The Adriatic Times - Inspiring Voices

The Adriatic Times

INSPIRING VOICES February 2014

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The Editorial “It is slavery, not to speak one’s thoughts,” said Euripides.

Everyone at this college has different sources of inspiration, different thoughts and different standpoints. What may carry great importance for one person may not be as significant for another. Seeking an explanation to “Why such a thing, which is very important to me, is not valued in the same way by others?” would most likely lead us to two possible answers, either:

statements, my dearest colleagues, let me deliver Rabbah Deuteronomy’s message to you: “In vain have you acquired knowledge if you have not imparted it to others.”

You are given the voice. You are given the knowledge. You are given the skills. All you need to do is to deliver your knowledge and opinions to others, to the people of your community, those with whom you share your profes1. That is just not a priority in sional and private lives. Let the person’s life, me tell you; we are lucky! We or have a students’ magazine that serves as a tool to de2. The person is not well in- liver our message to our colformed about the importance leagues with its content based of it. solely upon our community’s needs.

Unfortunately, in many cases it is the second reason that The Adriatic Times 16th edimakes some great aspects tion with its theme “Voices” of life remain unheeded by hopes it has enabled the writmany people. The ‘unfortu- ers of the articles to raise the nately’ should be highlight- awareness of what they think ed in this case because lack is essential for our lives. We of information means that hope that the articles of this there is room for improve- edition will inspire some/ ment if nothing is done about most/all of us and broaden it. It means that, if we know our perspectives. something may have a great impact and significance in Fellow peers, raise your voicothers’ life, it is our respon- es on what you think is imsibility to speak up about its portant, or chose to live a importance and inform the silent life until you discover uninformed ones. If you still that you had not lived. have doubts on the previous Editor: Sibel Spahija Jornalist: Giuliana De Polo Proof reader: Malcolm Price Designer: Valev Laube

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4 An uphill battle for women in sports

By Adrienne Gomes

The 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, which commenced on Friday, February 7, will be the first Olympic Games to include the sport of women’s ski jumping.

Since the inaugural Winter Olympic Games in 1924, men’s ski jumping has been included in the Olympics. Women’s ski jumping was not instituted at this time. Many other sports in this era included men’s competitions only, the corresponding women’s events being added over the years.

But women’s ski jumping has remained conspicuously absent.

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How did this come to be? The International Olympic Committee (IOC) passed a law in 1991 decreeing that all Olympic sports must include both men’s and women’s events, for reasons of gender equality. But the loophole in this ruling was that it only applied to events added after 1991. Ski jumping, having been one of the original 16 sports inducted in the winter Olympics was not affected, and women remained without the opportunity to compete.

This issue sparked years of lawsuits and a battle for equality that proved very difficult. In 1998, the first official bid to have the women’s event inducted into the Olympics was made, and denied.

Since then, it has been an unceasing struggle for women competitors across the globe to win the right to compete in their sport at an Olympic level. At each Olympic Games since 1998, they have vouched for their sport to finally win a place in the games. Why did it take so long before their efforts were rewarded?

The IOC had many reasons, often without valid backing, for their refusal to introduce the women’s

event into the Games. The Head of Federation International du Ski, who was also a member of the IOC, famously commented in 2006 that women should not compete in ski jumping, as it “would not be appropriate from a medical point of view.” This comment sparked enormous controversy and was condemned for its lack of legitimate grounds. Also, women had been allowed to compete at World Championship competitions for years, without medical repercussions. In fact, women had been ski jumping as long as men had. The false statement angered many supporters of the cause worldwide.

When the IOC was preparing for the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, women ski jumpers applied again to be included among the new sports to be introduced in the games. When they were denied approval yet again, they took legal action. The IOC explained their decision with the statement that the depth of the sport was too shallow; not enough women and nationalities were participating in the sport. But this argument didn’t hold with the public either, as the new and budding ski cross event was chosen to be added to the Olympic Games that year, having very few competitors as a budding sport. Women’s ski jumping competition was well developed around the world, with a talented group of athletes competing in sanctioned, high-level events.

