New Internationalist articles from April 2002

New Internationalist archives from April 2002

From this month's editor.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... THE smell of petrol disappeared for a moment when our thumbs thrust into the mandarin-orange skins, producing a plume of fine spray. The passenger next to me was handing them out. She only had a small bag of them. But in a cargo plane flying...

Letters.
April 1, 2002... World Parliament I strongly support the calls made in George Monbiot's article 'A Parliament for the Planet' (NI 342). However, he does not mention the work of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (www.ipu.org), the international organization of...

Mesmerized: Once a taxi-driver, Elias Badawi now makes icons of transcendent quality in his kitchen. But even he doesn't know how, as Reem Haddad discovers. (Letter from Lebanon).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... No-one has figured it out. Not his wife and children nor even himself. But 72-year-old Elias Badawi has suddenly turned from taxi-driver to master icon maker. 'I don't know how I do it,' he tells me after he and his wife warmly welcome me...

Southern Exposure.(photographer talks about her work in India)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... Janmashthomi was the day Sri Krishna came to the earth. Hindus celebrate this day with worship and prayer. They read and sing in the temples. After prayers thousands of devotees wait in a procession in the late afternoon. A child is dressed up...

Mao's maids. (Urvashi Butalia's View From The South).(women's movement in Maoist Nepal)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... You see the colour red everywhere in Nepal: in the roadside shrines and intricately carved temples that edge the streets; in the saris women wear and the vermilion powder that fills the parting in their hair; in the woven caps that men sport;...

Laying Uncle Ho to rest: The WTO as the latest invader. (Vietnam).(Ho Chi Minh, World Trade Organization)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... THE Ho Chi Minh Museum in Vietnam's capital, Hanoi, is a treasure chest of photos, letters, artefacts and artworks commemorating both the national independence struggle against France and the US and the life of its liberation leader, Ho Chi...

Unocal in Afghanistan. (Current).(Zalmay Khalilzad appointed US Special Envoy to Afghanistan)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... Former consultant to oil giant Unocal Corporation and pro-Taliban lobbyist, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been made the US Special Envoy to Afghanistan. The highest-ranking US diplomat in the country, he represents US government interests to the...

Folk fabric: Chinese villages where unsung artists dwell. (Culture).(folk arts in China)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... A 350-metre-long patchwork quilt made of 1,000 cloth pieces is carrying an urgent cultural message to the Chinese. The quilt symbolizes the need to preserve the country's folk art, which is in danger of dying out. One thousand people from...

Tiny eye of the hurricane. (Currents).(United States military base results in displaced island habitants)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... The US navy call it 'the rock'. Diego Garcia is a beautiful 27-square-kilo-metre atoll of coral and sand -- and the most important strategic US air-base in the Indian Ocean. It's been used for US bombing raids on Iraq, and in October 2001...

Curfew. (Word Corner).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... Today a curfew is a regulation forbidding people to be out of doors, especially at night. Curfew is from the French couvre-feu, meaning literally 'cover-fire'. In medieval towns with wooden building built close together, fire was a great...

Slaves shake off their shackles: Dramatic rescue bids for exploited children. (Child Labour).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... IT was the workers from Free the Children India (FTC) who rescued Gopal -- from a West Bengal mechanical workshop near the Bangladeshi border. They rescue thousands of children from exploitation each year. In Gopal's case, his employer had paid...

Seriously: You couldn't make this stuff up. (Currents).(reality television program of United States military personnel in Afghanistan)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... 'Reality' TV Two of the world's worst things -- the 'war on terror', and 'reality television' -- are coming together in a new Pentagon-Hollywood collaboration. ABC -- a US TV 'news' network owned by Disney -- is getting priveleged access...

Way beyond petroleum. (West Papua / Transnational Companies).(social, economic and political aspects of British Petroleum Company PLC's presence in Papua New Guinea)
April 1, 2002... Oil giant British Petroleum's glossy, eco-friendly advertising campaign says the company has gone 'beyond petroleum'. In resource-rich West Papua, the company seems to be living up to its claim by helping to fund an emerging government. Can it...

