Our Aug. 11 cover story on obesity around the world sparked letters of concern. One reader offered health tips with optimism: “Obesity can be fought.” Another worried that the countries have developed a new competition, “a rat race of appetites.”
THE WORLD’S WAISTLINES
Your Aug. 11 cover story, “Fat World,” was really shocking. It completely changed my stereotypical thinking that obesity is a problem only in developed and rich countries. As you point out, the problem is now spreading to developing regions like Africa and India. It seems as though having too much can be as dangerous as having too little, as both overeating and starvation can kill a person. Unless we take prompt global measures, the world population, especially younger generations, will be in for a catastrophe.
Takahito Miyazawa
Odawara, Japan
Your cover story presents obesity as a global epidemic no longer limited to wealthy countries. But I found this article indecent, and the mention of weight-loss clinics in Africa irrelevant. The rapid progression of obesity does not change the sad disproportion between the populations of rich and poor countries. Hunger and malnutrition still remain a problem in a vast majority of the world, especially in Africa. Let’s think beyond the borders of Texas or Utah. There are a number of health issues that should be presented at the global level. How about discussing AIDS, hunger or malaria? These are serious global epidemics, and I find it regrettable that the world’s diverse and complex reality was presented with such a narrow mind-set.
Moise Leye
Nairobi, Kenya
Your inside graphic for the cover story wrongly identified Mozambique as Malawi. People in the West already know little enough about Africa, and the situation is not helped when respected magazines provide inaccurate information.
Rebecca Lewis
Oxford, England
I was impressed by your cover photo. The image of the globe as the stomach of a severely obese man gave me the impression that obesity is definitely the world’s newest epidemic. This problem should not be taken lightly, and if we want to conquer it, each and every individual must take responsibility for his lifestyle. Eating healthy, exercising three times a week and increasing our water intake would help. Now is the time to take our health seriously no matter how busy life can be. Slowly but surely, obesity can be fought.
Lee Poh Lin
Seremban, Malaysia
Globalization has brought us cheap and unhealthy ways of living. Yet somehow we’ve accepted these ideas instead of good nutrition habits from our ancestors. Now we’ve got a rat race of appetites.
Etsuko Takagi
Tokyo, Japan
EXPRESSING ESPERANTO
Congratulations for giving an objective picture of Esperanto and those of us who use it (“Speaking Up for Esperanto,” Aug. 11). While traveling, I’ve found the language to be the most pleasant way of communicating in depth with local people. Using Esperanto, we talk on a broader range of subjects than English allows. While English is OK for travel arrangements and shopping in tourist centers, Esperanto is better for discussing complex social, political and personal matters. The language is also cost-effective: I was more fluent in Esperanto after six months than I was in English after six years.
Claude Piron
Gland, Switzerland
It would be advisable for the European Union to accept Esperanto as one of its official languages. Using it could save lots of money and create better relationships between representatives of the different nations. Thank you, NEWSWEEK, for your complete, accurate and meaningful article on Esperanto.
Marcelo Casartelli
Cordoba, Argentina
THE MOMENTUM OF DR. DEAN
Howard Dean is the man to deliver the United States from President George W. Bush and the Democratic Party from itself (“The Left’s Mr. Right,” Aug. 11). He is not a radical, as some believe, unless it is radical to believe that the United States belongs to its citizens, not to wealthy special interests and hidebound political clubs. The Bush camp and Washington-insider Democrats aren’t afraid of Dean so much as the burgeoning movement behind his success. In other words, they’re scared of us ordinary Americans.
Scott Powell
Brooklyn, New York
If Karl Rove & Co. really saw Dean as the dream opponent, they sure as heck wouldn’t be letting on. Their antics suggest they agree with a growing number of Democrats that Howard Dean is increasingly in the best position to beat President Bush in 2004. Check the record. He steered a centrist, fiscally conservative course as governor of Vermont, he gets an A rating from the National Rifle Association and he’s igniting the Democratic base. No wonder Rove is waving his arms. He sees a steamroller coming right at him.
