For A Change articles from June 1999

For A Change archives from June 1999

After war, what?
June 1, 1999... Analysing the war in the Balkans, as well as the student massacre in Columbine High School and racist attacks in Britain, William Rees-Mogg wrote in The Times of London recently about `the racism that threatens the world's future'. He fears...

Ethics of food production: from the pasture to the plate: current farming controversies give food for thought to Joanna Grigg, a New Zealand hill-country farmer.
June 1, 1999... My favourite meal is hazelnut and lemon crusted lamb, served with kumera and fresh beans. Delicious. Food is not just our sustenance and fuel, it also touches on our identity. How we eat, when we eat, whom we eat with and what we eat is an...

View from an organic farm.
June 1, 1999... Alan Brockman is a man with a vision. His hope for the 21st century is no less than a revolution in world farming, which will see organic farming coming into its own. Alan and Ulrike Brockman and their two sons run beef, cereals and...

All change at the town hall.
June 1, 1999... When apartheid ended in South Africa, thousands of racially segregated communities, with separate local governments, merged. In many towns, the transition has been painful, with newly elected black councillors pressing for the dismissal of...

Economic volcano in Veneto.
June 1, 1999... The volcanoes in the Italian region of Veneto have been dormant for 50 million years. But a new volcano has just erupted: the economy. Veneto contains most of the mainland dominions of the mediaeval Republic of Venice. After World War II it...

Now to Albania.
June 1, 1999... Tony Budell is not one to ignore a need. He has already led 88 aid convoys into troublespots in the former Soviet bloc. So when he heard of the exodus of Kosovar Albanians he began organizing a convoy of 35 vehicles to help them. Plans...

Broadcaster with vision: Vision TV, Canada, is a network with a difference - religious but multifaith, incisive but non-confrontational.
June 1, 1999... Vision TV, Canada, is a network with a difference--religious but multifaith, incisive but non-confrontational. Choice Okoro meets its Vice-President, Rita Deverell. Anyone who doubts that faith has a place in the profit-driven world of...

Dutch police reach out to ethnic minorities: former Utrecht city councillor Aad Burger discovers how the Dutch police are responding to their country's increasing ethnic diversity.
June 1, 1999... Police forces across Europe have had to rethink their priorities and methods in the light of their countries increasing racial diversity. One of those who has played a leading part in pioneering new approaches is Utrecht Police Commissioner...

Stepping into the unknown: Paul Williams tells the story of an accountant who decided to put God before his pay cheques.
June 1, 1999... Nigel Morshead was 35 and a rising executive with the Commonwealth Development Finance Company in London when he received an invitation that changed the course of his life. He was enjoying his work as a chartered accountant. It had included...

Centre of hope for Poland and Germany ... a Silesian estate which once focused the hopes of the German resistance to Hitler - and is now playing a part in healing Europe's divisions.
June 1, 1999... Silesia, which is now the western part of Poland but was once part of Germany, has long been a bone of contention between Germans and Poles. Only now, more than 50 years after World War II and ten years after the fall of Communism, does the...

`I knew you'd come one day': Jan Pieklo ... know(s) the cost of losing a home through the war.
June 1, 1999... I met Suzanne at a conference on journalism in Sweden. Suzanne is German and lives in Berlin; I am Polish and live in Krakow. We began to talk. I told her about my German ancestors, who left Alsace in the 19th century and settled in eastern...

Reconciliation 95: can there be healing after ethnic cleansing?
June 1, 1999... Can there be healing after ethnic cleansing? Jiri Jiny describes how a citizens' movement began the process of reconciliation between his country, the Czech Republic, and Germany. One of the worst examples of ethnic cleansing in 20th...

Last best word of the English language: American author Philip Yancey teaches Susan Corcoran a thing or two about grace.
June 1, 1999... `What would grace look like in this situation?' That is a question I often ask myself since reading Philip Yancey's book What's so amazing about grace?*. Grace is not easy to define but we usually recognize it when we see it. Yancey...

Old and new wars: organized violence in a global era.
June 1, 1999... Old and new wars: organized violence in a global era by Mary Kaldor Blackwell Publishers, 1999, [pounds sterling] 12.99 The theme of Mary Kaldor's perceptive and innovative book is the change in the nature of wars since the end of the Cold...

Irish examine the media.
June 1, 1999... Nineteen-year-old Ellen Doherty from Derry/Londonderry in Northern Ireland was never going to choose a safe career path--not for her the security of a nine-to-five lifestyle. Rather, she has chosen the adrenaline rush of journalism. ...

Welsh prepare for devolution.
June 1, 1999... On 1 July the British Government will hand over decision-making power on a range of subjects to the Welsh National Assembly in Cardiff. It is part of its devolution programme for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland--the biggest constitutional...

Oregon marks a new chapter.
June 1, 1999... Oregon, at least western Oregon, is green--blessed by nature with abundant rain. Oregon is also predominantly white, 90.3 per cent. This is not so natural. In 1849 legislation was passed by the Territorial Assembly excluding African Americans...

Interlude.
June 1, 1999... Here, deep in the South African veldt, the silence is full of birds' calls, and the chattering and bickering of monkeys and baboons. No manmade sound interupts the stillness of the morning. As I sit outside, watching the sun hitting the...

Advertising a flare-up on the farm.
June 1, 1999... In 1912 my paternal grandfather took a gamble. He, his wife and their five children left Bury St Edmonds in England and sailed for the wider horizons of Edmonton, Alberta. While waiting in Liverpool to board the old Lake Manitoba they heard the...