Military madness. (West Papua / The Military).(civil war and military corruption)
April 1, 2002... One terrible day in the highlands revealed what's at stake for West Papuans -- and the strategy of violent strife being fermented by the Indonesian military, whose local commander tried it out first in nearby East Timor. As the Morning...

Playing up the primitive: After being buried under 40 years of Indonesian rule, West Papuan culture is still very much alive and kicking, as Eben Kirksey finds out. (West Papua / Culture).
April 1, 2002... IN May 2000 thousands of the Mee people greeted Megawati Sukarnoputri -- who was then Indonesia's Vice President -- when she visited the highland outpost of Enarotali. Running counterclockwise around her helicopter in a raucous dance called...

West Papua -- a history of betrayal.
April 1, 2002... The first colonizers Humans first settled New Guinea at least 50,000 years ago, when it was connected to Australia by a land bridge. The British were the first Europeans to attempt colonization, but their 1793 colony was evacuated within...

They walk on the leaves of trees: The wealth of its neighbours in Papua New Guinea has been squandered by a Westminster-style Parliament. No wonder the type of democracy West Papua wants is still up in the air. (West Papua / Governance).
April 1, 2002... Chris Richards finds an alternative model for West Papuan self-determination. HE is a human telegraph. He will travel for days to get the news. On foot and by car. Over the Papua New Guinea border, then through the jungle into West Papua....

Reach for the Morning Star. (West Papua / International Support).
April 1, 2002... After nearly three weeks in West Papua, Chris Richards concludes that West Papuans are well on their way to freedom -- but it's too early to celebrate yet. My last day in West Papua starts in the same place as my first in Sentani, 36...

Riley Bechtel. (World Beaters).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... Riley Bechtel, Chair and Chief Executive of Bechtel Enterprises, is a very wealthy man. According to Forbes magazine he had a net worth last year of more than $3.5 billion and was number 51 on the list of the richest people in the US. The...

The Picador Book of African Stories. (Books).
April 1, 2002... Edited by Stephen Gray (Picador, ISBN 0 330 36989) In his introduction to this impressive collection, the editor Stephen Gray remarks that, with the first free elections in his native South Africa in 1994, he finally felt able to explore...

Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower. (Books).
April 1, 2002... By William Blum (Zed Books ISBN 1 84277 015 2) At a time when the US has declared war on terrorism Rogue State is a most timely guide to the state-sponsored terrorism that the US has been exporting around the globe since the Second World...

Gandhi. (Books).
April 1, 2002... Would Mahatma Gandhi have used the internet? This is one of the more curious ponderings of Peter Ruhe in Gandhi (Phaidon ISBN 0 7148 4103 X), a photo-biography of one of the most extraordinary lives of the 20th century. This book, the result of...

Fight to Win. (Music).
April 1, 2002... by Femi Kuti (Wrosse Records WRASS 042 CD) So his father declared his own state, once married 27 women in one day and was a constant thorn in the side of Nigeria's military rulers. Oh, and he also created afro-beat. Let's face it: Fela...

Zombie. (Music).
April 1, 2002... by Fela Kuti and Afrika 70 (Wrasse Records WRASS 048 CD) Whenever the 'moral majority' gets itself in a lather about anti-authoritarian pop stars, maybe they should just thank their lucky stars that they don't have someone of the order of...

Djomeh. (Film + Video).
April 1, 2002... written and directed by Hassan Yektapanah Djomeh is desperately lonely. He lives in exile, banished from his Afghan village because of his love for a woman both older than him and widowed. Under the eye of his older, more conservative...

Sharp focus on Zacharias Kunuk: Jerry White catches up with the Inuit director's latest genre-defying film. (Sharp Focus).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2002... Although he's sceptical about being viewed as a leader of any kind, it seems clear to me that Zacharias Kunuk's film Atanatjuat: The Fast Runner speaks to the fact that indigenous media now have the chance to take their rightful place at the...

Country Profile: Peru.
April 1, 2002... Two centuries ago, Italian explorer Antonio Raimondi wrote that Peru is like a 'beggar seated on a bench of gold'. Today, nearly half the population lives on less than two dollars a day despite billion-dollar mining, oil and natural-gas...