Questões de Inglês

Timbuktu

By Blake Gopnik

1 From the moment the followers of Muhammad came roaring out of Arabia, in A.D. 633, they’ve cherished beautiful things. An exhibition that just closed at the Metropolitan Museum in New York showed how the first Muslims were inspired by glorious works from the Greek-speaking world, and their descendants never stopped being art-friendly.

2 That’s why it has been such a shock to see the artistic heritage of Timbuktu, one of the great seats of Africa’s Islamic culture, fall prey to Muslim puritans. As recently as July 10, members of a group called Ansar Dine, which has been linked to al Qaeda, stormed the 14th-century Djingareyber mosque and destroyed two ancient shrines they found there, according to Reuters and Agence France-Presse. In late March, in the chaos of Mali’s civil war, a small number of these fighters gained control of the city and have since been attacking its heritage. At the start of July, we got word of several shrines they had destroyed. They had also broken open a sealed door on the 15th-century Sidi Yahya mosque, which local tradition says ought to stay closed until Judgment Day. “Building on graves is contrary to Islam. We are destroying the mausoleums because it is ordained by our religion,” Ansar Dine has insisted, claiming that local followers of the Sufi strain of Islam are guilty of idolatry each time they visit the tombs of theirmovement’s sages.

3 But Shamil Jeppie, director of the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project at the University of Cape Town, rejects the idea that this is about the kind of consistent ideology found in other groups we call Islamist. “These guys, you can’t give them such credit,” says Jeppie. “It’s just hooliganism.” He says the locals had been resisting the fighters’ authority, and he feels that the attacks on the shrines are a form of punishment. (Jeppie also reports that, so far, Timbuktu’s great collections of Islamic manuscripts, which he studies, seem not to have been threatened.) The puritanical religious views that Ansar Dine claims to espouse, Jeppie says, derive from the relatively recent Wahhabi movement, “born in Arabia in the 18th century,” and have been taught to today’s fighters by patrons from Saudi Arabia.

4 Ansar Dine claims that its attacks on the shrines reflect the pure form of Islam practiced by Muhammad’s first followers, but Jeppie and other experts, both Western and Muslim, say that misinterprets the historical evidence. There was always debate about showy entombment in shrines and mosques, but the practice was established from early on and has never been definitively rejected in Islamic law. “All you have to do is look at the Taj Mahal,” says Sheila Canby, head of the Metropolitan’s Islamic department, to see that “the attitude toward tombs has varied.” She calls Ansar Dine’s violent rejection “a very, very extreme view.”

5 Even with the most recent destruction, however, the particular artistic culture of Mali gives a glimmer of hope. Thomas Schuler, chair of the Disaster Relief Task Force of the International Council of Museums, has been denouncing the damage. But he points out that locals have a more flexible view of their shrines’ destruction. “The people in Timbuktu say, ‘Let them destroy them. We will rebuild them.’ That’s why people don’t defend [the shrines] to the death.” Art historians have started to talk about this as a “substitution” principle, found in many cultures, whereby something new can stand in for something old that has been lost. It’s not always the physical substance of an artwork that matters, but its shape or location and the traditions those point to. (Timbuktu’s shrines are made of mud brick and so have alwaysrequired rebuilding.)

Adapted from Newsweek, July 23 & 30, 2012

NORTH KOREAN BRIDES

By Melanie Kirkpatrick

1 Steven Kim, an American businessman from Long Island, New York, may be the world’s leading expert on the market for North Korean brides. He acquired this expertise accidentally. He likes to say it was God’s plan.

2 A decade or so ago he was living in China, overseeing the manufacture of chairs he sold to retail clients in the United States, when he heard about a secret church that catered to the South Korean businessmen who worked in the Shenzhen industrial zone, not far from his apartment. It wasn’t registered with the Chinese government, as required by law, so it operated underground, billing itself as a cultural association. There was no sign on the door and no cross on the roof. The 100 or so congregants had learned about the church as Kim had, by word of mouth.

3 Kim, a practicing Christian, became a regular attendee. One Sunday he noticed two shabbily dressed men seated in a corner of the room. After worship, he went up to them, said hello, and learned to  his astonishment that they were from North Korea. They had escaped across the Tumen River to northeast China and traveled 2,000 miles south to Guangdong province, a journey that took two months. Theyhoped to find a way to slip across the border into Hong Kong. “They came to church asking for help,” he says. “But the church would only feed them, give them a few dollars, and let them go.”

4 Kim was outraged. “I asked the pastor, ‘Why do you let them go?’” “Because we’re afraid,” the pastor replied. “If we’re caught helping North Koreans, the church will be shut down.” Kim took the two men home.

5 That was the start. Kim began to assist North Korean refugees clandestinely. He provided safe houses, food, clothing, and money; eventually he organized secret passage across China to third countries. Before long, he gained a reputation along the new underground railroad as someone North Koreans could count on for assistance. Many of them turned out to be women fleeing from the Chinese men who had purchased them as brides.

