Month: June 2009

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

The burden of mental illness in China has been seriously underestimated, the authors of a new study say. More than 17 percent of Chinese adults have a mental disorder, the study concluded — far more than the 1 to 9 percent reported in studies done between 1982 and 2004.

To do the study, published in the journal Lancet last week, researchers at Columbia University and major psychiatric hospitals in Beijing, Shandong, Zhejiang, Qinghai and Gansu screened 63,000 adults with questionnaires, and psychiatrists interviewed more than 16,000 of them, often in local dialects. The research was financed by the World Health Organization, the Shandong provincial health department and the China Medical Board of New York, an independent medical foundation begun in 1914 by the Rockefeller Foundation, which supports medical education and research across Asia.

The most disturbing aspect of their research, the authors said, was that, among those who had a diagnosable mental illness, 24 percent said they were moderately or severely disabled by it. But only 8 percent had ever sought professional help, and only 5 percent had ever seen a mental health professional.

People from rural areas were more likely to be depressed and have alcohol problems than urbanites, the study found. Mood and anxiety disorders were more common in people over 40 and among women, while alcohol abuse was much more common among men.

New York Times for more

On 28 February 2002, a mob tore down Wali’s little tomb in Ahmedabad and dug up his grave. Overnight, the road was tarred and now no sign remains. Wali’s grave had stood outside the gate of the police commissioner’s office.

Aakar Patel

Narendra Modi should fire his home minister. Ghalib acknowledged Mir Taqi Mir with this couplet: Rikhta kay tumhi ustad nahin ho, Ghalib Kehtay hain aglay zamanay may koi Mir bhi tha.

Rikhta is another name for Urdu. The couplet reads: Don’t think yourself Urdu’s only master, O Ghalib: I hear there once was another, called Mir.

Verse case: Under Modi, Wali’s tomb was destroyed. Adnan Abidi / Reuters

Ghalib died in 1869 (the year Mahatma Gandhi was born) and many see Mir, who died in 1810, as the pioneer of Urdu poetry. But did Mir acknowledge anyone before him? He did in this couplet:

Khugar nahin kuchch yoon hi hum Rikhta-goi kay/ Mashooq jo apna tha, bashindah-e-Daccan tha.

It reads: It’s not casually that I’ve been possessed by Urdu: He who was my love was that native of the Deccan. The man Mir is referring to is Wali Muhammad Wali, who died in 1707, the first poet of Urdu. Wali is called Wali Daccani because he was born in Aurangabad, but also Wali Gujarati because that is where he lived and was buried. Did Wali acknowledge an inspiration? Yes, but not a person. I translated two of his poems. One was a masnavi, Ta’arif-e-Shehr Sourat (In Praise of Surat City), the other, excerpted below, was a ghazal, Dar Firaaq-e-Gujarat (On Separation from Gujarat):

Parting from Gujarat leaves thorns in my chest
My heart—on fire!—pounds impatiently in my breast
What cure can heal the wound of living apart?
The scimitar of exile has cut deep into my heart
My feet were bound, and in sorrow
Sabrang for more

A reminder of the still unresolved and evolving predicament of Nepal’s Bhutanese refugees

A. ANGELO D’SILVA

BBC doc The Forgotten Refugees, is an admirably succinct summary of the Bhutanese refugee situation in Nepal and captures the complex human calculations of the resettlement solution.

BBC correspondent and director Amanda Burrell begins by following Chandra, a refugee and midwife, whose narrative describing camp life intersects nicely with a sequence of the impressively efficient food operations, representative of the humanitarian aid work honed over the 20 years of the camps’ existence. More importantly, it allows us to appreciate the trauma of Chandra’s and her elderly parents’ expulsion from Bhutan and their current plight, illustrative of the experience of many of her peers.

For the middle portion of the film Burrell shifts to Bhutan, where the crew is allowed a brief day visit to that gorgeous and tightly restricted country. It is here that she garners some of the most intriguing interviews, interspersed as it is with weak Lonely Planet-esque cultural relativisms. There are chilling comments by Michael Rutland, an apologist for the Bhutanese position, that gives a frightening double-edge to the response to human rights activists protesting the citizenships act of 1988: “Because harmony was so much part of the way of life? it was very difficult to know how to deal with this sudden promotion of disharmony? I think measures were taken to try to promote harmony.”

Nepali Times for more

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

A hummingbird that makes death-defying dives has been found to be the fastest thing on two wings – for its size. Scientists say that it experiences G-forces that would make a trained fighter pilot faint from the stress

GETTY IMAGES
A hummingbird that makes death-defying dives has been found to be the fastest thing on two wings – for its size. Scientists say that it experiences G-forces that would make a trained fighter pilot faint from the stress.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Actually it’s a bird that flies faster than a plane, relatively at least.

The dramatic courtship dive of a small hummingbird has been found to be the quickest aerial manoeuvre in the natural world for an animal compared to its size. It even outpaces the movements of a jet fighter and the Space Shuttle on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

Anna’s hummingbird lives in the American south-west and the courtship display of the male is renowned for its death-defying dive that ends abruptly with a dramatic upturn with outstretched wings and tail feathers that stop the bird from crashing into the ground.

The Independent for more

It’s a Thursday afternoon at the Brunel shopping centre in Swindon. Flanked by a muffin stand and an injection-moulded child’s ride sits the Guardian Jewellery Company. Little more than a desk and a couple of stand-up banners, it forms an outpost for one of the recession’s few success stories.

Since forming a year ago, the firm has grown from two staff to 75, and is hiring at the rate of five a week. It sets up stalls in shopping centres of medium-sized towns – Basingstoke, High Wycombe, Worcester – and people come to sell their gold jewellery for cash. Guardian then melts the gold down and sells it on. There are 30 locations now, by the end of the summer that figure will be 80, and the firm has started advertising on TV. “We’re on an exponential curve,” says the sales director, Lee Bushell.

