HEALTH HAZARD: How the system makes us sick - NI 331

New Internationalist 331Jan / Feb 2001

A person's relation to God, gods or spirits is called religion. The vast majority
of people - two-thirds of the world's population - follow a religion.

For many, dollars and deities seem
interchangeable.

Six out of ten people in the US pray for cash.
In India, shop staff ask Lakshimi – the Hindu goddess of wealth – to bless the cash registers before they open for business.
When a rumour started that the 999 emergency telephone number in Malaysia was a direct line with God, operators were swamped with calls asking for the winning numbers of the upcoming lottery.
Fellow-national Pope John Paul II recently urged Poles to attend mass rather than shop on Sunday – their only official day off work.

1 Encyclopaedia Brittanica: www.brittanica.com
2 Colours magazine, No 37.

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New Internationalist (NI) workers' co-operative exists to report on issues of world poverty and inequality; to focus attention on the unjust relationship between the powerful and the powerless worldwide; to debate and campaign for the radical changes necessary to meet the basic needs of all; and to bring to life the people, the ideas and the action in the fight for global justice.

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