June 16, 1999

Like ancient gaul, Colombia can be said to be divided into three parts. After several decades of undeclared civil war, leftist guerrillas dominate much of the southern part of the country. Much of the north is in the hands of right-wing paramilitary groups backed by wealthy landowners (though the leftists have a piece of this region too, near the Caribbean coast). Both the rebel insurgents and the rightist militias are involved in drug trafficking—a highly lucrative enterprise, Colombia being the world's principal producer of cocaine and a major provider of heroin.

On the broad track of rock and dirt that runs through Cegrane, the largest refugee camp in Macedonia, a woman labors to push a wheelchair carrying a young boy with cerebral palsy. Nearby two young men join arms to form a human litter on which perches an old woman who is unable to walk. They are the vulnerable among the vulnerable. Illnesses and infirmities that made normal life difficult back in Kosovo add hardship to hardship under the stark conditions of the camp.

The Earthist Challenge to Economism: A Theological Critique of the World Bank.
By John B. Cobb Jr. St. Martin's, 192 pp. 

Building a Protestant Left: Christianity and Crisis Magazine, 1941-1993.
 By Mark Hulsether. University of Tennessee Press, 416 pp.