Beautiful Country Research Articles

Aldo Leopold Wilderness: Ensuring a Legacy While Protecting “a Ruggedly Beautiful Country”

Aldo Leopold Wilderness is special place, perhaps sacred as well as inspirational, which protects a ruggedly beautiful country in southwestern New Mexico. This congressionally designated wilderness of 202,016 acres is managed by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), which is also responsible for administering the Gila National Forest within which Aldo Leopold Wilderness is situated. The administrative histories of Aldo Leopold Wilderness and Gila National Forest are interwoven as result of Department of Agriculture regulations and by public law. Administratively, Aldo Leopold Wilderness began as the eastern portion of the Gila Wilderness Area (1924), then became the Black Range Primitive Area (1933), and finally emerged as Aldo Leopold Wilderness (1980). This long, arduous, and occasionally confusing administrative evolution explains the efforts to provide enhanced federal protection for remarkable landscape and honor the legacy of Aldo Leopold, wilderness philosopher and advocate. To understand Aldo Leopold Wilderness requires an understanding of the man for whom the wilderness would serve as legacy. Iowan Rand Aldo Leopold, Yale Forestry School graduate, arrived in Albuquerque, New Mexico Territory, on 2 July 1909 to await his initial assignment as forest assistant in Apache National Forest, Arizona Territory. It was in

Vignettes of a fair skinned Mexican: cultural influences and traditional therapies

Mexico is a beautiful country, with its distinctive flavor of the culture, influences, and social mores; however, many people have had neither the opportunity to visit this country nor the opportunity to learn about its history. Mexico's social structure and philosophies were patterned after the royalty that came to settle there—originally from Spain in the 1400s and subsequently from France in the 1700s. Unlike some of the tropical islands in Latin America, the Spanish were not able to completely annihilate the vastly diverse customs and foods of the resident Indian tribes (such as the Toltecs, Aztecs, and Mayans). Indeed, Indian religions eventually merged with those of European Christianity.

ANTHONY HECHT, PRIVATE FIRST CLASS

This letter is written primarily to inform you that the war is over, and I have come through it unscathed. You had probably guessed as much by this time, but I am sure that my own confirmation can clinch the matter more firmly than anything else. Unscathed, of course, does not mean unaffected. What I have seen and heard here, in conversations with Germans, French, Czechs, and Russians — plus personal observations — combines to make a story well beyond the limits of censorship regulations. You must wait till I can tell you personally of this beautiful country and its demented people.

Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present (review)

