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JINN MAGAZINE

PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE

Issue No. 5.12

06/07/99 - 06/20/99

CONTENTS


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

    Cox Report May Doom America's Technological Preeminence
    By George Koo
    Date: 06-08-99
    The Cox Committee Report, detailing a long and intricate history of Chinese spying on U.S. nuclear weapons programs, could do considerable harm to the country's technological capacities. This is all the more distressing, writes PNS commentator George Koo, because the report itself is basically without substance. 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.

    In the Name of Protecting Diversity -- U.S. Once Again a Whaling Nation
    By Steven Zak
    Date: 06-11-99
    On May 17 the United States officially became a whaling nation, having granted a "cultural exemption" to the international ban on whaling to a tribe that until that day had not hunted whales since 1926. In a land of many subcultures, we ought to respect diversity, but not at the cost of flouting society's most fundamental values and policies. Steven Zak is an attorney and writer. He has written about animals and the law for many publications including The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times.

    Illusion Vies With Reality on Both Sides of Border -- Talk Show Host's Murder Reveals Magic's Seductive Hold
    By Richard Rodriguez
    Date: 06-14-99
    The recent murder of Mexico's TV talk show host and the reactions it provoked reveal the growing disjunction between illusion and reality in Mexico. In that way, Mexico is becoming more and more like the rest of North America where the border between fiction and non-fiction, North and South, is blurring. PNS editor Richard Rodriguez, author of Days of Obligation and essayist for the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, writes for the Los Angeles Times Sunday Opinion section where a longer version of this article also appears.

    A Punishment Worse Than Hell -- Life Sentence Too Harsh for Cops Who Sodomized
    By Joe Loya
    Date: 06-15-99
    When ex-NYPD officers Charles Schwarz and Justin Volpe can receive the same sentence for raping Abner Louima as for killing him, we have lost our perspective. As horrible as the crime was, we still need to think about civilized gradations in our punishments. Even Dante's Inferno had gradations. PNS associate editor Joe Loya is a California writer currently writing a memoir.

    My Father's Army Uniform
    By Andrew Lam
    Date: 06-17-99
    Father's Day evokes powerful memories of a father's warrior passions which his son, a writer, did not inherit. Yet is not writing itself a passionate effort to re-invoke the past -- if only to take leave? PNS editor Andrew Lam is a short-story writer and journalist. A longer version of this article appeared in the San Jose Mercury News.


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

    What the Sinking Euro Says About European Unity
    By Franz Schurmann
    Date: 06-10-99
    Few Europeans take their new currency, the euro, seriously and its exchange rate has dropped every since it was put into circulation on January 1. The reason, explains PNS editor Franz Schurmann, is that unlike the dollar, the yen or the Deutschmark, the state authority printed on the euro commands little or no respect. Schurmann is a professor emeritus of history and sociology at UC-Berkeley and author of numerous books on global politics.

    Kosovo--The New "Virtual Nation" of the 12st Century
    By Walter Truett Anderson
    Date: 06-16-99
    Kosovo may be moving into the 21st century ahead of the rest of the world, becoming a kind of virtual nation, a "not exactly" place -- not exactly a part of Serbia, not exactly independent either. It will have foreign officials enforcing its laws and running its elections, while its citizens use Deutschmarks or dollars for currency. And the whole world will be watching to see how things work out. PNS associate editor 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.


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

    Why Mexican Immigrants Fear and Loathe Their Consulates
    By Jesus Martinez
    Date: 06-07-99
    A small incident in Los Angeles shows why Mexican citizens living in the United States do not look to their consulates for protection in time of trouble. Indeed, consulates have a long history of acting in the interests of the country's ruling party rather than its nationals. PNS commentator Jesus Martinez is an immigrant researcher and activist who was formerly a member of the Political Science Department at Santa Clara University.


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

    Gleanings from the Ethnic Media #25
    By Emil Guillermo
    Date: 06-09-99
    What does the world look like as reported on the pages of California's growing ethnic newspapers? PNS monitors the Chinese-, Spanish-, Vietnamese-, Japanese-, Korean-, Arabic-language news media as well as English-language newcomer and native-born ethnic press published and/or distributed widely in California. "Gleanings from the Ethnic Media" is a regular weekly column compiled by Emil Guillermo, host of "NCM: New California Media TV" (seen on PBS station KCSM-TV60 in the Bay Area); assisted by Pacific News Service and the NCM Network. Just as the alternative news media connected the disaffected populations in the 1960s, so in the 1990s the ethnic media connects the new ethnic majority communities of California -- to one another and to the larger public forum.

    Gleanings from the Ethnic Media #26
    By Emil Guillermo
    Date: 06-18-99
    What does the world look like as reported on the pages of California's growing ethnic newspapers? PNS monitors the Chinese-, Spanish-, Vietnamese-, Japanese-, Korean-, Arabic-language news media as well as English-language newcomer and native-born ethnic press published and/or distributed widely in California. "Gleanings from the Ethnic Media" is a regular weekly column compiled by Emil Guillermo, host of "NCM: New California Media TV" (seen on PBS station KCSM-TV60 in the Bay Area); assisted by Pacific News Service and the NCM Network. Just as the alternative news media connected the disaffected populations in the 1960s, so in the 1990s the ethnic media connects the new ethnic majority communities of California -- to one another and to the larger public forum.


* MOVEMENTS: Strategies For Survival, Identity and Direction by People on the Margins

    Competing With Nature -- The Passion Driving "The X Games"
    By Richard Rodriguez
    Date: 06-18-99
    This summer ESPN and NBC Sports will televise "The X Games" in San Francisco, which is funny because these aren't, strictly speaking, sports events in which athletes compete against one another. Rather these are contests with the air, cold, gravity, where one's opponent is Nature itself. PNS editor Richard Rodriguez is author of Days of Obligation and an essayist for the PBS TV show The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.


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

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