6 Today he runs 318 Partners, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to rescuing trafficked women in China.

7 Kim clearly has his hands full. The only practical escape route for fugitives from North Korea is  through China, and human-rights groups say roughly 80 percent of those thousands of refugees arewomen and girls who have become “commodities for purchase,” in Kim’s words.

Adapted from Newsweek, August 27, 2012

NORTH KOREAN BRIDES

By Melanie Kirkpatrick

1 Steven Kim, an American businessman from Long Island, New York, may be the world’s leading expert on the market for North Korean brides. He acquired this expertise accidentally. He likes to say it was God’s plan.

2 A decade or so ago he was living in China, overseeing the manufacture of chairs he sold to retail clients in the United States, when he heard about a secret church that catered to the South Korean businessmen who worked in the Shenzhen industrial zone, not far from his apartment. It wasn’t registered with the Chinese government, as required by law, so it operated underground, billing itself as a cultural association. There was no sign on the door and no cross on the roof. The 100 or so congregants had learned about the church as Kim had, by word of mouth.

3 Kim, a practicing Christian, became a regular attendee. One Sunday he noticed two shabbily dressed men seated in a corner of the room. After worship, he went up to them, said hello, and learned to  his astonishment that they were from North Korea. They had escaped across the Tumen River to northeast China and traveled 2,000 miles south to Guangdong province, a journey that took two months. Theyhoped to find a way to slip across the border into Hong Kong. “They came to church asking for help,” he says. “But the church would only feed them, give them a few dollars, and let them go.”

4 Kim was outraged. “I asked the pastor, ‘Why do you let them go?’” “Because we’re afraid,” the pastor replied. “If we’re caught helping North Koreans, the church will be shut down.” Kim took the two men home.

5 That was the start. Kim began to assist North Korean refugees clandestinely. He provided safe houses, food, clothing, and money; eventually he organized secret passage across China to third countries. Before long, he gained a reputation along the new underground railroad as someone North Koreans could count on for assistance. Many of them turned out to be women fleeing from the Chinese men who had purchased them as brides.

6 Today he runs 318 Partners, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to rescuing trafficked women in China.

7 Kim clearly has his hands full. The only practical escape route for fugitives from North Korea is  through China, and human-rights groups say roughly 80 percent of those thousands of refugees arewomen and girls who have become “commodities for purchase,” in Kim’s words.

Adapted from Newsweek, August 27, 2012

NORTH KOREAN BRIDES

By Melanie Kirkpatrick

1 Steven Kim, an American businessman from Long Island, New York, may be the world’s leading expert on the market for North Korean brides. He acquired this expertise accidentally. He likes to say it was God’s plan.

2 A decade or so ago he was living in China, overseeing the manufacture of chairs he sold to retail clients in the United States, when he heard about a secret church that catered to the South Korean businessmen who worked in the Shenzhen industrial zone, not far from his apartment. It wasn’t registered with the Chinese government, as required by law, so it operated underground, billing itself as a cultural association. There was no sign on the door and no cross on the roof. The 100 or so congregants had learned about the church as Kim had, by word of mouth.

3 Kim, a practicing Christian, became a regular attendee. One Sunday he noticed two shabbily dressed men seated in a corner of the room. After worship, he went up to them, said hello, and learned to  his astonishment that they were from North Korea. They had escaped across the Tumen River to northeast China and traveled 2,000 miles south to Guangdong province, a journey that took two months. Theyhoped to find a way to slip across the border into Hong Kong. “They came to church asking for help,” he says. “But the church would only feed them, give them a few dollars, and let them go.”

4 Kim was outraged. “I asked the pastor, ‘Why do you let them go?’” “Because we’re afraid,” the pastor replied. “If we’re caught helping North Koreans, the church will be shut down.” Kim took the two men home.

5 That was the start. Kim began to assist North Korean refugees clandestinely. He provided safe houses, food, clothing, and money; eventually he organized secret passage across China to third countries. Before long, he gained a reputation along the new underground railroad as someone North Koreans could count on for assistance. Many of them turned out to be women fleeing from the Chinese men who had purchased them as brides.

6 Today he runs 318 Partners, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to rescuing trafficked women in China.

7 Kim clearly has his hands full. The only practical escape route for fugitives from North Korea is  through China, and human-rights groups say roughly 80 percent of those thousands of refugees arewomen and girls who have become “commodities for purchase,” in Kim’s words.

Adapted from Newsweek, August 27, 2012

MONEY

1 Money is perhaps the most basic building-block in economics. It helps states collect taxes to fund public goods. It allows producers to specialise and reap gains from trade. It is clear what it does, but its origins are a mystery. Some argue that money has its roots in the power of the state. Others claim the origin of money is a purely private matter: it would exist even if governments did not. This debate is long-running but it informs some of the most pressing monetary questions of today.

