrent time periods is evidence of the lack of science behind them.

"It shows how arbitrary these bans are," says Ferguson.

With files from Marcus McCann

From the January/February 2008 issue of Vegetarian Issues, pages 70-73, an article about eating more vegetables as a vegetarian:

PUT THE VEG BACK IN VEGETARIAN
The simplest way to lose weight and keep if off this year might also be the healhiest diet change you'll ever make: eat more veggies

By Hillari Dowdle

Like many American vegetarian home cooks, I cut my teeth (so to speak) on the Moosewood Cookboook. I learned everything I know about baking homemade bread from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. I revere Still Live with Menu as a work of art as much as a bible of artful meatless cooking. And I think of Berkeley, Calif.-dwelling Mollie Katzen, creator of these three classics as well as a new one, The Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without, as a poster girl for vegetarian living.

So I'm shocked to hear Katzen doesn't call herself a vegetarian. "Vegetarianism isn't even about vegetables - it's about meat, or the absence of meat," she says. "I want to make a more positive statement - a big embrace of garden, orchard, and eating low on statement - a big embrace of garden, orchard, and eating low on the food chain. I like to call this pro-vegetable-ism.

"People approach me all the time and tell me they haven't eaten meat for 18 years. But I'm not interested in what you aren't eating," Katzen says. "Tell me what you are eating. Tell me you're into cooking kale chips, and we have something to talk about."

She's got a point. Every vegetarian has his or her reasons for choosing a meatless path. But, decision made, it's easy to fall into a meat-bad, everything-else-good way of thinking - a mind-set that paves the way for white bread, potato chips, and Oreos to take over a diet that should be among the world's most healthful.

It makes me wonder, here at the dawning of a brand-new year, what would happen if we all flipped our inner switch from anti to pro and make a new commitment to those foods we know we should be eating to keep our health up and weight down, environmental impact low and energy levels high? What if we all took a page from the Katzen book and put the veg back in vegetarian?

Veg Out

It's no secret we're experiencing a health crisis here in our land of plenty. Rates of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and obesity have reached epidemic proportions. Diabetes diagnoses among American adults climbed 61 percent from 1991 to 2001. And according to the American Heart Association, about 72 million Americans over age 20 have high blood pressure. What's even more troubling is that nearly 30 percent of them don't even know they have elevated blood pressure. What's even more troubling is that nearly 30 percent of them don't even know they have elevated blood pressure and 65 percent don't have it under control.

Meanwhile, we're getting fatter and fatter. The 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey estimates 66 percent of all U.S. adults are overweight. The World Health Organization's 2002 World Health Report stated that obesity kills about 220,000 people in the United States and Canada every year.

But there's a simple cure for what ails us, and it's right in line with a vegetarian lifestyle. In a report entitled "The High Cost of Not Consuming Fruits and Vegetables," The Journal of the American Dietetic Association noted, "There is substantial evidence showing that a single dietary change, increasing fruits and vegetables, can help to reverse some if not all of these trends."

Eat your veggies - this is not new advice. We've all heard it a thousand times - but do we listen? Statistically speaking, no. A full 60 percent of American shortchange themselves on the recommended daily five servings of fruits and vegetables.

Are vegarians exempt from these trends? There's no definite statistical evidence that vegetarians are faring any better (or worse) than anyone else. Saying no to meat doesn't necessarily mean fruits and vegebles are on the menu. Meat-less doesn't equte to health-full.

"It is somewhat ironic when people find out about factory farming, choose a meatless diet, and then become junk-food vegetarians, " says Dina Aronson, RD, a vegetarian nutrition consultant, writer, and dietitian for vegfamily.com.  "People have so much respect for animals, but then they don't take good care of his own bodies. If you're a new vegetarian and you don't make a conscious effort, you can easily gain a lot of weight."

Tara Gidus, RD, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, has been vegetarian for 15 years. More and more, she says, she sees "potato-chip vegetarians" who don't put veggies on the plate at all - they never learned to, don't think to, or simply don't want to. "I hear lots of vegetarians say, 'I'm vegetarian and I don't like vegetables ...' And then they just chuckle," she says. So what's for dinner instead? "People eat a lot of starches: pasta, rice, breads, and cereals. And I see a lot of vegetarians leaning on proteins from cheese, and vegans gobbling up prepared soy products."

That last one in particular - the soy products and the convenience-food meat analogues that have sprung up in the past few years to make our lives easier and better - is a trap that vegetarians can fall into, says Reed Mangels, PhD, RD, nutrition adviers to the nonprofit Vegetarian Resource Group. "It used to be, 20 years ago or so, you'd go on a vegan diet and you'd almost always lost weight," she says. "You used to have to focus on fruits and vegetables and beans and whole grains, especially if you were traveling. Now, it is easy to find vegan convenience foods and snack foods and portable foods that fit into your diet. In a way, it's a blessing because it makes life easier. But if you're trying to lose weight, it can also be a curse."