Marshall Helmberger
Tower, Minnesota
Jonathan Alter fails to explain why Howard Dean was not inducted into the military during the Vietnam era. Dean failed his medical exam because of an unfused vertebra, but Alter leaves the impression that Dean wiggled out from under by pulling strings or by faking a malady. Bush, on the other hand, did pull strings to get into the Air National Guard by jumping ahead of others on the list. Later, he spent the last year of his service AWOL in Alabama.
Mary L. Wentworth
Amherst, Massachusetts
As a 19-year-old college student who’s enthusiastically joined the Dean team, I know that Dean’s presence allays fears of an outrageously growing national debt, a tongue-tied president and a deceptive administration that says of the poor and middle class, “Let them eat yellowcake.” The only unfortunate thing is that the sleeve-rolled, plain-speaking Howard Dean wasn’t around any earlier to provide a creative, exciting grass-roots image the Democratic Party has been starved of.
Joe Sabia
Milford, Connecticut
Your recent article on Howard Dean, my former governor, states that he “expanded health-care coverage to include all children and most adults.” Dean claims success in improving access to health insurance in Vermont. But in fact, in his quest to improve the scope of coverage for hardworking, low-income Vermonters, he forgot about the hardworking, self-employed middle class. So many mandates were put on insurance companies that most left the state. Vermont is a small market that needs insurance companies more than they need it. This has left virtually no choice for individual health-insurance policies in the state.
Marlene Price
Williston, Vermont
J-PHONE CLARIFICATION
I would like to point out an error in your Sept. 8 “Back to School Guide” (Tip Sheet). Your article states that our mobile handset, the J-SA06 by Sanyo, is capable of video streaming and that it is likely to be available outside Japan soon. Two other models by Sanyo, the V-SA701 and the V801SA, are video-capable; however, the J-SA06 is not, and is available to Japanese consumers only.
Kazuyuki Hagiwara
Media Relations Manager
J-Phone Co., Ltd.
Tokyo, Japan
BEING JEWISH IN GERMANY
It is obscene that a generous package of incentives to lure Russian Jews from one of Europe’s most down-and-out economies to its richest (“Return of the Jews,” July 14) can be seen as a form of “second chance” atonement for the Holocaust. Nothing material can ever atone for that. And it is bizarre that Russian Jews, not the great-grandchildren of German Jews, are flocking to Germany to “rebuild” Jewish life there. Perhaps they have the historical amnesia that the move requires. It is also unfair that non-Jewish Russians and East Europeans are totally excluded from this German largesse for immigrants, based on the outrages of World War II. It is infuriating that Germans of Turkish descent, born and raised in Ger-many, or Gastarbeiter working there for decades, are generally denied German citizenship. Whom is Berlin trying to fool?
Zeev Templer
Vientiane, Laos
It is difficult to understand how Jews can immigrate to a country like Germany, which caused them such great suffering not so long ago. They must have a very short memory. Let us just hope that history will not repeat itself and that the 60 newly built synagogues will not be vandalized or burned, as happened recently in France and Belgium.
Ozias Bortman
Haifa, Israel
PAYING THE PRICE
In Stefan Theil’s portrayal of the pension situation in Germany (“A Heavy Burden,” June 30/July 7), language such as “entitlements,” “generational fraud” and “coddled” suggests that the typical pensioner enjoys a selfishly high standard of living. Nowhere does Theil tell us what a real pension might be for Germans who have worked in nonprofessional jobs or how that compares to the cost of living. Nor does he mention the impact on the pension system brought about by reunification, the widening compensation gap, the high levels of unemployment overall and the special difficulty unemployed people over 50 have in re-entering the labor market. Many retirees today, after long years of working in low-paying jobs, must practice old-fashioned thrift to subsist on their pensions. They are the ones—not the minority of the highly compensated who have had the means to save and invest—who will bear the brunt of the reform.
Barbara Pines
Munich, Germany
Germans under the age of 50 have been coddled since birth. My husband retired at 63, after working for 47 years, a work rate that won’t be met by our younger generation, who think they’re being taken advantage of. This generation goes to university free of charge (to them, not to their parents), may change their major many times and take their time to graduate, so they are close to 30 prior to entering a profession. If they retire in their early 60s, they will be in the work force for about 30 years. So who’s taking advantage of whom? The young threaten action against reforms that may reduce their own entitlements. For example, considering a free education a “right,” they refuse to pay even a portion of their university costs. Why can’t they complete their education in four years to enter the work force earlier?
