Current affairs with conscience
By Superna Aggarwal
"When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers the most. It's the same when the two elephants make love." — Rakiya Omaar, a Somali woman, on the impact of the Cold War and its aftermath in Africa.
"A man was ogling a woman and he goes up to her and asks, 'Will you sleep with me if I give you $5 million?'. She says, 'Hmm, Okay'. 'Supposing I only gave you $50?', he says, to which the woman replies, 'What kind of a woman do you take me for!'. He says, 'We've already established what kind of woman you are, we're just haggling over price'." — Sol Landau, a US dissident thinker on the selling out of intellectuals in the States.
"We do deserts, not mountains." — A US general on the question of why the US has failed to intervene in Bosnia.
Dispatches is Australia's only national radio program on third world development issues and current affairs, covering stories from Latin America, Africa, Indochina, Asia, the Pacific and Aboriginal Australia.
Dispatches provides an in-depth analysis of the issues which affect two-thirds of the world's people: the third world debt crisis, the politics of food aid and famine, the overpopulation versus over-consumption debate, the human and environmental costs of so-called "development", the inequities of international trade, the impact of colonialism, the World Bank's polices in Africa, the CIA's role in the creation of death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala, the Gulf War, Islamic and Christian fundamentalism, and female genital mutilation in Africa.
The program also questions the role of the state, church, big business and intellectuals in influencing public opinion, as well as the use of certain political terminology.
For example, individual acts of politically motivated
violence are called "terrorism", while state-orchestrated genocide is referred to as "counter-insurgency". Why is the annihilation of one people called a holocaust, another "ethnic cleansing"?
Democracy has come to mean the right to vote and the right to exploit, and a human right is similarly defined by Western liberal thinkers in terms of civil liberties. But what about the right to food, shelter, education and health services as other important rights of a democratic and just society?
Dispatches is for people who like their current affairs with a conscience. Stations playing Dispatches include: 2BBB-FM, 2BOB-FM, 2MCE-FM, 2NUR-FM, 2SER-FM, 2UUU-FM, 2VTR-FM, 2XX, 3CCC-FM, 3CR, 3GCR-FM, 3MBR-FM, 3MDR-FM, 3PBS-FM, 3RPC-FM, 3ZZZ-FM, 4CCR-FM, 4DDB-FM, 4RPH, 4RRR-FM, 5MMM-FM, 5TCB-FM, 5UV, 6CCR, 7LTN-FM, 7THE-FM, 8TOP-FM.
[Superna Aggarwal produces and presents Dispatches for the Public Radio News Services (PRNS). The feature on food aid in the previous Green Left was the transcript of a Dispatches program.]