The IOC’s arguments were met with criticism and incredulity, and legal action has been taken since 1998. The IOC has been put under immense pressure to include women’s ski jumping in the winter Olympics, for reasons of equality.

It is indeed hard to believe that such gender discrimination exist-

ed in a world we consider modern and developed. Finally, the IOC could invent no further reasons to keep the sport out of the games: on April 6, 2011, the IOC announced the inclusion of women’s ski jumping in the Sochi Olympic Games in 2014.

Many women have fought against immense challenges and frustrations for years in order to have their sport included. For many, it has been an emotionally trying battle. Some older participants of the sport devoted years campaigning for their sport, only to pass their prime and lose the opportunity to compete at the Olympic level. The Olympic Games are indeed considered the pinnacle of athletic accomplishment; to be excluded from such an opportunity based on unjust grounds must have been a painful experience for many female competitors.

But now there is hope; although the women’s event does not include so many categories as the men’s, for the first time women will be able to participate in the Games.

Many young athletes now have something to strive for, and the Olympic dream is a possibility for them in the future. Athletes who have been striving for the inclusion of their sport will now finally be rewarded when the women hit the slopes on February 11. Some have fought for over a decade for their dreams and will finally see them come true. Women worldwide have been empowered by the crusade of these athletes, and their unwavering determination. History is being made; dreams will soon be realized; and the brave warriors of the sport have and will continue to inspire generations of young athletes to stand up for what they believe in and never to surrender their dreams.

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Back to action

By Agnes Schim van der Loeff

(Please note that this is a speech (written for English class), so it is supposed to be read aloud.)

´I was active in a local political party´, ´I was a volunteer for Amnesty International´, ´I organized charity events´, and ´I was president of the school board´. I was engaged, responsible and taking action. These things show how each one of us at home was involved some way or other in the community. These things remind me of our shared idealism. We were selected for UWC for these things.

When coming here, I was amazed.

Amazed by the many opportunities, the new challenges and the caring community. UWC has brought me so much and I am very grateful for that. But now that the newness of it has worn off, I see also the things that have been disappointing. We are all idealists, wanting to make a difference and we have so much inside of us to make things happen. Just look at what we used to do before coming to the college! We organized and participated, thought and changed, believed and made happen. Then why is it so hard now to do this here, to take part in our community and initiatives in Duino?

In fact, I understand very well why we are less active than at home. We see it slip through our hands like endless rain: time, precious time.

The IB, including the CAS activities, our physical health and perhaps most importantly the interaction with our fellow students are all part of our UWC development but all of them also take up so much

time. This is not all bad, for UWC is most of all a preparation for what we will do afterwards in life. It is not a goal, but a means for greater things. However, with all the talking and discussing we do at the college, I fear that the gap between the theory we discuss and the practice of concrete action is getting wider and wider. Though idealists, we should not lose sight of the reality at hand, we should not lose sight of the other side of the gap.

Do not think I believe everyone should organize his or her own activity, if so, each activity would have but one participant. No, I am also talking about merely participating, and being engaged. I would like to give you a concrete example of how the community disappointed me. If you remember, on the anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10th December, Magda organized a Write for Rights marathon. There were ten cases of violations of human rights. We could write letters, either to the prisoners as support, or to the authorities to demand their freedom or a fair trial. The result was approximately 160 letters. Not bad, not bad at all.

Except if you consider that there were only 20 people or so that had actually written them. Our college has 189 students, so if every one of us had taken five minutes to write one letter each, we would already have exceeded that number. Why

didn´t we? Do we not care about the human rights activist from Cambodia? Do we not care about the Guantanamo Bay prisoner? Do we not care about the gay rights activist from Belarus, the filmmaker from China, or the tortured woman from Mexico?

I don´t want to believe that we do not care, and I don´t.

It is a known fact in psychology that within large groups, the individual´s sense of responsibility decreases. So perhaps this is the reason then. As paradoxical as it sounds, when coming to the college, we become less responsible individually then we used to be at home. It seems UWC has become more of a comfortable bed to fall in, rather than a trampoline to jump from.

