waldron@newport.rutgers.edu (James Waldron) (08/12/89)
*Part 2 of a 3 Part series.
Prepared by: Dr. James Waldron, Director UNITEX Network
A. NEWS GROUP OVERVIEW
UNITEX supplies and disseminates information that we obtain from
United Nations mainframe databases and related sources. We have
been a major advocate for the distribution of 'raw', uncensored and
un-edited material obtained from official UN sources and are playing
a key role in the acquistion and distribution of this information.
It consists of UN press Releases, UN Radio News, UN International
News, UNICEF Press Releases, Electronic Publishing (DIPA) and
related UNICEF documents and Wordwide Disaster News and Relief Plans
from UNDRONET. The UNITEX conference was established over two years ago
on microcomputer distributed networks and had a limited distribution in
the United States, Canada and Australia. We maintained approximately
12 to 16 direct links at any given time. In fact UNITEX was originally
'labeled' as part of the "Socially Conscious 7" since we were the only
USA link with 3 from Canada and 3 from Australia. All the 'connected'
seven systems at that time were specialized in ways that were relevant to
various social issues, such as, disarmament, environmental and ecological
issues, human rights, etc. Due to the interest generated
in general and to the timely international news coverage in specific,
vis a vis Soviet-US current affairs, Nobel Peace Prize Award to UN,
a renewed interest in the US space efforts, etc., there has been a
mushrooming effect resulting in many more direct links. We
now have a gateway to several networks, including BITNET, UseNet,
PeaceNet, GreenNet, EcoNet, etc and have several thousand users
that access this information .
B. CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION
The issues that UNITEX presents are many and are dependent on
current political topics of interest and timely international
news. The key areas that we focus on are the following:
Human Rights, Disarmament, Amnesty International (Action Alerts),
African News, news from and about 3rd World and Developing Countries,
World Peace Issues, Space News/NASA and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space,
Worlwide Disaster News & Relief Programs, Technology Transfer and
Information Exchange, International Ecological and Environmental
Issues, World Health Organization Reports (International health
issues, vaccines, etc), Reports from the General Assembly and World
Bank (International finance, multi-national and inter-governmental
joint ventures, etc)
C. CONFERENCE GUIDELINES and RULES
Currently, the readers of UNITEX are concerned scientists, educators,
teachers and students, as well as governemnt officials, UN delegates and
news journalists. Through the vehicle of this conference, UNITEX provides
information and promotes information and data exchange on a two-way basis.
One should exercise a certain level of 'diplomacy' when addressing issues
or people in this conference. There is much to be gained by good-will,
patience and understanding and nothing to be gained by rash, insensitive and
mindless chatter. Think before you write and try to make intelligent
thought provoking commentary and stay focused on the issues presented.
UNITEX welcomes reader replies and user feedback. It is not
a Read-Only NewsGroup *but* due to the sensitive nature of many of
the international issues that are addressed and the scope and
breadth of the distribution, we feel the need to moderate this
conference, at least in the beginning stages of this newsgroup's
development. If we set some standards early, and if the readers
feel they would like the newsgroup unmoderated, we will go that route.
D. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND and PERSPECTIVE
The United Nations plays a key role in several areas, such as,
population and agricultural studies, world health and medical
issues (imunization, new vaccines, treatment programs, etc),
international peace agreements, treaties and security, international
laws, peaceful uses of outer space, egual rights, human rights and the
disemmination of information and international news. UNITEX is an
advocate for these issuses and is also strongly commited to modern
computer applications in the areas of software design and network
development. Apart from our main goals as technology and information
providers, UNITEX helps to make the goals and efforts of the
United Nations more widely known, adds to international understanding
and reduces misunderstandings.
International news and new technological developments occuring in
both the industrialized nations and in the developing nations
is transmitted, distributed and disseminated by UNITEX to all
direct private & public links via distributed network technology.
E. PURPOSE
INFORMATION and THE CHALLENGE OF THE 90's
The following is a summary of several points that were introduced and
discussed at the United Nations Special Session on Information
on June 13 - June 27, 1988:
Advances in communications technology have exacerbated the gap between
the developed and developing countries. Information and communications
in an interdependent world affect the economy, trade, culture and the
development of a nation. Aside from this, confusion about the
United Nations is enormous.
The ever widening gulf that exists between the developed industrialized
nations and the undeveloped countries has been referred to as the
"North-South information inequality". A pre-occupied concern
of the developing countries is freedom of information (article 19
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and the information
inequality that currently exists. To address these specific
areas of concern, the UN has referred to the general topic of
international co-operation and communication as the "New World Information
and Communication Order." Co-operation between the North-South will
provide the developing countries with up-to-date know-how and assist in
the dissemination of fair coverage of the news about developing nations.
Hopefuflly, UNITEX and the associated systems which link into this
newsgroup/conference can help narrow this gap using effective, low-cost
communication technology and decentralized wide-area networks that
are a trademark of both the microcomputer networks (FidoNet) and
the uucp networks (UseNet, etc).
Thank you for your help in assisting us with the above guidelines.
Date: Thursday, 10 August 1989. Time: 17:07:48.
Dr. James Waldron waldron@newport.rutgers.edu
Director, UNITEX
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