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JINN MAGAZINE

PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE

Issue No. 3.22

10/20/97 - 11/02/97

CONTENTS


* VOICES: First-Person Essays Linking the Private to the Public

    The Year of the Apology-- But Who Gets to Say "I'm Sorry"?
    By Michael Datcher
    Date: 10-30-97
    The air seems suddenly filled with regrets, as public figures apologize for past wrongs, both recent and ancient. The trend may be healthy, but the fact that we are willing to accept apologies from some wrongdoers and not others, notes PNS commentator Michael Datcher, carries a message more important than "I'm sorry." Datcher is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and co-editor of Tough Love: The Life and Death of Tupac Shakur."


* VECTORS: A Regular Column on the Ideas and Directions Behind Today's News

    Chinese President Comes to Call as an Equal in the Superpower Sweepstakes
    By Franz Schurmann
    Date: 10-27-97
    The U.S. visit of Jiang Zemin, China's president, is widely hailed as significant in terms of our relations with the largest country in the world. For Jiang, as expressed in a statement released just before his departure, this is an opportunity to forge a superpower alliance that can cooperate to the great advantage of both sides. Franz Schurmann is professor emeritus of history and sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was former head of the Center for Chinese Studies, the author of The Organization and Ideology of Communist China and co-editor of The China Reader, among other books.

    Who's Writing the Global Constitution? Everyone!
    By Walter Truett Anderson
    Date: 10-29-97
    The push toward global government seems to be gathered momentum on a number of fronts and is being advanced through trade organizations, the UN, and dozens of other avenues. Critics have also appeared from every side, charging everything from a business conspiracy to a liberal plot, and according to PNS commentator Walter Truett Anderson they may all be right -- but the process of world government is well underway. Anderson, author of "Evolution Isn't What It Used To Be" (W.H. Freeman), is a political scientist who writes widely on technology and global governance.


* PACIFIC PULSE: The Pacific Century and Its Impact on the Americas

    Letter from Yunnan-- Isolation at the Center of the World
    By Andrea Quong
    Date: 10-23-97
    China is home to the world's most diverse collection of plants and flowers -- some 30,000 species, many of them unique or seen only in fossil form elsewhere in the world. A project is now underway to catalog the species, many of them endangered, in the northern mountains of Yunnan Province in southwestern China near Burma. PNS associate Andrea Quong, who has spent two months with that expedition, writes from the field.


* THE AMERICAS: The Growing Enmeshment of the U.S. and Latin Worlds

    Megaprojects-- Mexico's North May Be New Battleground for Indigenous Struggle
    By Kent Paterson
    Date: 10-21-97
    All Mexico was shaken by the evidence of indigenous unrest revealed in the "Zapatista" uprising in Chiapas in 1994. Now in the state of Chihuahua -- about as far from Chiapas as you can go without leaving Mexico -- there are signs of a political stirring which, while far from an uprising, may produce interesting sparks when they come into contact with a massive development scheme backed by the Mexican government. PNS correspondent Kent Paterson is a radio producer at KUNM in Albuquerque, New Mexico and writes about Mexican politics and culture.


* CALIFORNIA COLLAGE: California as Trendsetter for the Country and the World

    Teacher, Can You Spare a Book?
    By Adrian Dedomenico
    Date: 10-22-97
    In many urban public high schools in this country, the real textbook scandal is that there aren't enough books to go around. In one San Francisco Bay Area high school students who have to rely on handouts call their teacher a ditto pusher. Many complain the textbook shortage is chronic and see it as a sign the system doesn't really care whether they get educated or not. Adrian DeDomenico is a reporter for YO! Youth Outlook, a monthly newspaper by and about Bay Area youth published by Pacific News Service.

    Gleanings from the New California Media
    Edited by Sandy Close and Franz Schurmann
    Date: 10-28-97
    What would the world look like if at least part of your daily diet of news came from the ethnic media -- which now has more readers than the mainstream press in some California metropolitan regions? Every other week PNS, in collaboration with members of the New California Media network of ethnic media organizations, digests news and commentary from this rapidly growing but largely invisible segment of the news media. Accompanying the digest is a profile of a key journalist or editor within the ethnic media.

    In Their Own Words-- Viet Magazine's Nam Nguyen
    By Nam Nguyen, as Told to Andrew Lam
    Date: 01-02-99
    Nam Nguyen, 42, is editor-in-chief of Viet Magazine, an international bilingual publication based in San Jose, California. Often referred to in the community as the "Vietnamese Newsweek" the magazine has a readership of 30,000 and covers everything from high-tech industry to affirmative action to politics in Vietnam. Nguyen came to the United States seven years ago and has been active in the Vietnamese American community ever since. He discussed the life of that community with PNS editor Andrew Lam.

    In Their Own Words-- Viet Magazine's Nam Nguyen
    By Nam Nguyen
    Date: 01-02-99
    Nam Nguyen, 42, is editor-in-chief of Viet Magazine, an international bilingual publication based in San Jose, California. Often referred to in the community as the "Vietnamese Newsweek" the magazine has a readership of 30,000 and covers everything from high-tech industry to affirmative action to politics in Vietnam. Nguyen came to the United States seven years ago and has been active in the Vietnamese American community ever since. He discussed the life of that community with PNS editor Andrew Lam.


* CIVIL CONFLICTS: Interpretive Reports on Ethnic, Religious, and Inter-National Conflicts Worldwide

    Rankism on Trial-- The "N" Word of the 90's is "Nobody"
    By Robert Works Fuller
    Date: 10-24-97
    Attorneys defending Sgt. Major McKinney -- the US Army's highest ranking enlisted man -- contend their client was charged only because he is not a full-fledged officer. This prompts PNS commentator Robert Fuller to note that, whatever the outcome of McKinney's trial, "rankism" is so pervasive in our society that "nobody" may become the "n" word of our time. Robert Fuller, past president of Oberlin College and currently Chairman of the Board of Internews, is working on a book about "somebodies" and "nobodies" and the rankism that divides them.

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