Reviewed by: Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present David Leheny (bio) Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present. Edited by Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunian. Duke University Press, Durham, N.C, 2006. 446 pages. $94.95, cloth; $25.95, paper. It seems unlikely that Japan’s 1990s will ever come in for the kind of sentimental, nostalgic treatment that director Yamazaki Takashi recently created [End Page 396] for Tokyo’s 1950s in his highly popular film Always—San-chōme no yūhi (Always: sunsets on Third Street). Japanese commentators seem inclined mostly to lament the decade, while politicians suggest that they have absorbed its lessons, turning it into an instructive hiccup between the miracle growth of the 1950s through the 1980s and the “beautiful country” (to use Abe Shinzō’s term) or the “tremendous Japan” (Asō Tarō’s) of the new millennium. As the authors in Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunian’s new edited collection Japan after Japan indicate, the intellectual trends and social debates of 1990s Japan reflect the difficulty of grappling not only with the Heisei recession itself but also with the meaning of the “long postwar” that had preceded it. Although its thematic connections are occasionally perplexing and its stylistic choices may prevent it from reaching many of the scholars who would benefit from reading it, Japan after Japan is a vital piece of scholarship and an indispensable guide to the social debates emerging from 1990s Japan. Yoda’s two chapters are superb. Her introduction provides an overview of some of the more visible of the myriad social and cultural debates in millennial Japan, exploring the “return to the modern” among neoconservative and left-leaning Japanese intellectuals. Yoda, whose previous book examined modern tropes in the interpretation of Heian literature, deftly traces arguments by the likes of Miyadai Shinji, Asada Akira, Fukuda Kazuya, and Karatani Kōjin, showing that in particular the last three, despite their diverse and deeply informed theoretical projects, often revert to a flawed notion of a “duality between Japan and the world (now cast as global capitalism or the United States as its embodiment)” (p. 49). In her other chapter, “The Rise and Fall of Maternal Society,” Yoda focuses partly on the mythical construction and recessionary deployment of postwar Japan as a kind of miraculous if maternalistic economic machine, generating relatively egalitarian growth, fostering harmonious labor relations, and premised on a stable and fulfilling home life for the nuclear families of the large middle class. This image was exploitable by nationalists after the collapse of the economic bubble, decrying the kind of narcissism and weakness purportedly generated by maternal structures and proposing instead a tougher, more paternalistic role for the state. While she contextualizes Japanese maternalism within transnational patterns of industrial development, Yoda neatly engages and critiques Nihonjinron-esque claims of national distinctiveness, particularly Doi Takeo’s arguments in The Anatomy of Dependence (Kodansha International, 1973) and Kawai Hayao’s reformulation of Nakane Chie’s views of Japan as a vertical society. Both chapters by Yoda astutely conclude with notions of loss: the possible disappearance of the collective drive to create a “master narrative” of national striving or cosmopolitanism (and that a “return to modernity” can presumably resuscitate), or the loss of maternalism in the face of neoliberalism, though without providing much in the way of liberation. [End Page 397] Although the editors do not explicitly say so, many of the chapters seem to be paired in their thematic concerns or source material. Harootunian’s chapter—as convincing and thoughtful as Yoda’s—and J. Victor Koschmann’s excellent essay both discuss Katō Norihiro’s 1995 book Haisengo ron (Since defeat; Kōdansha, 1997). Harootunian notes that Katō’s description of Japanese “self-loathing” in an America-driven break with the prewar “resuscitate[s] a hidden authenticity,” an imagined, original communitarian ethic that is as appealing to right-wing ideologues as it is amenable to exploitation by political figures with fascist ambitions. Providing a first-rate example of history as critical intervention, he discusses Imamura Shōhei’s 1971 documentary Nippon sengoshi: Madamu Onboro no seikatsu (History...

In Search of the Message

I was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1933. Hitler was on the rise in Germany, but this was of little concern to most of the inhabitants of this beautiful country so far from the political, economic, and cultural centers of the world. During my early years, my family lived by the seaside, and my sister and I led an idyllic existence playing on the beach, exploring rock pools teeming with life, and climbing the cliffs to see the nests of ocean birds. My exposure to the unique flora and fauna of New Zealand engendered an early interest in biology. I left all this behind when my family moved to the city, where my education began in earnest. This was when atomic bombs were dropped on Japan to end World War II. I did not recognize the moral issues involved in this act, but it stimulated my intense interest in nuclear physics. I was probably one of few elementary school pupils in New Zealand who read about Madame Curie, Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Ernest Lawrence, Enrico Fermi, Walter Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger, and, of course, New Zealand's own Ernest Rutherford.

Delicious Food in a Beautiful Country: Nationhood and Nationalism in Discourses on Food in Contemporary Japan

AbstractThe article discusses the recent development of banal forms of nationalism in contemporary Japan by examining a multitude of discourses on food produced by the national government as well as civil organisations working for food safety. Despite the intrinsically hybrid nature marked by the historical trajectory of Japanese food culture, these discourses tend to emphasise and propagate the Japanese element and, in so doing, firmly locate Japanese food as the core of ‘Japaneseness’. In this sense, contemporary food discourse in Japan functions as a powerful biopolitical device by propagating the notion of ‘delicious food in a beautiful country’ on which Japanese people are expected to organise their everyday lives.

Mission trip to Panama: A glimpse at global poverty

Panama is a beautiful country with many disparities. It was estimated in 1995 that 40% of the population lived in poverty. Deaths from cardiovascular disease increased by 2% annually from 1990 to 1994, with hypertension being the leading cause of death for persons aged 60 years or more. I had the opportunity to travel briefly in Panama on a mission trip and found elevated blood pressure to be a major symptom of the clinic participants.

Ghana, a liberated country

On the 6 March 2007, Ghana in West Africa celebrated 50 years of independence from British rule. This account by Catherine Bruckner describes where Ghana has come from, where it is now in terms of healthcare and dentistry and looks towards the future of this beautiful, culturally rich and joyful country.