2 Money fulfils three main functions. First, it must be a medium of exchange, easily traded for goods and services. Second, it must be a store of value, so that it can be saved and used for consumption in the future. Third, it must be a unit of account, a useful measuring-stick. Lots of things can do these jobs. Tea, salt and cattle have all been used as money. In Britain’s prisons, inmates currently favour shower-gel capsules or rosary beads.

3 The use of money stretches back millennia. Electrum, an alloy of gold and silver, was used to make coins in Lydia (now western Turkey) in around 650BC. The first paper money circulated in China in around 1000AD. The Aztecs used cocoa beans as cash until the 12th century. The puzzle is how people agreed what to use.

4 Karl Menger, an Austrian economist, set out one school of thought as long ago as 1892. In his version of events, the monetisation of an economy starts when agricultural communities move away from subsistence farming and start to specialise. This brings efficiency gains but means that trade with others becomes necessary. The problem is that operating markets on the basis of barter * is a pain: you have to scout around looking for the rare person who wants what you have and has what you want.

5 Money evolves to reduce barter costs, with some things working better than others. The commodity used as money should not lose value when it is bought and sold. So clothing is a bad money, since no one places the same value on second-hand clothes as new ones. Instead, something that is portable, durable (fruit and vegetables are out) and divisible into smaller pieces is needed. Menger called this property “saleableness”. Spices and shells are highly saleable, explaining their use as money. Government plays no role here. The origin of money is a market-led response to barter costs, in which the best money is that which minimises the costs of trade. Menger’s is a good description of how informal monies, such as those used by prisoners, originate.

6 But the story just doesn’t match the facts in most monetary economies, according to a 1998 paper by Charles Goodhart of the London School of Economics. Take the widespread use of precious metals as money. A Mengerian would say that this happens because metals are durable, divisible and portable: that makes them an ideal medium of exchange. But it is incredibly hard to value raw metals, Goodhart argued, so the cost of using them in trade is high. It is much easier to assess the value of a bag of salt or a cow than a lump of metal. Raw metals fail Menger’s own saleableness test.

* The exchange of goods and services for othr goods and services.

Adapted from The Economist, August 18, 2012

MONEY

1 Money is perhaps the most basic building-block in economics. It helps states collect taxes to fund public goods. It allows producers to specialise and reap gains from trade. It is clear what it does, but its origins are a mystery. Some argue that money has its roots in the power of the state. Others claim the origin of money is a purely private matter: it would exist even if governments did not. This debate is long-running but it informs some of the most pressing monetary questions of today.

2 Money fulfils three main functions. First, it must be a medium of exchange, easily traded for goods and services. Second, it must be a store of value, so that it can be saved and used for consumption in the future. Third, it must be a unit of account, a useful measuring-stick. Lots of things can do these jobs. Tea, salt and cattle have all been used as money. In Britain’s prisons, inmates currently favour shower-gel capsules or rosary beads.

3 The use of money stretches back millennia. Electrum, an alloy of gold and silver, was used to make coins in Lydia (now western Turkey) in around 650BC. The first paper money circulated in China in around 1000AD. The Aztecs used cocoa beans as cash until the 12th century. The puzzle is how people agreed what to use.

4 Karl Menger, an Austrian economist, set out one school of thought as long ago as 1892. In his version of events, the monetisation of an economy starts when agricultural communities move away from subsistence farming and start to specialise. This brings efficiency gains but means that trade with others becomes necessary. The problem is that operating markets on the basis of barter * is a pain: you have to scout around looking for the rare person who wants what you have and has what you want.

5 Money evolves to reduce barter costs, with some things working better than others. The commodity used as money should not lose value when it is bought and sold. So clothing is a bad money, since no one places the same value on second-hand clothes as new ones. Instead, something that is portable, durable (fruit and vegetables are out) and divisible into smaller pieces is needed. Menger called this property “saleableness”. Spices and shells are highly saleable, explaining their use as money. Government plays no role here. The origin of money is a market-led response to barter costs, in which the best money is that which minimises the costs of trade. Menger’s is a good description of how informal monies, such as those used by prisoners, originate.

6 But the story just doesn’t match the facts in most monetary economies, according to a 1998 paper by Charles Goodhart of the London School of Economics. Take the widespread use of precious metals as money. A Mengerian would say that this happens because metals are durable, divisible and portable: that makes them an ideal medium of exchange. But it is incredibly hard to value raw metals, Goodhart argued, so the cost of using them in trade is high. It is much easier to assess the value of a bag of salt or a cow than a lump of metal. Raw metals fail Menger’s own saleableness test.

* The exchange of goods and services for othr goods and services.

Adapted from The Economist, August 18, 2012