Radiation Scare: United States FDA Screens Food from Japan
As leakage of radioactive materials became evident, the United States Food and Drug Administration issued on March 24, Import Alert 99-33 or better labeled as "Detention Without Physical Examination of Products from Japan Due to Radionuclide Contamination".
On March 11, the pacific coast of Japan was hit by a massive earthquake of 8.9 magnitude with ensuing tsunami reported to be 30 feet high. Massive infrastructure damage was noted and the most significant of which was the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The neighboring prefectures of Fukushima, Gunma Ibaraki, and Tochigi were most affected by the potential leakage of radioactive materials.
Concern regarding the spread to other countries of radioactive materials through the atmosphere was allayed by authorities. However, on March 19, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare confirmed the presence of radioactive iodine contamination in dairy, fresh produce, and infant formula products.A five-fold increase from acceptable radioactive iodine levels contaminated food products from Kawamata Town, Fukushima Prefecture and Ibaraki Prefecture---areas surrrounding the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Radioactive iodine has a half life of eight days and decay naturally within weeks. However, when ingested the toxic materials can accumulate in the human body. Most affected are young people and children once exposed.Although the prime minister of Japan ordered the stoppage of distribution and consumption of food from the affected prefectures, the United States government in collaboration with Japanese authorities have imposed measures to prevent the spread of contaminated food in US markets.
Prevention and Public Health Fund for Americans
A year after the United States government signed into law the Affordable HealthCare Act last March 2010, the Obama administration once again bankrolled $15 billion for the Prevention and Public Health Fund (PPHF).
According to the federal government website Healthcare.gov, the Prevention and Public Health Fund is designed to assist state and community efforts to prevent illness and promote health, so that all Americans can lead longer, more productive lives.
Considering that 7 out of 10 killer disease affecting Americans are chronic in nature, accounting for 75% of the nation's health spending and preventable if more actively pursued, the fund will address chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes.
These diseases often afflict certain populations who use tobacco, abuse alcohol, have poor diet and are often physically inactive. If proven healthy lifestyle campaigns of even just $10 per American individual are directed towards strengthening preventive health care, Trust for America's Health estimates that a total of $16 billion can be saved every year.
A strong government through policy changes and earnest funding of important health measures will ensure accessibility to health care of all Americans and prevent depletion of the US talented workforce.
CARING FOR A GOD WHO CARES
By Arun Gogna
This is a reflection I read from Didache, a scripture reading guide published by Shepherd's Voice publication. Health is beyond the physical and it is not just the absence of disease or illness. Health is wholistic---covering all areas of a person's life including the Spiritual. I found this reflection very inspiring and spiritually nourishing. You may find them here. I pray that you will be filled with the needed resource as well.Joseph, her husband, was a righteous man. – Matthew 1:19 Imagine with me if you can... let’s go back in time and travel to Nazareth.Put yourself in the shoes (or sandals) of Joseph. Imagine you are the earthly father of Jesus.The reason for all creation was born in your midst.You are tasked to protect the very God to whom you pray for protection. You will be providing for the needs of the Great Provider.As your son’s first teacher, you will teach Him everything you know. You will teach to the God who knows everything.You will carry the one who carries the whole world in His arms.You are going to play hide and seek with God who sees everything.You will put to sleep someone you hope never goes to sleep.You will be able to make God laugh.These are some of the wonderful thingsJoseph did to his Son, Jesus.Think: Jesus says that you can do all this to Him if you do them to the least of your brothers. Arun Gogna ([email protected])
World Health Organization (WHO) Health Profile of Swaziland
Swaziland, a country of around 1.2 million people, has one of the lowest average life expectancy rate. Unlike other countries, males and females in Swaziland live on average 48 years. This is contrast to a relatively longer global average lifespan among citizens of other countries.
The low lifespan average among citizen of Swaziland can be attributed to a high HIV and Tuberculosis infection incidence rate.
HIV infection is quite high in Swaziland. Around 261 per 1000 population aged 15-49 years old are afflicted with the dreaded disease.
Swaziland is also besieged with numerous health issues. Among the many health woes the subjects of the Kingdom of Swaziland face is the wide inequity posed by a large doctor to patient ratio of 1.6 doctors per 10000 people and almost a quarter of births delivered in the absence of health professionals.
Consequently, the citizens of Swaziland have a high infant mortality rate of around 100 babies per 1000 deliveries. Pneumonia and prematurity are two of the top three leading cause of death among children under five years old.