Obstructed labours

Somalia is a beautiful country at the horn of Africa. Ravaged by war and without a functional government for 15 years, it lacks basic health infrastructure and rates as 1 of the world's worst health performers. As field nurses at the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) health centre in Dinsor, we dealt with the usual array of problems: cholera, tuberculosis, lack of nutrition. Yet, it is young, pregnant women that I recall, like the one I'll call “L,” who'd been in obstructed labour for 2–3 days. She presented with cephalopelvic disproportion (the baby's head was too big to pass through her pelvis) and type 3 female genital mutilation, making vaginal delivery difficult and extremely painful. L seemed exhausted. The surgeon recommended a cesarean section. In Somalia, consent for any manner of medical treatment must be given by a male relative. We had difficulty locating L's family and once we did, they refused permission to perform a C-section. Although warned about the risk to both baby and Mom, they took L home. I thought about her that night as we unsuccessfully fought to save another young woman in her first pregnancy, who'd arrived semi-conscious and convulsing, presenting with obstructed labour and eclampsia. The following day, looking frightened, L returned. Her contractions had stopped. By then, she'd been sleepless and in labour 5 days. The baby was dead in uterus. The surgeon decided to perform craniotomy, in hopes crushing the fetus' skull made it deliverable vaginally. The 4.5-kg baby was macerated, the smell awful. L asked me if she had twins and whether the baby was a boy or a girl. Post delivery, L's perineum was examined. It was a complete mess. She had a large tear and a fistula. Her vagina and rectum were one. She also required blood transfusion but again, in Somalia, blood is donated by male relatives, which often proves a challenge. While L was slipping in and out of consciousness, we were chasing donors. Some were finally found and she was transfused. L made it through the night, and survived, but faced ongoing complications of fistula. If unrepaired, her stool would leak into her vagina, making her an outcast in the community, like another 18-year-old who presented to our outpatient clinic with urinary incontinence. A year earlier, she'd had prolonged obstructed labour and a C-section to deliver a stillborn baby. Urine was leaking into her vagina. She had vesicovaginal fistula. Her husband wanted to leave her. When I think of her tears and the number of times consent for c-section was refused and a woman left to suffer chronic complications, or die, I feel hopeless, frustrated and demoralized. More so, when I recall that more urban parts of Somalia are less intransigent. We need a deeper investigation and understanding about why emergency obstetric care is anathema to some in the community. To that end, MSF proposes to engage an anthropologist, and until then, a specialist to repair fistulas. — Joli Shoker MSN, Vancouver, BC Figure. Emergency obstetric care is considered anathema in some African communities. Image by: Photos.ocm

American Airline Flight #941 to San Pedro Sula, Honduras: A First-Timer's Perspective on a Medical Mission

As the plane descended I caught my first glimpse of Honduras. What a beautiful country! The plane landed and taxied slowly to the only terminal. This was the moment I had been waiting for. My first mission trip! I had booked my mission trip with a group called Medical Ministries International (MMI)-USA from Allen, Texas. After a year of planning, saving, and begging family, friends, and co-workers for donations of supplies and money, a 3.5-hour drive from home in the Ozarks to St. Louis, and approximately 10 hours of layovers and flights from St.

Cancer care in Spain

Spain is, for most Europeans, a picture of sunny skies, nightly parties, the famous Mediterranean diet and of course, the siesta. But apart from these images that make it a beautiful country to visit, Spain is an extremely diverse country where contrast is clearly marked and any preconceived ideas must be abandoned so that the visitor can become submerged in the landscapes, people and customs. Only this visitor will realize that Spain is a truly unique country since both Spanish citizens and foreign residents receive complete and total health care and medical attention as established by the General Laws of Health care in our country. In 2005 the population of Spain totalled 44,390,300, 16.7% of whom were older than 65 years and 8.7% immigrants (Instituto Nacional de Estadistica, 2006). Cancer is the second most common cause of death in Spain after cardiovascular disease leading to approximately 89,000 deaths per year (Flores et al, 2000). It is more common in men than women, although the recent increase in smoking by young Spanish females has raised concern that the total number of cancer deaths will increase in the next few decades (Agudo et al, 1995). Considering such alarming statistics, it is understandable that the Spanish health care system aims to offer services related to prevention, early detection and treatment of cancer, and it is the purpose of this article to provide an overview of cancer care in Spain, highlighting several aspects related to cancer care, nurse training and the challenges faced by the health care system on the whole.

