09.09.08
Help the Chernobyl children at home
HOW can you criticise Adi Roche? Last Thursday night she appeared on television in an almost unbearably poignant documentary about the hardship children face in Belarus. Her Chernobyl Children’s Project has harnessed the good will, money and energy of hundreds of equally well-meaning, generous families who host children’s holidays here. So how do you tell Roche and those families that their project is capable of harm, and that there are better ways to help those needy children? Gently, but firmly.
It’s time to state bluntly that the story of the Chernobyl Children’s Project is not a simple one of a fairy godmother saving the lives of sick children. The story of Chernobyl is considerably more complex than the one we perceive every time a plane full of pale, cancer-stricken children lands in Ireland.
Roche described as shocking the decision by the Belarusian government to prevent children travelling to Ireland, or other host countries, for an annual holiday. The ban is indeed an over-reaction, and international pressure may have it over-turned. But the Belarusians have a point.
The ban was provoked by the failure of Tanya Kazyra, 16, who was on her ninth and last visit to a family in California, to board a return flight from San Francisco on August 5. She told Associated Press: “I love my motherland and my grandmother. However, my life there is hard. And I have a family here.”
Who could blame her? Belarus is a poor country, still devastated by the aftermath of the fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in 1986. When children from there are brought to a rich western environment for a few weeks, and showered with the best of everything we have to offer – medical treatment, sympathy, nice food, new clothes and toys – well, is it any wonder they don’t want to go back? How can they face back into their old lives once they’ve seen that faraway hills are very green indeed?
The Irish government would be rightly annoyed if a well-intentioned American philanthropist took children out of Temple Street hospital to Florida or California, showed them Disneyland and showered them with treats, and then the kids refused to come home.
Giving them a holiday seems like a charitable act, but Adi Roche has to face a number of realities. The first is that, contrary to popular belief, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has conclusively proven that cancer rates and congenital abnormalities in Belarus are no higher than in other former Soviet Union states.
Whenever I share this information, people react with disbelief. The only story they know is that radiation poisoning has resulted in high rates of terrible cancers among Belarussians. But that myth was categorically debunked by the Chernobyl Forum Report issued by the WHO in 2005. The report was compiled by a team of more than 100 scientists who attempted to quantify how many people died or became ill as a result of the Chernobyl fire.
They concluded that three groups of people were affected. There were the heroic emergency workers who fought the blaze, 56 of whom died from acute radiation sickness. There were thousands of children who, due to the complete mismanagement of the crisis by the Belarusian government, were allowed to continue drinking contaminated milk from the region. Some 4,000 children contracted thyroid cancer as a result. Most of those were treated successfully, but eight did not survive.
The third group affected is the general population, which has suffered devastating long-term damage to their mental but not physical health. The legacy of Chernobyl is not one of congenital deformities and childhood leukaemias, but of a nation cursed by the label of victimhood.
Belarusian people suffer acute anxiety and any illness, miscarriage or setback is attributed to radiation instead of the general misery of life. They have been struck by what the WHO forum report called “paralysing fatalism”.
So what they need is help to get on with their lives, not encouragement to believe that which is simply not true – that radiation continues to result in excessive cancers and illness. If Roche does not acknowledge this, she is being deeply unfair on them and on us.
That said, Belarus is a poor country and many of its children are in need. But I believe Roche’s efforts are misguided. If Concern started bringing plane loads of African children here for a month every summer, people would quite rightly question the wisdom of such a strategy. Yes, those children would get a boost from good food and medical treatment. But then what? It is illogical, unsustainable and a poor use of resources to bring a child on holiday for a few weeks. It is clearly much more sensible and in the long term interests of the child to improve their quality of life at home for every week of the year.
There are other charities in Ireland who are quietly and effectively doing that. But you may not know about them because they don’t pose with deformed children in front of TV cameras – a practice which most major international charities abhor.
Tom McEneaney, the former Irish business editor of this newspaper, has been visiting Belarus for over ten years with the International Orphanage Development Project which has worked with all 60 orphanages in Belarus. The only reason I know about the project is because he’s a friend of mine. Publicity is not high on his agenda.
McEneaney observes that every time a new member of the group comes to Belarus, they are shocked to discover that the children are quite healthy. That’s because Irish people have been conditioned to expect missing limbs and terrible deformities. They are surprised to find that Belarusian children look very like ours. McEneaney praises Belarusian childcare workers who do their best with poor resources. He believes the children’s needs are, simply, “capital”. They need washing machines or cookers, proper showers and playgrounds. The IODP buys farm machinery and improves storage houses so that orphanages can grow their own food. They buy new beds and blankets locally, in order to give the economy a boost. It’s not emotive, but it’s effective and sustainable and is now extending its operations to India.
Roche could perhaps learn something from this practice. I believe she has good intentions but a bad policy. She should abandon the holiday programme and help these children only in their own country, and she should tell them the full truth about Chernobyl.
08.06.08
Crewser – I’ll miss you
I got a letter in the post this morning and perhaps its contents will annoy some of you, but I have to say it made me smile and to be honest, I’ve been stressed off the scale in the past few months, so things that make me smile are most welcome.
It was posted to the Carey Auctioneers office in Enfield.