However, our national committees selected us all for our beliefs in the ideals of UWC, and our wish to make a change. In fact, one of the values we stand for is ´personal responsibility´ and another is ´action and personal example´. So let us explore our passions, let us enjoy our international environment and let us educate ourselves, but let´s not forget to be responsible and give personal example. Let us go back to action!

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The Voice of a Young Activist Interviewee: Marian Osman Interviewer: Sibel Spahija

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**My sincere thanks to Marian Osman for giving me the chance to interview her and get to know more about her experiences.** - Sibel Spahija Could you please tell me something more about your background?

“I was born in Italy, kind of randomly. I lived there for three months, so I don’t remember any of it and obviously I don’t speak the language Then, we went back to Somalia and the civil war broke out which made it difficult to stay in the country, so we moved to Canada under its Humanitarian Refugee Program. We spent a few years moving around because it was a very different country culturally and in terms of climate. I lived in Canada at an age, around 8-12, that allowed me to absorb the culture a lot better. People are surprised when I speak the way that I do and when I say I am from Somalia, because they have a very different idea of how somebody from Somalia sounds. So, you can see the impact that it has had on me, as my parent are so ‘Somalian’.

My mom’s English is quite broken and they both have very strong accents, so it’s very different. I remember when I was in the 8th grade one of my friends said, “Your mom has such an interesting accent” and I had never noticed it, because for such a long time that was just ‘my mom’. In a weird way, it was surprising that someone else showed me that my mom had an accent. I was around 7-8 when we moved to Canada and I was around 13-14 years old when we moved back to Somalia.

I lived the majority of my life in Somalia, but it is really difficult to keep track of the years, as it’s a bit broken up because of the civil war, having to relocate and stuff.”

How were your first years in Canada?

“I remember not being able to speak the language. I remember going to

classes and not understanding anything. Even after I learnt the language, there were certain things that had different connotations for me.

For example, I think it was the fifth grade when my teacher handed out this reading assignment about a Cambodian refugee. Standing in front of the class my teacher said, “So, do all of you know what refugee means?” All my life my mom had told me “Marian, we are refugees, but we are strong”.

So I used to think that refugee means someone who is super powerful, so I answered my teacher’s question thinking I sincerely knew what refugee means as I had heard it hundreds of times from my mother. The whole refugee thing helped me understand a little bit more how experiences can shape people’s understanding of the world around them. I also remember hating the cold, as I guess I was never made for cold, even though I loved the country itself.”

What was the reason you moved back to Somalia after Canada and how was the situation at Somalia once you were back?

“My father was really curious to see what was going on in the country and if it was safe to return. Even though the civil war had gotten better it hadn’t officially ended, even a couple of months ago there was another bombing in Mogadishu. In Mogadishu, it is almost impossible to go a couple of days without hearing gunshots. I somehow feel different from my parents, but I am learning to understand the way they are, partially because I am able to live outside Somalia for a couple of years, then return to the country and see more clearly those distinctions. In some ways, it makes

me work even harder, because I can see the impact living in a country like Somalia has had on its people.”

What got you so interested in environmental policy?

“Part of what I guess got me so interested in environmental policy was that Somalia is affected by climate change. I don’t know if many people remember it, but around 2007, there was a lot of media coverage of

the famine in Somalia, which was declared a terrible humanitarian crisis by the UN and it was bad. My father comes from a village called Afgooye,