"We Have Allmost Every Religion but Our Own": French-Indian Community Initiatives and Social Relations in French Prairie, Oregon, 1834-1837

MELINDA MARIE JETTE "we have allmost Every Religion but our own" French-Indian Community Initiatives and Social Relations in French Prairie, Oregon, 1834-1837 DURING THE EARLYSUMMER MONTHS of1834, theFrench Canadian men who had settled in the area of theWillamette Valley now known as French Prairie, likely in consultation with their Indian wives, discussed the need for religious and educational training for their growing families. By July, theyhad decided to send a letter to thenearest Roman Catholic ecclesiastical seat at Red River in the Canadian Northwest, asking that priests be sent to theirnascent community. Dated July5,1834, the Willamette settlers'first letter to Joseph Provencher, known as the Bishop of Juliopolis, probably did not reach theRed River colony until the fall orwinter of 1834.1 Having received no news from the bishop by the early spring of 1835, the French Canadians sent a second letter, repeating their request for priests and "promising to do all in their power to help them survive." They pledged twentyminots of grain per family to support the priests, "which themembers ofthe company there saying that they can easily deliver," since the Willamette Valley was a "beautiful country where one plants and harvests nearly year-round, and fishing there is in abundance."2 The French Canadians' petition forCatholic priests was not to bear fruit until 1838. In a curious turn of events, however, while the French Canadians were busy drafting their first letter to Bishop Provencher, the first party of Christian missionaries was already on itsway to Oregon. Headed by the Reverend Jason Lee, a small group of American Methodist missionaries joined Nathaniel Wyeth's second expedition to the West and arrived at Fort 222 OHQ vol. 108, no. 2 ? 2007 Oregon Historical Society This map, produced by the Oregon StateHighway Commission in the1960s, isa modern renderingofFrenchPrairie and thesurroundingareas in the1830s.French Prairie was originally thehome of the AhantchuyukKalapuyans but,as this map demonstrates, it became prime area for non-Kalapuyan colonization and re settlement following theFrench Canadians' retirement from theregionalfur trade. Jette, Community Initiativesand Social Relations inFrench Prairie 223 Vancouver in mid-September 1834.3 The Methodists subsequently established theirmission in theWillamette Valley; but, hampered by organizational problems, bouts of poor health, and their own cultural biases, theymade no significant attempts to convert the local Kalapuyans toChristianity during their first three years there.4 Jason Lee and his colleagues were more successful with their French Indian neighbors. Given sectarian tensions between Catholics and Prot estants in both theUnited States and Canada during the early nineteenth century, the Catholic French-Indian families were surprisingly hospitable to theAmerican Protestants during their first few years in the Willamette Valley5 During themid-i830s, theyworked together to solve local problems in French Prairie, reaching across cultural divides ? even in times of ten sion and conflict ? and demonstrating a commitment to ethnic, religious, and community solidarity.6 Because the early French Canadian settlers and theirNative wives were nearly all illiterate and left fewwritten records, their role in early Oregon history has long been obscured.7 A fresh examination of the surviving docu mentary record, including some previously untapped Canadian sources, however, reveals a complex story inwhich the French-Indian families in French Prairie used all themeans at their disposal ? including tieswith Methodist missionaries ? to advance their own community interests.8 FRENCH PRAIRIE SETTLERS initially came intocontact withAmerican missionaries when Jason and Daniel Lee spent September 19 through Septem ber 26,1834, touring the Willamette Valley to reconnoiter a site for their new mission. French Prairie, theoriginal territoryof theAhantchuyuk Kalapuyans, was named after the French-Indian families who settled there. Located in the mid-Willamette Valley, French Prairie isbounded by the Willamette River to the north and west, the Pudding River to the east, and what remains of Lake Labish (lac labiche) to the south. The Methodist missionaries firstvisited the French-Indian families living inAhantchuyuk Kalapuyan territory, staying with Joseph Gervais and Yiamust Clatsop and their children, who lived on a farm about tenmiles southwest of Campement de Sable (Champoeg). Also living at theGervais home were Yiamust's sisterCeliast and her husband Solo mon Smith,who was then a schoolteacher to the local French-Indian children. The families whom themissionaries met at...