Ash Wednesday, Dustification and the End of the World
The End of the World and our True Destiny
PROFESSOR ANTON MEEMANA
 http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5122/
Lack of faith in a transcendent God leads to possessive knowledge. Wisdom cannot be possessed but only received gratuitously. To possess something is to lose it. The libidinal desire to own, to possess, to take hold of something is to give up the way of wisdom, the way of endless openness. True wisdom is a vision, an ever-growing and widening vision, not a private possession.
Speculation about the end of the world is a betrayal of Christian message. Such a preoccupation is the slipping away of the day-to-day historical living. Our business is to live each day joyfully and faithfully without apocalyptic anxiety. Unnecessary anxiety is anti-Christian. By living fully we prepare ourselves for any apocalyptic eventuality.
Even if God decides to end the universe today, those who have attained eternal life will remain in that state forever. Nothing will be taken from them; nothing will be lost to them. Even after the end of the world, the eternal life continues.
Whatever graces they may have been granted will never be lost to them. Eternal life is a permanent reality and nothing can jeopardize or jettison it, not even the end of the world.
The end of the world is not the end of God’s love, creativity, compassion and mercy. The end of the world would be an act of his unrestricted, unconditional, unreserved love. Both the beginning as well as the end of the universe is a work of Divine love. God is never malicious, merciless, ruthless, heartless, cruel or mischievous.
The end of the world is insignificant in comparison to the love of God. Absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God. Not even the end of the universe can separate us from it. The universe has a beginning as well as an end. But its end is not like any other end we know of.
The shape of the future to come cannot be known exactly. This massive lust, gnostic libido, cognitive concupiscence for certitude is symptomatic of false prophets and futurists. Wise person lives by faith in a God whose presence is ever active in history.
Futurism is false knowledge. Wisdom comes from doubt, anxiety, questioning, “the waiting, the periods of aridity and dullness, guilt and despondency, contrition and repentance, forsakenness and hope against hope, the silent stirrings of love and grace.” (Eric Voegelin)
Ash Wednesday reminds us that the way to heaven is a dusty and a sweaty path.
Ash Wednesday, Dustification and the End of the World
Christification of the Universe
PROFESSOR ANTON MEEMANA
 http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3447/
Part of Christ’s holiness was his earthiness, his down to earthness.
Christification cannot be separated from planetisation of sanctity.
When Christ will dwell, rest, relax and repose in your heart, you too will feel truly rested, relaxed and reposed. Real human rest comes from resting in Christ.
Real relaxation stems from relaxing in Christ Jesus. Christ is the masseur par excellence. His is the real massage parlour. Our authentic self is a mirror of Christ.
Ash Wednesday reminds us of the most realistic perspective on life. Ash Wednesday is the celebration of our earthiness, dustiness, soilness, clayness, fleshness, ashiness and the liberation it facilitates towards Easter. There is no resurrection without immersing ourselves in our dusty human reality.
Ash Wednesday, Dustification and the End of the World
Repentance and True Life
PROFESSOR ANTON MEEMANA  http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5298/ R epentance is increasingly becoming conscious of all inauthenticity, pretensions, superficiality and vanity and the deepest longing and yearning for personal integrity. Personal authenticity is the fruit of true conversion (metanoia), true turning around (periagoge).
Repentance is at the service of life. Unrepented people are not truly alive or free. They do not live but merely exist like emotional terrorists, existential zombies and psychic vampires. Ongoing repentance keeps purifying, assaying and magnifying one’s zest for authentic life. Repentance is personal but never private. The fruits of one’s ongoing repentance is always communal, social, global and planetary.
Unrepented life is an empty life,a wasted life, a useless life, a confused life. It is a life which has not been lived properly. The glory, majesty and grandeur of God is human person becoming fully, burstingly, explodingly and gigglingly alive, kicking and kissing.
The one who repents loves life and appreciates the preciousness and giftedness of it. We cherish life to the extent we repent of our sinful and selfish tendencies. God understands everything and therefore forgives everything.
The problem is not with God but with us; that is, most of us cannot forgive ourselves enough, love ourselves enough, cannot accept and appreciate ourselves enough and hence tend to attribute all our miseries to God. God’s forgiveness is always there, eternally and perpetually available to us to respond to.
The one who cannot forgive oneself condemn oneself. It is never God who condemns us but we ourselves. Self-condemnation leads to self-destruction and we are pretty good at it. Forgiveness is the life-blood of life.
The one who responds to God’s forgiveness redeems oneself and thereby becomes a blessing to others. Interiorly unscrutinised life is not worth living. The surgery of one’s soul (Mahatma Gandhi ) is at the service of the social.