which is an agricultural village, so the entire community is focused on farming. When the famine started, it affected people in terms of health, but also economically. When you are hungry and poor it is devastating to a community, and, if you imagine it in a large scale, particularly in a country like Somalia that has had terrorism and other issues of civil unrest, it makes the whole process of rebuilding so much more difficult. When the war broke out, the central government collapsed and everything very quickly fell apart. The education system was gone and the public infrastructure and medical care and everything that people relied on to live was in chaos, so it made everything very difficult for people. Then around 2010 the government tried to regain power within the country because there was a government but it didn’t have a central power dynamic. There are different parties where only one of them is supposed to be the official government and the others are like terrorist groups and the government was struggling to get power over them as these terrorist groups have been in power for so long. The way my government has tried to gain power and reorganize our country was something that my parents talked to me about, because this was the country where my parents were born and grew up. I always listened to my parents talking about Somalia as if it was an old dream, so I want to see Somalia come back together. Somalia is trying to develop a central government where there hasn’t been one for so long. The government is trying to learn how to be a government and then think about things that are more complex. The building where the government used to have its meetings was destroyed in a terrorist bombing, so they were meeting in another area, which was very open, where people could easily go and observe what was happening. However, it wasn’t a safe place, which is why the government was first based in a small country outside Somalia. After a while, thankfully, the situation in Somalia started to improve and then they could have

their meetings in Somalia. The transition improved to the point where Somalia’s MPs could function in Somalia and they even rebuilt the parliament that was destroyed. Now, it is a beautiful building, but you can still tell that it is in a country that has been dealing with war for 20 years.

The spin to all of this, is that I don’t want to say that this is a positive thing, but the fact that Somalia has been going through this metamorphosis has allowed people like me to get involved in the government. It sounds strange, but this idea of intergenerational equity has become a buzzword within many environmental policy circles, because what is being discussed in United Nations Climate Negotiations will affect our generation. They decided to promote the idea of posterity having a stake in these negotiations, to engage with the process. For example, Tanzania recently wrote into their text that they want youth to have a say in what happens in these negotiations.

Many countries, like Belgium, have official youth representatives that they have brought on to their negotiating teams and they treat them as respectable, legitimate members of their government. At the other end of the spectrum you have countries, like the USA, that don’t even want to talk about having a US youth representative, because frankly their position within UNCN is that they don’t want to reduce their emissions if it hurts their economy. Then, when I think about the way Somalia has been learning to govern itself, it hasn’t had all these restrictions. I was much younger at that time and I was eager to see all these things come together. I was eager to see the country that my parents were always talking about, actually recover. I am the oldest of the nine children in our family and, if I wanted to see something happen, I had to do it. So, in a weird way, having heard about my country and then seeing the opportunity to engage with it spring up in front of me, I was going to take the opportunity and say “I want to help the government”. I was an assistant in the beginning, so I would follow

parliament members around and start to absorb the discussions that they were having and try to learn more about what they were trying to achieve. I began to be respected as a delegate within the government and then after a while I started to take more of an environmental focus.

Environmental buzzwords were becoming more and more a part of my everyday language and so it became more a priority, as I would understand how they linked to each other and was ‘forced’ to constantly see.“

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How did your UWC journey start?

“There was this Education Minister and there was a lot of discussion about future education in Somalia.

The Education Minister, who I guess had heard of UWC, was interested in helping students. I heard about UWC from someone, who said, “I understand you are interested in education and you are young”. He thought I fitted the profile of a UWC student, as there were not a lot of people who were interested in the stuff I was interested in. I was the only young member of the parliament, actively trying to engage with the process, so he told me that there was this scholarship that the Minister needed to give to a student and that I seemed to be a person who fitted the profile. Through him, the National Committee sponsored me to go to UWCAC. It was a surprise for me and it was also surprising for my parents; I am the oldest of nine children and whenever I do something for the first time my parents get to experience the same excitement and anxiousness for the first time as well.”

How did you get involved in the United Nations?

“The federal parliament of Somalia sends representatives to meetings called Inter Parliamentary Unions (IPU) which are similar to the United Nations, but it is for parliament members rather than government representatives of specific countries. For example, if the UN holds a conference on women’s rights, the Minister of Gender and Equality

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will be the one to go. However, the Inter Parliamentary Unions are just for general members of parliament, rather than ministers of specific aspects of the government. Although these unions are more general, a lot of them discuss things that are more sustainably focused. We would have discussions on ‘Sustainable Development’ where I learnt more about environmental policy. Then I was introduced to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It is a major international body addressing climate change, which is a global problem. If we are going to fight climate change, we can’t have a single country doing it by itself, there needs to be a global effort. I guess I got involved in UNFCCC because I invested so much time reading about environmental policy, while many people of the parliament didn’t, because they don’t have much of an education; some of them have not even finished high school, because the civil war interrupted it. I read a lot in English.