On Truthiness, Wiki-Ality, and Driving on a Treadmill

THE DRIVE between Lame Deer and Havre is a long one. Montana is a big state. Lame Deer is the largest city on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation and home to its government. I'd come to the reservation for a couple of meetings that morning and had to be in Havre, more than 400 miles north, later the same day. What's more, I'd just flown from Kentucky to Montana the day before and was suffering a serious case of jet lag. Pulling away from Chief Dull Knife College, I knew it was going to be a long, hard day. trick would be to keep my mind busy, I thought. At first, that was easy. drive west from Lame Deer toward the Little Big Horn Battlefield and the Crow Reservation is a beautiful one. As I drove through the green rolling hills, I imagined Custer and his men riding foolishly into the history books, Sitting Bull and his men shaking their heads in disbelief at the great military genius, and the Crow scouts begging Custer to rethink his plan of action. Yet onward he went, too few men in an ill-advised action against an underestimated enemy. It felt eerily familiar. After about 45 miles, a sign welcomed me to the Crow Reservation. Soon after, I drove past the entrance to the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Park. Stopping to fill my car with gas before I began the hard drive north, I noted that people were still winding down from Crow Fair, which had ended the day before. This annual event brings more than 80,000 folks to the Crow Agency for five days of celebration, camping in tipis, parades, rodeo, and powwow. With a super-gigantic black coffee and a 16-ounce can of Wired nestled snugly into the cup holder at my side and a fresh bottle of NoDoz on the dashboard, I headed north. Interrupted only briefly by Billings and a left turn in Round Up, the road seldom seems to veer more than a couple of feet to the right or left. While it is beautiful country, you've pretty much seen all there is to see within the first dozen miles north of the Billings city limits. road just goes on and on, with the only break in the monotony in the form of an occasional car speeding past. There is just so much my mind can do to create interesting thoughts about wheat fields and cows, and the coffee, Wired, and NoDoz weren't doing the trick. I decided to give the radio a try. Out there in the middle of nowhere, it picked up only one station, and, just my luck, it couldn't be NPR, an oldies station, rap, country, or even a greatest-hits-of-polka station. No. It was talk radio. And not just any talk radio. It was Rush Limbaugh. Soon Rush began to explain that minimum-wage workers are just uninspired and lazy--or they are high school students trying to earn a little spending money. Hey, even in the throes of boredom, I have standards, I thought, as I turned the radio off. As I drove on, I began to wonder whether the car was really moving. speedometer read 75 mph. I was pretty sure the wheels were turning, and I could see that the gas gauge was slowly moving downward, so I seemed to be using fuel. But in front of me, behind me, and as far as I could see out both side windows, nothing changed--just endless golden fields of wheat. Maybe it was a hallucination from an overdose of caffeine, but I began to wonder if I was driving on a treadmill. Although I was distracted by that thought for a few minutes, I soon decided to relax my high radio-listening standards and tuned back in. Soon Rush turned the microphone over to Sean Hannity, who announced that his special guest for the day would be Ann Coulter. A few days earlier I'd heard Coulter explain that Bill Clinton was gay--a fact he certainly went to great lengths to hide. She had also posited that the Jersey Girls (widows of the 9/11 attack) would probably have ended up divorced if their husbands had lived. She had no facts to support her statements, of course, but in her world, none are needed. Holy yikes, my mind screamed as the theme song from The Twilight Zone played in my head. …

Some effects of Indian English on the language as it is used in Oman

Distinctive developments in an Arab sultanate. Relatively few people around the world react with instant recognition when the Sultanate of Oman is mentioned. This may however be changing as international news media focus ever more strongly on events in the Arab world and on the strategic significance of the Persian Gulf. There are many who misunderstand the spoken word ‘Oman’ as ‘Amman’ and therefore think erroneously of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Oman, however, is a beautiful and hospitable country possessing white sand beaches, rugged mountain ranges, breathtaking cave systems, a long and somewhat surprising history, and an English of its own.