Turn Up the Volume

For anyone who's ever fallen in love with a meatless corn god, "curse" seems like a harsh judgment - and to some degree, it is. Meat analogues, even the junk food ones, can have a proper place in a vegetarian diet. It's just that they're not the free-for-all food many of us view them as. Mangels explains. They tend to be high in calories and low in fiber, which means they fatten you up without necessarily filling you up. And that's not good.

Fresh vegetables, on the other hand, offer just the opposite equation. "Vegetables offer a lot of volume for very few calories because they are so rich in fiber and water," explains Aronson. "Study after study shows that people who consume more fiber and water lose weight because they get full quicker."

Barbara Rolls, PhD, a professor nutrional sciences at Penn State University and author of The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan and The Volumetrics Eating Plan, authored many of those studies. Rolls's research has focused on the "energy density" of foods - the calories delivered per gram of weight. Since water and fiber are the two lowest-calorie dietary constituents, it's easy to see that a diet focused heavily on them would be slimming. Hence, the idea that you can fill up on salad and not necessarily need to compensate with cheesecake later in the day.

"Because people tend to eat a consistent weight of food each day, losing weight is about reducing calorie density and filling the plate with lower-calorie options," Rolls explains. "If you add fruits and vegetables that are high in water, you dilute calories and feel just as full."

Eileen Behan, RD, is a nutritionist on the seacoast of New Hampshire and the author of Eat Well, Lose Weight While Breastfeeding. She regularly beats the same drum in her practice for vegetarians and meat eaters alike: fresh vegetables and fruits. "People come in and tell me they feel terrible and they're gaining all this weight and they don't understand why," she says. "Then we'll sit down and review what they ate over the last four or five days, and there won't have been a single fresh vegetable on their plate! No wonder."

In her practice, Behan often recommends Volumetrics as a resource to show how veggies can tip the balance toward weight loss. She offers this case study. "People love pasta, so I always start there," she says. "Two cups of pasta are 420 calories. Now, if you do one cup of pasta at 210 calories and add one cup of zucchini at 40 calories, you still have two cups of food but now it's only going to cost you 250 calories."

From the Thursday, January 3, 2008, Ideas section of the Toronto Star, page AA6, an article about social policy from Linda McQuaig. She has also written various non-fiction books, including the one that I've read, called It's the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil, and the Right for the Planet.

THE LONG AND SHORT OF PROGRESS
Agenda 2008
Social Policy

The seventh in a series of essays about key issues in the year ahead

Taller Europeans have a message for small-minded North Americans

Linda McQuaig

Many adjectives come to mind when thinking of how to describe Americans. But "short" probably isn't one of them.

We're used to the notion of the United States as the world's dominant power - a land of untold resources, wealth and consumption. And one reflection of this abundance is the fact that for most of the past 2 1/2 centuries, Americans have been literally the tallest people on the planet. Feeding off the abundant wild game and rich agriculture of their vast new land, colonial Americans measured a full three inches taller than Europeans.

Not so any more. Compared to Europeans, Americans have effectively shrunk. Indeed, among all advanced industrial nations, Americans are now at the bottom end of the height scale.

And, no, it's not the influx of short Hispanics. The height pattern is the same for Americans even when the sample is limited to non-Hispanic, native-born Americans.

It seems to be a reflection of something more basic. According to an influential paper in Social Science Quarterly last June by economic historians John Komlos and Benjamin Lauderdale, "height is indicative of how well the human organism thrives in its socioeconomic environment."

The relative shrinking of Americans on the world scene is perhaps then an indicator of something Americans are doing badly - not in Iran, but right at home. And that something should be of more than passing interest to Canadians as we continue, consciously and unconsciously, to shape our economic and social systems with the U.S. in mind.

Actually, Canada has traditionally been a blend of the U.S. and European approaches. But in the last couple of decades, as we have focused increasingly on cutting taxes and have adopted the attitude that individuals must make it on their own in society, we've veered more closely to the U.S. model.

We tend to view the low-tax, low-spending U.S. model as simply the norm in the era of globalization. But in fact it is only the U.S. norm.

Europeans, particularly nothern Europeans, have traditionally done things differently - imposing much higher taxes and delivering much more generous social programs that provide a striking array of benefits to every member of society. Contrary  to our impressions here in the West that globalization has fundamentally redesigned the world, the Europeans have stuck with their high-tax, high-spending model in the globalized era.

