For A Change articles from April 1996

For A Change archives from April 1996

Commonwealth gets into its stride: once the old boys' club of the British Empire, the Commonwealth is now one of the world's most effective, and diverse, multilateral organizations.
April 1, 1996... Next to the United Nations, the Commonwealth is the largest truly global multilateral institution. Some see it as an anachronism, the relic of a late and unlamented British Empire, long overdue for euthanasia. But is this a fair assessment? Is...

Watershed in Auckland.
April 1, 1996... When the Commonwealth heads of government met in Auckland, New Zealand, last November, two issues dominated the headlines. The media had reduced them to `Nukes and Nigeria'. Both subjects were controversial and emotive, and both involved...

Russian scientist's journey to faith: science can answer many questions but cannot explain values, argues Russian mathematician Julius Schreider.
April 1, 1996... Ten-year-old Julius Schreider was lying in bed one evening in Mytishchi, a Moscow suburb, when the men from the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD, later KGB) came to arrest his father. It was 9 April 1938, in the dying days of...

Maori deserve a more generous approach: despite governmental efforts to resolve some of the Maori people's long-standing grievances, race relations remain volatile in New Zealand.
April 1, 1996... Last year, Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch ever to make an official apology. In the presence of the Maori Queen, Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, she signed into New Zealand law a bill in which the Crown apologized to the...

Buddhist medicine for Cambodia's ills.
April 1, 1996... `Conflict within individuals is linked to conflict within the nation,' said Cambodia's Supreme Patriarch, the Venerable Tep Vong. The International Patriarch, the Ven Maha Ghosananda, added, `If a driver is not sober how can he drive a...

To be a modern pilgrim: ... Europe's great pilgrimage routes.
April 1, 1996... For over a thousand years, pilgrims have travelled through France and Spain to the final resting place of St James the Apostle in Santiago de Compostella. Modern pilgrims come in two types. One dresses in lycra, wears irridescent...

Stress in the fax age: stress need not be harmful.
April 1, 1996... Two women came to see me. The son of the first had just made a serious attempt to end his life because of the pressure of his forthcoming school exams. The son of the second has lost his motivation and stopped going to college. As a doctor, I...

Rewriting Russia's history: publisher Frances Pinter is helping Russia meet its vast need for up-to-date school-books.
April 1, 1996... Henry Ford irreverently held that `history is bunk', but millions of Russians might be forgiven if they agreed with him. A whole generation were brought up on school textbooks which reflected Marx's and Lenin's interpretation of history. So how...

Annie, give up your gun: `more Americans died from gunshots in the last two years than in the entire Vietnam War'.
April 1, 1996... Having a gun in your home is almost an article of faith in the United States. Many see it as the ultimate protection against dictatorship. The second amendment to the Constitution states that `a well regulated militia being necessary to the...

Frosts are gone.
April 1, 1996... My great-grandmother's engagement ring was set with five diamonds. When she died, her daughter Maud insisted it should come to her, as she was the only one of the five children not to have married. (Family legend has it that this was her own...

In praise of admiration.
April 1, 1996... Ionce heard it said of a man that he didn't admire anyone. The implication was that he was wise in the ways of the world and could see through what others took for talent and virtue to the reality beneath. In his eyes, the `talent' was due more...

Racing for a new Lebanon (wheelchair marathon champion and war casualty, Nano Chlemon).
April 1, 1996... You could see he was a sportsman. The broad shoulders and powerful arms, constantly on the move, almost made you forget the wheelchair. But Nano Chlemon, like so many other young men in Lebanon, is a war casualty--shot in a gun battle in...

Across Malta's divides.
April 1, 1996... It takes only an hour to cross Malta by car. But even on this small island people are divided by social and political walls. Fr Edgar Busuttil has crossed some of these divides. He grew up in upper-class Sliema. Now he lives and works in a...

Hippocrates today.
April 1, 1996... Not many dentists `retire' to write books on economics, philosophy and faith. But James Dyce has always been unique. Dyce's father was a young Aberdeenshire farmer who came to Glasgow in the Depression and made good. James Dyce gained...

Simple path.
April 1, 1996... On the verge of the 21st century, there could be no better spiritual message than Mother Teresa's. A simple path includes the voices of Mother Teresa, her sisters and brothers of the Missionaries of Charity and their voluntary workers around...

Beasts and saints.
April 1, 1996... This delightful little book presents stories of what Helen Waddell calls `the mutual charities' between saints and beasts, translated without artifice from the original Latin. Here are Jerome and his lion and donkey, Werburga and her geese,...