It is strange, but in Somalia you can have access to English books much more easily than to ones in Somali (the official language of Somalia), because when the war broke out, all the printing presses stopped. I was able to access to a lot of information about environmental policy in English, from the books being imported into Somalia. I read a lot about environmental policy, because I saw what was happening to people of my country, suffering through famine and so it felt like a duty to take action against it. Because I had all this background knowledge, the parliament started sending me to these conferences. When I went there, I started uniting with other young people, even though all of them were

much older than me. At my first conference I was 17 and the next youngest representative was about 24.”

What was the experience of your first conference like?

“The first UN conference I went to (COP17) was in Durban, in South Africa in 2011. I remember this beautiful convention, which was so intense, because there were people running around all the time. It was a surreal atmosphere, where it seemed like so much was happening. You stay there, you are surrounded by all these inspiring people and you listen to Ban Ki-moon discuss why climate change is so “real”. But, I was very disappointed by that conference, because I so wanted to see something happen. I learnt so much about the theory, I thought, “Ok, this will be the practice, this is where things get done”, and I remember the conference was supposed to end on Friday, but it didn’t end until Sunday.

There were people negotiating all the time and so they were not able to go home. They stayed at the convention over night because they couldn’t agree on anything. There were all these adults supposedly holding our future in their hands and actually not agreeing on anything. There was one woman from India who stood up and started telling us how there were many people waiting for her to go home and give them good news for their future; she said she could not afford to go home without seeing something happen. There were peo-

ple crying and it felt really intense and then after all was said and done, nothing happened.”

You say that the first conference was disappointing for you but then you kept on going to other conferences. What made you do so?

“I kept going because you get emotionally invested in it and you can’t let it go. I’ve gone to four conferences so far and I think there is just so much potential in the process, especially in the last year where, surprisingly, the youth have been able to gather. The youth in the UN is made up of young people that come from all different areas, some of them are NGO representatives, some of them are observers, some of them are involved in educational institutions and then youth delegates like myself.

When we gather, we have a common goal, and in some way it feels like UWC, as we all have this unified understanding of what we want to accomplish.”

What is something you hope to be able to do in future?

“I definitely want to go back to Somalia, because I have the passion to see Somalia recover and see it becoming a country I can really be proud of. I remember each time I talked to my uncle or my parents they were so proud of the way Somalia used to be. It’s weird to say I am nostalgic, because I didn’t live back then, but I feel like I want to see my parents’ dream come true, to see Somalia come back together.”

Should I Sign It?

By Malcolm Price

I didn’t sign the petition to “Send Snowden Home”.

I was a little confused by the proposal, because they wanted to send him home to Brazil and I thought his home was in the USA. Avaaz got this one a little wrong. If they had asked me to sign a petition saying Edward Snowden should be allowed to go home to the USA, under the full protection of whistle-blower laws, then I would gladly have signed it, but (no offence Wesley) did they really mean Brazil?

Every couple of weeks Avaaz asks me to sign some petition or other and I have to decide “Should I Sign It?” Before deciding, here are some issues that I consider.

What is Avaaz? It is an online protest movement.

Who is behind Avaaz? A group of activists led by Ricken Patel from Canada.

Who funds Avaaz? I don’t know, but they claim to be self-financing

now.

What is their political bias? I don’t know, because they come up with all kinds of petitions covering social, political and environmental issues, but I suspect their bias is “Western Liberal”, which is OK with me, because that is also my bias.

So, what are the “Pro’s”? It is activist. It is big (there are now over 33 million registered petitioners).

It is creative (not only petitions, but protests, legal action and fund raising). It is democratic (anyone can suggest a petition and if it gets enough clicks, then Avaaz will take it up for a campaign). It is effective (people in power can be influenced by enough petitioners saying that they are watching what is going on).