COMING OUT OF THE DARKNESS OF THE PAST

Technology is helping to reduce the education gap between developed countries and those that are still developing. The following article gives one example of an innovative teacher training project where a western university, in Rome, Italy, is selflessly showing their African counterparts, in rural Rwanda, how to become fully autonomous in training their future generations. Schrum and Hong (2002) state that “learners throughout the world are demanding educational opportunities in an ‘anytime and anywhere’ format and institutions are responding by devoting substantial resources to develop online distance learning.” This assertion is fast becoming the reality in every corner of the globe where the teaching profession is using technology to bring education to people and places that might never have imagined receiving its benefits little more than a decade ago. Such examples include teachers working with blind children in Chile on “a project called Hyperstories which exposes blind children to a learning methodology that uses 3D sound interactive software to help them construct cognitive structures that represents their surrounding space” and “aims to move these disadvantaged blind children from darkness to what they call ‘aural’ vision” (Gourley, 2004). This metaphor of technology bringing people from darkness into the light can be applied to many other contexts where professionals in the field of education are giving rather than taking from the developing world and offering hope that we can indeed create a world of shared resources and international unity, rather than division, in the future. The benefits of technology are now helping to rebuild Rwanda, the beautiful ‘Land of a Thousand Hills’ and ‘Gorilla’s In The Mist’. Unfortunately, just over a decade ago, this densely populated, tropical nation became synonymous with less beautiful things such as ethnic cleansing, genocide and refugee crises. The war was bloody and divisive and further hindered an already impoverished nation’s progress. Yet, slowly this beautiful country, in the highlands of east Africa, is successfully emerging from centuries of colonial oppression and internecine fighting to take its first steps towards becoming part of the 24/7 digital age of education.

Three IP blogs

Lawrence Lessig is the author of such revered titles as Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace and The Future of Ideas. As may be expected, his eponymous blog site follows themes similar to those covered in those titles. So if you want to know what is happening in so-called cyberspace (I have never liked that expression), this is your blog. On the agenda are the creative commons, open source software, fair use, culture, code, and more code. It is an interesting copyright-centric collection which, perhaps unsurprisingly given the subject matter, touches more upon policy than black-letter or case law; what type of Internet do we want? Lessig's celebrity has ensured postings from the likes of Richard Posner and Cass Sunstein, together with a steady flow of comments. Postings are a little irregular (ie not daily) but Lessig provides enough sentient comments to breathe life into this blog (eg ‘Norway is an extraordinarily beautiful country, filled with brilliantly tri-lingual and warm people’, and, in particular, see Lessig's account of the Supreme Court ruling in Eldred v Ashcroft, in which he was personally involved). The blog is cleanly laid out, easily navigable, and well illustrated. The content is mostly US-sourced. If you are looking for a ‘daily update’ on US intellectual property law this is not your blog. However, users who are interested in copyright and the internet should add this to their list of favourites.

Uniting to defeat terrorism

New challenges have changed and also sharpened the focus of East–West Dialogue. During the Cold War, such a dialogue would have focused on nuclear arms control. The peril of atomic warfare held the world’s attention. However, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 changed the strategic picture. Without a clear, common threat, pundits predicted the end of history and the world reaping dividends of peace. But the events of September 11 surfaced an insidious, growing threat. The attacks on the US hastened a new post-Cold War battle against global radical Islamic terrorism. In essence, this terrorism is a war waged by fanatical Islamists against civilisation itself. Their goal is to replace secular or moderate Muslim states with a caliphate based on their narrow, distorted interpretation of Islam and an imaginary ideal vision of seventh Century Arabia. Their enemies are both Muslims and non-Muslims—Muslims who do not agree with their goal and non-Muslims whose way of life they reject. This transnational threat confronts all civilised nations today. The “Alliance of Civilisations” is therefore a timely initiative. I commend the Dialogue’s broad themes. However, for the East–West Dialogue to have real impact, we must be clear what exactly we are discussing. Our objective for meeting cannot just be to promote greater cultural awareness between East and West. While East and West may have different political, cultural and social values, they are not enemies. Putting aside diplomatic niceties, I believe that to have real meaning, the Dialogue must focus on the threat of transnational terrorism to human civilisation, including to Islam. The “Alliance of Civilisations”must unite to defeat this global scourge, whose latest victims were innocent Jordanians. I feel deeply for the Jordanians because I have visited their beautiful country twice and I know King Abdullah II well. However, my own perspective of terrorism is shaped primarily by our experience in Southeast Asia. Post 9/11, my region has emerged as a key 1

Invisible Country

Invisible Country

Baby Lerato deserved better

Disgusted to the bone. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I had just returned to our beautiful country after five weeks abroad; maybe it was because of the way news reader Riaan Cruywagen read the news on SABC2; maybe it had to do with the way we practise our journalism in South Africa.

A Road-Trip Documentary Without a Map

The author reviews Story of a Beautiful Country, a documentary of a road-trip across South Africa with the object of meeting “ordinary” South Africans and hearing about their feelings and impressions of their “new” country.