“Yet even now,” says the LORD, “Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. . . “(Joel 2:12-13)
Ash Wednesday, Dustification and the End of the World
Ash Wednesday and Cosmology
PROFESSOR ANTON MEEMANA
 http://farm1.static.flickr.com/179/
The rich symbolism of Ash Wednesday liturgy facilitates our spiritual and moral transformation and transcendence, our constant going beyond, our endless revolutionary continuity; that is, personal transformation through existential breakthroughs, spiritual outbursts and intellectual paradigm shifts. Ash Wednesday is the liturgical reenactment of cosmology. Every good liturgy has a cosmic dimension and a cosmological meaning.
Spirituality is never a flight from earth but an authentic celebration of our earthiness, our organic connection to the earth, our bio-chemical-psycho-spiritual connectivity to the earth. In that sense, the real term for spirituality is earthuality (Thomas Berry).
Spirit is the very depth, the very interiority of matter, of dust, of soil, of clay and of ashes. Escape from dust is escape from God and equally escape from earth is escape from our true destiny. Eternal life is facilitated in and through earthly realities.
There is no creativity without earthly connectivity. Sacred dust, holy soil, divine ashes, and mysterious clay are our family members.
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Ash Wednesday, Dustification and the End of the World Sanctification of the Dust
By PROFESSOR ANTON MEEMANA
 http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3429/
Dusts sing of a presence that is sacred, divine and holy and that hymn is the essence its luminosity. The whole dusty earth is an enchanted kingdom. Dusts contain the splendor of God and reflect the glory of God.
God’s creativity and originality is ever active, flows and flares forth in and through dusts and ashes. His creative energy pulsates in dust. There is no such a thing as cosmic energy apart from divine energy. God is the fountain of cosmic energy. No energy can give birth to itself. No energy can create itself out of nothing. There is a Creator of all energy. This prodigious cosmic creativity, this mind-blowing and mind-buggling cosmic energy is never arbitrary or auto-generated. Cosmic energy is borrowed-energy from God.
Matter has a mysterious and a metaphysical dimension. Dustification is part and parcel of divine justification. There is no sanctification of the human person without dustification.
Evolution is dust becoming alive, vibrant and reflectively conscious. Earth is a living and pulsating organism. Divine incarnation is sanctification of dust and dustification of the Sacred. Dusts possess a psychic inwardness and a multifaceted consciousness received from and given by its Creator. The evolving and expanding universe is a celebratory event, a glorious reality. The earth is becoming increasingly alive, giggling and pulsating. So can we become as alive, bubbling, pulsating, dazzling and sparkling as our good friend earth or as exuberant, jubilant, festive and radiant as the universe which is made of dust? Human beings are made of star dust.
Dusts are divine particles, sacred building blocks, divine miracles. And divine miracles are marks of Divine love.
Ashes are divine embers, sacred blazers and holy sparks. Adorability of dust is its sacredness. There is only way to become truly human, that is, in and through infinite humility. Humility is another name for humanity for both have the same root in Latin (humus=soil). Humans are creatures of humus. The way to heaven is a dusty path.
Ash Wednesday, Dustification and the End of the World
Dustification of the Creation
By PROFESSOR ANTON MEEMANA
Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Lent, is not a day for misery and self-pity, but a day for
deep repentance and radical conversion. Ash Wednesday is ready to take away our ashen
faces. Ash Wednesday is a day of aspiration, assistance, assurance and ascent towards
spiritual magnanimity.
Humans are earthly creatures through and through and our destiny is organically and
necessarily tied up with the health and happiness of the earth. We are not flying creatures
such as eagles, crows, hawks, parrots and mocking birds. This fantasy about space travels
and colonizing other planets is a very comforting illusion and can at best become an escape
from our earthly, clayish, ashy, soily, dusty and fleshy reality.
Even if we develop the technological capability to settle down in another planet, what guarantee would we have that we are not going to destroy it the way we have plundered, raped and devastated the mother earth?
What is fundamentally and very urgently required of us is transformation of our
consciousness and our daily lifestyles, not so much space exploration for exploitative
enterprises. Earth is our second skin without which human life is absolutely impossible.
Our malnourished and anorexic perspective on dust is gathering dust and it is high time to dust it
off. The one who cherishes the earth cherishes the universe entire. By the same token, the one
who destroys the earth destroys the universe entire. The enemies of the earth are the enemies
of God and the friends of the earth are friends of God too.
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