“For the attention of Ms Sarah Carey, Operator of GUBU blog”
The Crewser Artistic Spoof which has haunted your site and a few others for the last 18 months or so has been terminated as planned on July 31st last. You may not have suspected it but we did not know anything about politics when we started out on some other Blogs but we certainly do now.
Our presence was prolonged somewhat by interest from a small Irish independent TV production company who may do something based loosely on what went on (names changed of course). We were impressed by the fact that you never imposed blanket censorship and rolled with it even when it got hot and heavy. Fair play.
We did have some political advisors as you might imagine, people who knew Ireland particularly well, geographically and otherwise. We understand that a further similar “exercise” will commence in early October 2008. It will not involve GUBU and the theme and team will be different.
We could never understand how people could work themselves into a frenzy over politics until we got involved in this and then we saw ourselves getting sucked into the battle as it were. The Crewser had nothing to do with Conor Cruise O’Brien as you thought, it was a spoof name chosen after the consumption of alcohol over 2 years ago.
So you can get back to your blogging work safe in the knowledge that The Crewser has written his last lines. Thanks for being such a sport.
The Crewser (over and out)
PS And we always used IP Platinum as a sort of contraception”
So, we were had!!! And how we were! Talk about hook, line and sinker. People used to email me wondering about him. Of course I know it was a dreadful trick. Faking identity on the internet is inevitable and undermines one’s instinctive willingness (and a necessity somehow too) to treat visitors in good faith. Crewser DID take over and there were times when I wanted him to go away and troll someone else’s blog. But since I firmly believe that blogging is social networking and not an exercise in egomaniacal self-publishing (as some would accuse it), I ended up feeling about Crewser as one does a member of the family or an errant friend: drives you completely mad but you’re attached and after a few days absence I’d wonder where he was even if I had learned to ignore his inflammatory remarks (most of the time!!).
As for people going mad about politics; well, we care, even if at times it seems pointless. And maybe it is pointless. While I find myself tempted more and more to stick to the gardening and wondering why I waste mental energy getting angry about politics, fundamentally, I think caring places us above those who don’t care. But possessing a sense of humour and not taking ourselves too seriously is even more fundamental.
Sigh. End of an era 
08.01.08
Holidays
For Sunday Times readers you might have missed me for the last two weeks. I’m taking another two weeks holidays – time for a proper break. I won’t be blogging either (off to Galway PLEASE don’t rain!).
Ahem, morning…
Right, well, that was an interesting 24 hours. Thanks to Gavin for his help.
Crewser, are you at the Galway Races? Come back! Come back! Oh for the genteel carping of Fine Gael vs Fianna Fail. It turns out techies are FAR more aggressive than political junkies.
Poor Cuil. Honestly, we talked to no more than 20 journalists and then they got 50 million hits
In the meantime, I really don’t want my blog to explode into a Cuil venting channel. We know what we like here: gardening and politics. So eh, normal service resumed?
07.28.08
Cuil
Well folks I am back home and my little Silicon Valley project is out of stealth.
At 9pm PST, 5am our time, Cuil was unleashed upon the world. So now when you are going mad rephrasing search queries on Google, you can try Cuil instead.
It has a huge index, 120 billion pages; it ranks based on content; it displays results magazine style in columns and with images so you can see more and my favourite; it offers you up categories and subject drilldown to help you explore a topic especially when you don’t know much about a topic and don’t know the “right query” to enter. Try searching for Ireland as an example and check out the tabs on the top and then the “drilldown” on the right. Then go to the bottom of the page and click “add to firefox”!!
And for privacy advocates – Cuil doesn’t log users’ search activities. Your search history is safe.
One note: this blog, I discovered, had a redirect on its robot.txt files which made it tricky to crawl. If your blog is not showing up it might have the same issue. So either stop any robot redirects (if that makes sense!) or email crawler@cuil.com and ask Jim to make sure you are crawled.
Some early coverage
Ah the fun..
I get from this blog.
Godwin’s Law has been invoked on Economy CA.
I am going home tomorrow. Can’t wait! But to ease the stress of these last 24 hours I am meeting Gerry and Ben tonight. I said “meat and spuds”. No more Italian food or seafood salads.
A note on multiculturalism vs integration.
This company has 30 employees who come from
Ireland
England
India
Brazil
Columbia
France
Serbia
Hungary
Peru
Pakistan
Poland
and yes, America.
They have some things in common, mainly the fact that they are computer scientists BUT their ideologies are similar – liberal, environmentally friendly, family-friendly, clean-living, well-educated, and interested in world-affairs. There’s only one real republican. I have no idea what religion any of them follow. The only ones that talk about religion are me and the other Irish guy.
I think the point is that they moved from all around the world to this spot because they were interested in computer science but also because they wanted to live in California. So, they made the shift in their minds before they got here. They moved to a country where they felt the lifestyle and the world view would match theirs. It contrasts strongly with people who moved to a new country without making, or even wanting to make that adjustment – they want to live in the country – but hold onto their native country’s world view. And in fact, want the new country to adjust to them. That’s the source of a lot of problems (not all – I’m not arguing its this simplistic) but its certainly a major factor.
Fox
I know its a cliche but god they are so aggressively anti-Democrat.
This evening on a show Frank Luntz was being interviewed talking about Obama’s speech and how’s he’s popular in Europe.
So Sean Hannity the host says, “well maybe Europeans like him because they share his contempt for America”.
??????????
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