So, what are the “Con’s”? It is lazy (clicking a petition is too easy and too passive). It overestimates its effectiveness (does a person in power really worry about a group of internet surfers from all over the world clicking a petition). It is too broad (one minute talking about Snowden and the next about Orang-utans).

It steals information (someone sent me a link, Avaaz captured my email

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address and now Avaaz is building a profile of me to know what petitions and appeals I will respond to).

So, what is my conclusion? I like it (their campaigns are well thought out, creative and pertinent). I want my voice heard (the people in power should be held to more account and should be aware that their citizens are watching). I want change (Avaaz is a positive organisation that believes in their ability to bring real change).

I have signed petitions against the rape laws in Morocco, the killing of Dolphins by Peruvian fishermen, the continued use of Guantanamo Bay and the size of the bonuses paid to bankers in the UK. Do I know anything about these subjects? Not enough. Am I being manipulated by the media? Yes, a little. Do I care about such issues? Yes, I do, because I think I should care about injustices and things that are not right with the world.

Will I sign it? Too true, I will, but maybe not to send Snowden to Brazil!

Admiration vs. Fanaticism

By Giuliana de Polo

Inspiration can be quite a peculiar thing. Almost everyone aspires to be like someone else at least once in his or her lives. We like to look at roles models, at those people who seem to get it all right, who are successful in their field. I’m not going to go further in the analysis of the definition of success, since I would go off topic, so let’s just says that it is someone that has accomplished their objective in a certain area, and therefore is admired (or envied) by those who haven’t (but want to).

It is in this admiration that the ground gets slippery, and the border between it and fanaticism be-

comes thinner. There is no harm in being inspired by someone; it has been the engine for many who want to do great things. Seeing that others have done the same as we want to do, or had the same ideals as we have, or have fought against great odds and had overcome them is a reassuring fact when it’s time to take a big step.

However, idolatry of a person or an institution is a dangerous matter. In the same way as falling in love, the fan creates an image of them that doesn’t match with reality. Everything that their idol does seems right, and even if they make

a mistake, justifying the action is no problem. In addition, the subject becomes extremely susceptible to criticism from others, and can reach a point of violence or psychological problems because of it.

At all times, we have to keep in mind our humanity, and acknowledge the tendency of men to commit as many mistakes as good actions, in order to form a more realistic idea of those recognized as “role models”, and be able to discern when things get far from ideal.

Poor old Justin Bieber!

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10 You are

simply the best

SPEECH TO CONVINCE STUDENTS AT THE COLLEGE TO BECOME VEGETARIANS

By Florentina Abendstein

Dear Magda, You are lovely and the love which you have for everyone around you is unbelievable. Stay strong, beautiful, and shining as the moon which lightens people’s way and life.

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You are amazing I wish you an endless amount of happiness, and success.

Lots of love ^_^

It is Wednesday evening and after a long day of school and activities, you take your last bit of remaining energy to get to Mensa. Your stomach has been grumbling all the way through Aerobics and cannot wait to be fed.

Your eyes glance over the food stations and brighten when you see that huge juicy hamburger you have been waiting for all day long. You cannot wait for Marina to put it on your plate and run to the nearest table to indulge yourself in this artwork of food. You take a bite and while you are chewing, you look at your burger again. And…

Dear Michbal, If we were like chromosomes, you’d be my homologous pair ;) - Lilly-Pad

Dear fellow students and teachers, today I want to talk to you about the many advantages of a vegetarian diet, all the positive impacts it has on our environment and why you all should consider adopting it.

Dear Melania, My love for you can be expressed only through snuggles in your bed, with sour strawberry strings while we gossip about last Saturday night and watch stupid youtube clips.

- Lilly

The general diet of an average person in Europe contains a 100 kg of meat per year, when the recommended amount would be only 28 kg. This large amount has a high number of side effects not only on our health but also on the environment and on the quality of life of animals. By becoming vegetarian, we could prevent so many of these consequences and our whole planet would benefit from our decisions.

