For A Change articles from February 2003

For A Change archives from February 2003

Ear to the ground.
February 1, 2003... Lifelines If you pressed your ear to the railway line that runs east-west across thousands of kilometres of desert scrub in Western Australia, you might have picked up the reverberation of long tongues licking the lines. Desperate camels...

A timely note of idealism. (From The Editors' Desk).(time for standards in journalism and politics)(Editorial)
February 1, 2003... The press and the political class have an uneasy relationship, in Britain at least. A good thing too. The Fourth Estate is ideally positioned to act as watchdog and bay when our political masters overstep the limits of propriety and decency....

My family's Russia: few countries have seen more changes in the last century than Russia. Anastasia Stepanova traces its history through the lives of three generations. (Lead Story).
February 1, 2003... If you were to ask most Russians about their origins they would immediately refer to Mother Russia. But our nation is not as homogeneous as it may seem. In fact, the majority are descendants from many nations, as I am. I am only a quarter...

Forgiveness out of suffering: the last words of Wim Lindeijer's mother led him to seek reconciliation with the Japanese. He tells his story to Michael Henderson. (Profile).
February 1, 2003... Nel Lindeijer lay dying in a Japanese internment camp on the island of Java in the last days of World War II. Three years of privations--shortage of food and medicines--had exhausted her. Together with the young Dutch mother were her four...

Open house library. (People Making A Difference).(Research Centre for Arab and Mediterranean Medieval Studies in French-speaking North Africa)
February 1, 2003... The first Research Centre for Arab and Mediterranean Medieval Studies in French-speaking North Africa has recently been founded in an unusual public library in Sfax, Tunisia. `The Middle Ages is a very significant period in human history,' says...

Hospital saved. (People Making A Difference).(Tinplate Hospital in India)
February 1, 2003... There are three factory hospitals in Jamshedpur, a remarkable industrial centre in the heart of India. Amit Mukherjee is an orthopaedic surgeon at one of them, the 210-bed Tinplate Hospital--which he helped to rescue from closure. The...

Japanese-Korean youth initiative. (People Making A Difference).
February 1, 2003... Two years ago Hiroshi Ishida decided to give up his highly paid post in the Industrial Bank of Japan to become a `social innovator'. This original job description has led him into an initiative to rebuild relations between young people in Japan...

What Europe should understand about the US: Bryan Hamlin, a British-born American citizen, challenges Europe's prejudice towards the United States. (The FAC Essay).(Column)
February 1, 2003... Born and educated in Britain, I have moved from being in love with an American--my wife--to also being in love with her country, while still loving the land of my birth. It pains me therefore to see not only misunderstanding but, from my...

Should `assisted suicide' be made legal? Pierre Spoerri reads a book which puts forward some uncomfortable views on a burning subject.(Denial of the Soul--Spiritual and Medical Perspectives on Euthanasia and Mortality)(Book Review)
February 1, 2003... How did I react when our main Sunday newspaper announced in the autumn of 2002 that my city, Zurich, had become a `world-capital of euthanasia'? My first reaction was: it just cannot be true. The second: what is this all about, what is behind...

From Cornelio Sommaruga, Switzerland. (Letter).(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2003... You kindly published a generous `profile' on me in your August/September 2002 issue, under the title `A passion for the human family'. The journalist, Andrew Stallybrass, correctly reports that I was particularly saddened by the personal...

Working for a small-is-beautiful world: a narrow brush with death led Richard St George to devote his life to conservation. The Director of the Schumacher Society talks to Caz and Sandy Hore-Ruthven. (Profile II).(Interview)
February 1, 2003... Not many people have one near-death experience--let alone four or five; and that fact alone makes Richard St George, Director of the Schumacher Society, quite remarkable. During his student days in Northern Ireland, glandular fever left him in...

English and Irish: a way forward through repentance: Peter Riddell reviews a slim book with some big implications.(Where I Sensed the Breath of God: a Footnote in Anglo-Irish History)(Book Review)
February 1, 2003... In the heart of the Falls Road district of West Belfast, Northern Ireland, stands the Redemptorist Monastery of Clonard. It was a source of strength for the local Catholic community during the darkest days of the Troubles in the Seventies and...

The making of an historian: Paul Williams discovers how Robin Mowat found his path in life in the turbulent 1930s.(Biography)
February 1, 2003... Even at this distance the 1930s stand out as a particularly fateful decade. The rival ideas of fascism and communism fought it out in a world rocked by the Great Depression, captured whole countries and nearly destroyed Europe in the process....

Time to stop pretending: the West's views on sexual morality are out of step with the rest of the world's, maintains Joanna Bogle. (Living Issues).
February 1, 2003... It's time we got some honesty and integrity back into the debate about human relationships. All my adult life, I've heard the message that those who oppose sexual activity outside of marriage are narrow-minded, bigoted, even dangerous. ...

How does Enron affect corporate life? Stephen B Young, Global Executive Director of the Caux Round Table, which campaigns for ethical and social responsibility in business, ponders the lessons from the collapse of Enron. (In My View).(Caux Round Table)
February 1, 2003... The Caux Round Table (CRT) states in its Principles for Business (published in 1994) that corporations and businesses are a moral good for society. Their value is more material than spiritual; in Christian and Buddhist vocabulary they are `of...

Learning about democracy in South Africa. (Webbsite).(World Movement for Democracy's Third (biennial) Assembly)(Column)
February 1, 2003... Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th Century French politician and writer, believed it inevitable that democracy would spread worldwide: `The progress of democracy seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient, and the most...

Which hopeless case? (Reflections).(conversation with an alcoholic)(Excerpt)
February 1, 2003... It was a sharp late autumn evening in Kiruna, north Sweden. I had a long day behind me, and a tedious journey ahead. But there was time for a warm meal at the station cafe before the train left. There were two other customers in the cafe: one...

What makes for a good apology. (Guest Column).(Column)
February 1, 2003... One of the most profound interactions of civilized people is the offering and acceptance of apologies. Some apologies have the power to heal and restore damaged relationships, avoid or undo vengeance and grudges, and diminish guilt and shame....