For investors, gold is a classic safe port in the storm of recession – John Paulson, for instance, the legendary hedge funder who won big after betting against sub-prime mortgages, recently bought a stake in a South African gold mine. Philip Klapwijk, chairman of the metals consultancy GFMS, believes the price could hit a record $1,100 an ounce this year, despite a recent dip in value. So, ordinary people can make a lot of cash, quickly and easily. “Beat the credit crunch!” suggest Guardian’s banners. A photo shows a hand holding a fan of £20 notes.
New Statesman for more

By Danielle Kurtzleben

WASHINGTON, Jun 16 (IPS) – On Jun. 19, 2008, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1820, expressly addressing the problems of sexual violence in conflict situations. One year later, three experts in the field gathered to speak at the United States Institute of Peace to evaluate the implementation of 1820 and consider how it might better prevent this widespread crime.

The resolution marked a major step forward for the U.N. in addressing the problems of sexual violence in conflict zones. Anne-Marie Goetz, a chief advisor at the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), presents it as a groundbreaking resolution, linking sexual violence to broader peace and security concerns.

“For the very first time, the U.N. Security Council recognises that systematic sexual violence can be a tactic of warfare. And because it’s a tactic of warfare, it requires a security and policy response,” said Goetz, speaking at the USIP on Thursday.

Goetz was joined by Neil Boothby, a professor of clinical population and family health at Columbia University, and Dara Kay Cohen, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of political science at Stanford University, to mark the one-year anniversary of Resolution 1820.

The resolution acknowledges that sexual violence is often widespread in conflict zones, and that this violence is not just a social problem. Rather, the resolution says that sexual violence “can significantly exacerbate situations of armed conflict and may impede the restoration of international peace and security.”

Boothby, Goetz and Cohen addressed the unique challenges of studying and ameliorating the sexual and gender-based violence situations in conflict zones. They also presented new findings about data-collection and perpetrators’ motives that promise to help reverse the trend of sexual violence within conflict zones.

All three experts emphasised the extent to which sexual violence in conflict zones is misunderstood. The prevalence of the problem is particularly difficult to estimate.

Knowing the frequency of sexual violence in any conflict zone is difficult because being the victim of sexual violence often carries with it a heavy stigma. Thus, it is often not reported to officials, U.N. observers, or researchers.

Furthermore, rape in conflict zones is not always stranger rape; it may be performed by a partner or spouse. Domestic sexual violence is not often reported because the victims fear retribution from their partners.

IPS for more

“Kenya has a long history of serious human rights violations but it now has an opportunity to turn the page,” said Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, concluding the high-level mission to Kenya.

“Successive Kenyan governments have been good at establishing Commissions and Taskforces and poor at implementing their recommendations. This government must not repeat that pattern.”

Amnesty International welcomed the high level access and the frank and open dialogue with the Kenyan authorities, but found deep differences within the Government, both on the perception of the human rights situation in Kenya and on the extent and nature of reform needed.

“Time is running out and the government must act urgently to build consensus on fundamental human rights issues,” said Khan.

Amnesty International for more

Pervez Hoodbhoy

BOOK REVIEWED- Kim Plofker’s Mathematics In India

F. SOLTAN/SYGMA/CORBIS
Buddha is said to have wooed his future wife by reeling off a huge number series.

In a world divided by culture, politics, religion and race, it is a relief to know one thing that stands above them — mathematics. The diversity among today’s mathematicians shows that it scarcely matters who invents concepts or proves theorems; cold logic is immune to prejudice, whim and historical accident. And yet, throughout history, different families of humans have distilled the essence of the cosmos to capture the magic of numbers in many ways.

Mathematics in India shows just how different one of these ways was, and how culture and mathematical development are intimately connected. This carefully researched chronicle of the principal contributions made by a great civilization covers the earliest days of Indian history through to the beginning of the modern period. Regrettably, it stops short of the legendary mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (born 1887), whose name is still seen in today’s research papers.

Kim Plofker’s book fulfils an important need in a world where mathematical historiography has been shaped by the dominance of the Greco-Christian view and the Enlightenment period. Too little has been written on the mathematical contributions of other cultures. One reason for the neglect of Indian mathematics was Eurocentrism — British colonial historians paid it little attention, assuming that Indians had been too preoccupied with spiritual matters to make significant contributions to the exact sciences. Another reason is that many ancient Indian mathematical texts have long been extinct; often, the only indication that they existed comes from scholars who refer to the work of their predecessors. As Plofker wryly notes, two historians of Indian maths recently published articles in the same edited volume, wherein the estimates of their subject’s origins differed by about 2,000 years.

Nature for more

Her website is http://pushdance.org/

By Kari Lydersen

UNESCO lists almost 2,500 languages worldwide as “endangered,” meaning they are at risk of falling out of use and even disappearing as fluent native speakers die and younger generations fail to take up the language. A bulk of endangered languages are the tongues of indigenous groups who have been colonized or encroached upon by a dominant culture and forced or coerced to give up their native language. In the past, students were beaten for speaking their language in strict boarding schools in the United States and Australia. More recently in parts of the U.S. and countless other regions worldwide, people feel cultural and economic pressure to switch to the dominant language, seeing it as a means of opportunity and feeling a sense of shame in their indigenous identity.

But recent years have also seen a resurgence in the interest to preserve indigenous languages among academics, nongovernmental organizations and indigenous communities. In many cases, young people, who did not grow up speaking their native language, are now studying and embracing it as a way to understand and celebrate their heritage and connect with their elders.
Colorlines for more