Dear Georgia, You’re cute like a tiny rabbit in the woods. But also tough like tiny rabbit in the woods, who is independent and can fend for herself. (I stole this from the internet) - Lilith Dear Evelyn, You are awesome.

‘Nuff said.

- Lilly

Meat has more of a negative impact on the environment than any other food we eat. The requirement for food, water, land and energy by livestock is much more than that required producing and transporting equal amount of plants. For example, it takes 2,350 litres of water to produce a beef burger of 150 g while it takes only 158 litres to produce the same product with soybeans. That is 1/15th of the amount of water needed. And it is not only the water which makes the difference but also the amount of pollution which this in-

dustry pumps into our atmosphere.

Agriculture is said to be responsible for 14 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, most of it comes from the 1.5 billion cows in the form of methane, and this number doesn´t even include all the carbon dioxide emissions that are produced by shipping your Argentinian steak from one continent to another.

By becoming vegetarian, you would no longer support the mass breading of animals and therefore reduce the horrendous amounts of exhaust gases being produced, since climate change is no longer knocking on our door but is actually already inside our house chilling in the living room.

We need change and we need it now so adjusting your diet would be a great step forward to show this mass industry that enough is enough.

This would not only help us to stay a little longer on this wonderful planet but it would also benefit animals.

Most of the time when we go to the supermarket to buy steaks for the next barbeque we look at the package and are immediately convinced by the happy cow on the picture grazing on a spacious field surrounded by flowers and a cloudless sky. We do not feel bad for the animal since we know that it had a happy life up there in the mountains and could argue that eating it now is purely part of the cycle of life. In my opinion, there would be nothing wrong with that if the cow actually had been living that way but sadly, the only thing that picture sells us is a guilt free meal. Because if the label depicted the truth, we would not even dare to touch this product. After meat consumption per capita doubled in the past 50 years, farming has become more competitive and with the financial crisis, the demand for cheap food has increased sharply. The only way for many farmers to survive was to

become a mass producer and this is often achieved through factory farming.

Factory farming means that because of the high stocking density of thousands of animals in one farm the use of antibiotics and pesticides is a daily routine to lessen the spread of diseases that are caused by these cruel, crowded living conditions. That not being enough, they use antibiotics and growth hormones to stimulate livestock growth by killing intestinal bacteria. And as soon as they reach the right age, they are cold hearted slaughtered. Let me just ask you, in what world would this be considered the right thing to do? In what world could we be so blinded

by our own superiority to do this to other living creatures? And in what world would we be willing to support this cruel business by buying their products every day?

My dear co-years and teachers please no longer make it so easy for them to continue this horrible industry. I ask you not only for your own health but also for the benefit of our planet and all its living creatures to consider vegetarianism as not only an option but a duty as a responsible human being on this earth.

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Love letter This edition has given me the chance to share with you some thoughts that have been going around my head for a couple of weeks now. I want to write a letter to a person that believed in me even when I didn’t, and taught me a lot more than that I was aware of.

Dear, Distance has defined us in the past few years.

However, I’m not mad. Not anymore. Not every day. I know. I used to be. And it wasn’t fair. But please, understand, that sometimes pain likes to dress up as anger.

They say time heals every wound, I say time is not always relevant. Memory knows way too well what to preserve. And how to. Dear, my memory remembers you.

Yes, I still remember your recipes, and your taste for fancy perfumes, and your worried speeches, told to my stubborn mind.

And the hours, days, months that you spent keeping my light alive, that light that seemed too far away for me to reach.

Now I’m ok, you know, I wish you could see me. Now my thoughts have learnt to flow, now I can leave my life just be.

I finally get it, what you wanted me to see. It seems so real now, so near.

If you hear these words, dear, please remember one more thing: I love you, mom. And I always will.

Dear Nicole, Thank you for being such a sunlight in everyone’s day.

In addition, if the Whitney Houston’s voice was named as a national treasure of the US, then your’s should be called the Duino treasure.

Dear Valev, I wish you lots of energy to keep up everything that you have been doing so far - playing violin, designing, drinking coffee, and loving your computer. Continue to be amazing and fight for justice.

The Adriatic Times