Which is why the "shrinking" of Americans relative to Europeans is so intriguing.

Almost three inches taller than Americans, the Dutch are now the tallest people in the world. Dutch males average six foot one - seven inches taller on average than they were just over a century ago. Crowded around the towering Dutch at the top end of the height scale are other northern Eoropeans - Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Belgians and Germans.

Height is a rather potent symbol. But it also appears to be a useful measure of the well-being of a nation's citizen's, particularly its young people, since height is determined early in life. Komlos and Lauderdale note that a wide range of factors determine height: "(T)he political economy of the healthcare system, education transfers to the poor, and government policy toward equality (hence taxation policy) all matter."

They go on to suggest that  "perhaps the western and northern European welfare states, with their universial socioeconomic safety nets, are able to provide a higher biological standard of living to their children and youth than the more free-market-oriented U.S. economy."

Height is in fact one of many measures of well-being where the Americans increasingly find themselves of the bottom of the heap among industrial nations.

Equally telling is the Innocenti Report Card, a broad measure of physical and material child well-being in 21 OECD countries, prepared by a UN-affiliated Italian research institute. Once again, the Nederlands tops the list, in a cluster with Sweden, Denmark and Finland. One has to go all the way down to number 20 spot to find the United States. (It narrowly edged out last-place Britian, which with the Thatcher revolution in the 1980s joined the U.S. in adopting the low-tax model.) Canada, in keeping with its blended approach to the U.S. and European models, comes in at a middling Number 12.

The strikingly strong performance of the northern Europeans and the dismal performance of the U.S. (and Britain) when it comes to child well-being would presumably set off alarm bells in any nation with aspirations for its future.

Yet we remain strangly oblivious here in Canada, continuing our obsession with low taxes and our acceptance of minimal social programs, even as the Europeans show us what appears to be a far better way to equip our children for the future.

One of the key differences for European children - in addition to excellent public health care and even free public dental care in some Nordic countries - is universal access to amply-funded child-care programs, which are typically housed in attractive buildings and staffed with teachers trained to encourage creative thinking and interest in the arts.

By contrast, we are in North America have embraced an "individualistic" approach, leaving it up to individual families to take care of the needs of their own children. This has left millions of children in poorly funded private daycare facilities or fending for themselves after school.

After years of pressure by activists, Ottawa finally brought in a bare-bones national child-care program in 2005. Yet that minimal program was cancelled by Stephen Harper's Conservative government, which replaced it with an even more meager child allowance paid to individual families, with no guarantee the money even be spent on children.

And even as the federal budget surplus ballooned to $16 billion this year, the Harper government steadfastly avoided enriching social programs, directing the surplus instead to tax cuts and military spending increases.

Our tight-fisted approach to meeting social needs takes its heaviest toll on the poor, but it has a huge impact on the middle class as well. The extensive benefits inthe northern  European countries include many that would make dramatic differences in the lives of just about all Canadians, including free university tuition, extensive in-home care of the elderly and the disabled, generous pensions, maternity and paternity leaves, job retraining and mandatory paid vacations (for all workers) of four, five or even six weeks.

Many Canadians might be inclined to dismiss these sorts of benefits as unaffordable luxuries - luxuries that would risk dminishing our economic performance in the highly competitive global economy. After all, the U.S., with its low-tax, low-spending model, is the powerhouse of the global economy.

But just as Americans aren't actually as tall as we think, they're not so clearly the towering economic giants we've made them out to be.

To be sure, the U.S.is one of the most competitive countries in the global economy, but it shares that elevated status with the Nordic nations, which along with the U.S., consistently rank at the top end of the scale of competitive nations, as measured by the World Economic Forum in Geneva.

This suggests that both the U.S. and European models can work well economically, leaving it a matter of which model the electorate prefers.

But there are other important factors that may reduce the room for chioice. The real imperative in the future may not be the demands of "globalization," but rather the demands of global warming.

Overall, Americans live in bigger homes, drive bigger cars and consume more.

Not surprisingly, then, Americans produce much larger carbon emissions - roughly 20 tons on average per person, compared to only nine in the Netherlands or just under six in Sweden. (And in this area, Canadians are much closer to Americans, producing almost 18 tons per person.)

But oddly there's little attention paid in Canada to the striking differences between the U.S. and European models.

Indeed, as the northern Europeans grow ever taller, more attentive to the environment and better at preparing their children for the future, we in Canada seem blindly attached to doing things as they're done south of the border- where climate change hasn't sufficiently registered as an issue, where people are getting relatively shorter, and where it's pretty much every kid for himself.

Linda McQuaig is a journalist and author, most recently of Holding the Bully's Coat" Canada and the U.S. Empire.