JINN - THE GENIE OF THE CULTURE
Jinn Home Page | About Jinn | Search | Net-Links
Voices | Heresies | Vectors | Pacific Pulse | The Americas | California | Movements | Civil Conflicts | YO!

JINN MAGAZINE

PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE

Issue No. 4.18

08/31/98 - 09/13/98

CONTENTS


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

    Tupac Still More Alive Than Many Who Can Still Draw Breath
    By Ri'Chard Magee
    Date: 09-10-98
    For many young people the words and music of Tupac Shakur -- who died two years ago at age 25 -- still have a resonance that has never been equaled. Near the anniversary of his death, PNS commentator Ri'Chard Magee explains the lasting power of this artist. Ri'Chard Magee is on the staff of YO! (Youth Outlook), a newspaper by and about young people produced by Pacific News Service.


* HERESIES: Thinking the Unthinkable About the Future

    Why Russia Went Wrong and China Went Right -- Lessons for the United States
    By George Koo
    Date: 09-09-98
    Policy makers in the United States have had a tendency to see the world's two communist giants as peas out of the same pod. But the current situation in Russia, which followed U.S. advice, and China which did not, suggests both the diagnosis and prescription should be reconsidered. PNS commentator George Koo is an independent business consultant, former Chairman of Silicon Valley based Asian American Manufacturers Association, a Human Relations Commissioner of Mountain View, Ca. and a member of Committee of 100, a national organization of prominent Chinese Americans.


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

    In a James Bond Era, You Can't Tell If You're at War or Not
    By Walter Truett Anderson
    Date: 08-31-98
    If the United States fires millions of dollars worth of missiles against facilities allegedly controlled by one man, it seems reasonable to ask whether the era of the nation-state is now over and a new James Bond-type era has begun. Welcome to a world in which non-state actors assume the war-making capabilities only governments once held. PNS commentator Walter Truett 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.

    How Lewinsky Affair Emboldened a President -- Who Says Private Actions Don't Have Public Consequences?
    By Franz Schurmann
    Date: 09-11-98
    In an odd twist of conventional wisdom, the recklessness of President Clinton's private behavior with Monica Lewinsky -- and his ability to get away with it -- may have emboldened him to behave more presidentially on the global stage, just at the time when the world situation called for daring. The tragi-comedy is that his new boldness may have also galvanized his enemies into using those acts to cripple his presidency, just when it is most needed. PNS Associate Editor Franz Schurmann is the author of "The Foreign Politics of Richard Nixon" (Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley) in which he examined the links between Nixon's "Grand Design" and the Watergate Affair that led to his resignation.


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


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

    New Campus Debate -- What If American Studies and Ethnic Studies Were One in the Same?
    By Joan Walsh
    Date: 09-02-98
    Thirty years after helping to found the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California-Berkeley, department chair Ling-chi Wang is proposing a bold initiative to transform itself into an American Studies department. The move, he argues, would help acknowledge race and ethnicity as central to American identity -- and it may also prevent the Ethnic Studies department from becoming victim of its own success. PNS associate editor Joan Walsh writes on issues of race and poverty.


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

    How the "War of the Future" Looks to the Third World Media
    Compiled by Franz Schurmann, Andrea Quong and Alfonso Serrano
    Date: 09-03-98
    Less than a decade after the end of the Cold War against global communism, the United States has again declared itself at war on a global front -- this time against terrorism. Dubbed the "war of the future," this new kind of battle raises a host of questions. Where and how will this war be fought? Who are the enemies and why do they hate the U.S.? Finally, how do people in other parts of the world -- especially those living in countries suspected of sympathizing with or even supporting terrorists -- view this kind of war? This is the first in a series of periodic Digests focused on how Third World media and ethnic media in the U.S. are reporting covering the U.S. War on Terrorism in the wake of the August 20 missile strikes.

    Snapshots from a Mercilessly Simple War
    By Terence Sheridan
    Date: 09-04-98
    The conflict between Serbian government forces and Albanians in the province of Kosovo in Yugoslavia is an almost-war, for the moment. The ground is quiet enough to allow a reporter to provide sketches of a world waiting for trouble. PNS correspondent Terence Sheridan, a former reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, has been living and writing in the former Yugoslavia for the last eight years.


* YOUTH OUTLOOK: The World Through Young People's Eyes

    A Conversation You Would Never Hear -- Does Race Matter Online?
    By Open Voice
    Date: 09-01-98
    How do young Web surfers feel about racial identity when they're chatting with each other online? PNS asked Open Voice, a nonprofit youth organization based in East Palo Alto, Calif. which runs the largest teen-produced site on the Internet, to coordinate a chat-room on this question. Mike Burnside, 16, Ron Chapman, 16, Benjamin Carson 15, and Will Schultz, 15 are staff members of Open Voice and juniors in high school. This is the first in an ongoing online conversation on young people and technology produced for YO!, a monthly newspaper by and about youth published by PNS.

Pacific News Service, 660 Market Street, Room 210, San Francisco, CA 94104, tel: (415) 438-4755.
Jinn Magazine: <http://www.pacificnews.org/jinn/>
Email: <pacificnews@pacificnews.org>

Copyright © 1998 Pacific News Service. All Rights Reserved.
Please do not reprint our stories without our permission.
Our articles are available for reprint. For rates and information, call (415) 438-4755 or send e-mail to <pacificnews@pacificnews.org>