For A Change articles from August 1999

For A Change archives from August 1999

Cardinal who pointed us to the best.
August 1, 1999... Cardinal Basil Hume, the Archbishop of Westminster, died on 17 June mourned not just by Britain's Roman Catholics but by many of different faiths and of none. He was in a sense a `reluctant' Archbishop. As the relatively unknown...

What has people power done for Poland? Mike Lowe revisits Poland, ten years after its return to democracy.
August 1, 1999... History will surely record 1989 as one of the most remarkable outbreaks of democracy the world has ever seen. The toppling of defunct communist regimes across Central and Eastern Europe (see box page 6) gathered pace through what has been...

1989: year of the people.
August 1, 1999... 15 January, Prague: 4,000 demonstrate in Wenceslas Square to commemorate Jan Palach, who burnt himself alive in protest against the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. 6 February, Poland: Round-table talks begin between the...

What happens after you say sorry? John Bond describes progress towards healing a deep hurt in the soul of Australia.
August 1, 1999... Two years ago, a national enquiry presented its report to the Australian Government. It had looked into the effects of removing Aboriginal children from their families, a practice which went on for 150 years into the 1970s and aimed to...

Ugandans go for green.
August 1, 1999... With its pigs and goats, cow and calf, chickens, rabbits, small fields and vegetable plots, Warren Farm in Berkshire, England, comes straight from the pages of a children's story book. Not the first place, perhaps, you would look for answers to...

From Korea to the world.
August 1, 1999... Venerable Mother Park Chung-Soo, the head of a Buddhist temple in Seoul, is a money-raiser extraordinaire. Over the last 11 years she has persuaded her countrypeople to give gifts totalling US$2.5 million for projects in 35 countries. Park...

Black belt tackles blackspots.
August 1, 1999... `If anyone is serious about making a difference to society, youth has to be the focus for what is done,' says five times World Karate Champion Geoff Thompson. And the way to reach the youth, he has no doubt, is through sport. Over the last...

Verwoerds and the ANC: Verwoerd is one of the names most associated with apartheid. William Smook discovers that Wilhelm and Melanie Verwoerd break all the stereotypes.
August 1, 1999... Reconciliation between South Africans can't be achieved until they learn to relate to each other on the basis of being fellow citizens, with shared problems and aspirations, and a common destiny. That's the view of two outstanding white...

After 292 years - we meet again: Campbell Leggat returns to the land of his birth to find out what Scotland's new parliament could mean for Scotland and the UK.
August 1, 1999... It was just after 9.30 am on Wednesday, 12 May 1999. The 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament, who had been elected the previous Thursday, gathered together in the chamber of their temporary home, the Assembly Hall on the Mound in Edinburgh....

Sixty minute man: in 1988 Rob Parson gave up his job as a lawyer to help bolster Britain's ailing family life. The founder of Care for Family talks to Kenneth Noble.
August 1, 1999... Teacher, lawyer, public speaker, Christian leader, writer. Is there anything Rob Parsons cannot do? Perhaps, like many successful people, he has serious marital problems? Seemingly no chinks in the armour here. He and his wife Dianne have just...

When neighbours become enemies: Laurie Vogel reflects on Michael Ignatieff's recent book on ethnic conflict.
August 1, 1999... Talking to a Kenyan I had met in the English Midlands, I mentioned the name of someone I knew in his home country. `He's a Kikuyu,' was the immediate response, as if his identity was thus fully described. But I knew my friend in Kenya as one of...

Atlantic Odyssey.
August 1, 1999... Atlantic Odyssey by Michael Thwaites New Cherwell Press, 1999, [pounds sterling] 9.99 ISBN: 1-900312-35-2 In this vivid first-person tale of the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II, the Australian poet Michael Thwaites takes us into the...

Seminars in Gaza and Israel.
August 1, 1999... An international group, with experience of facilitating change in their societies, spent a week in April in Israel and Palestine, at the invitation of people who had participated in MRA conferences in Caux, Switzerland. The visit included...

Ray of hope from the Hague.
August 1, 1999... `We couldn't let the century end without giving peace the last word,' said Cora Weiss, President of the Hague Appeal for Peace Foundation (HAP). The HAP's civil societies conference in May drew some 7,000 people, representing over 100 countries...

Tanzania tackles corruption.
August 1, 1999... An all-African conference on how to combat corruption and bring reconciliation to a war-torn continent, organized by MRA, took place in Tanzania in May. It was opened by Wilson Masilingi, Minister of State in the President's Office, who said...

Pope calls for communication not alienation.
August 1, 1999... Pope John Paul II has spoken out strongly about the special responsibility of the media. With the explosion of information technology, he says, the possibility of communication between individuals and groups in every part of the world has...

To see ourselves.
August 1, 1999... The last year has been characterized for me by two apparently opposite emotions. On the one hand the pain and grief surrounding the decline and death from cancer of my brother-in-law. On the other hand inner joy from experiencing the leading of...

Tax protests focus Jamaican media's role.
August 1, 1999... The English-speaking Commonwealth Caribbean has one of the freest presses in the world. Jamaica, the largest English-speaking territory and my home country, has a long history of a vibrant and free press. The Gleaner, for which I write a...