Sharon M. Lochocki
Westergellersen, Germany
SONS OF SADDAM
It took up to 200 crack army troops—with helicopter gunships, Humvees, TOW missiles and heavy machine guns—nearly four hours to take out two playboys, a bodyguard and a teenage boy (“Their Final Days,” Aug 11). Any thought that the troops were going carefully in order to take Uday and Qusay Hussein alive was dispelled by the four dead bodies at the end of the battle. This old Korean War Marine is underwhelmed.
Jim Hall
Phoenix, Arizona
With the recent deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, and Saddam’s death or capture sure to follow, wouldn’t logic imply that if Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, he would have used them by now? America should face the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction and no Qaeda ties, and that we’ve been had.
Jim Hellem
Alpharetta, Georgia
Thank you for your article concerning the length of deployment of our troops (“Families Ask Why,” Aug. 4). My husband is a Navy reservist stationed at Camp Mitchell in Rota, Spain, and has been away since March 31. In June about 200 troops were sent home from Camp Mitchell, while 200 others remained. During the time the 400 troops were together, the reserve center kept in contact with us via e-mail, but now the Navy has lost interest in us and our spouses. We call the reserve center for help with different things—grass mowing, plumbing problems, etc.—but get no response to our calls or are told that someone will call back, which never happens. Yes, our spouses chose to defend their country, but they were also told that things would be taken care of here at home so that they could concentrate on doing the job they were sent to do. I believe that because my husband was not sent to Iraq, the Navy feels that his needs and those of his family are unimportant. Shouldn’t “supporting our troops” include the families left behind?
Suzy Lowe
Milford, Ohio
Every American is concerned about mounting casualties and long deployments, but families of military personnel know better than most that there are casualties in war. And exactly what is considered a long deployment? We have been engaged in active combat in Iraq for several months now, and from all ac-counts it has been a long, grueling fight on behalf of freedom. But let’s remember that our World War II vets spent considerably longer in active combat; and my friends were deployed in Vietnam for two-year stints. We felt for them, were concerned for them, loved them and prayed for their safe return. Wars don’t end in a few days or weeks, or in a couple of months. War is hell, and we honor and thank those who serve to ensure that the right to life, liberty and freedom prevails (and, I suppose, the right to whine as well).
Kathleen A. Wright
Rochester, New York
REDEFINING ‘FAMILY’ CULTURE
In the Aug. 4 article “9/11’s hidden Toll,” Dr. Nora Alarifi Pharaon, a psychologist at the New York-based Arab-American Family Center, says that the Arab/Muslim culture “puts a premium on the family unit.” She then describes a Muslim wife who has been repeatedly beaten, has her money controlled and is not even allowed to retain the family’s mailbox key. That is not my idea of a family culture. That is a slave culture that permits men to do anything they want whenever they want, at the expense of the entire family.
Diana Parker-Williams
Sarasota, Florida
IN DEFENSE OF RWANDA
“Wars Without End” (July 14) is revealing by what it omits to examine: Rwanda’s balance sheet since the genocide that wiped out nearly 1 million people in 1994. Rwanda has made steady progress in laying the foundation for unity and reconciliation, including decentralization that gives a voice to the people in the decision-making process. Rwanda’s economy has been growing for nine years, even though its socioeconomic infrastructure was destroyed during the genocide. And Rwanda has a new Constitution that reflects the aspirations and interests of the Rwandan people, 93 percent of whom voted for it in the referendum last May. It also had the first-ever multiparty elections for president on Aug. 25 and will have them again for Parliament in late September. Those who have been to Rwanda will tell you that this country is an oasis of security and stability. But Rwandans are the first to recognize that durable peace and development can be fully realized only when the whole region is free from the insecurity that claims innocent lives and makes development difficult to achieve.
Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa
Chief of Staff, Office of the President of Rwanda
Kigali, Rwanda
© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.