New Internationalist articles from April 2007

New Internationalist archives from April 2007

Cotton.(From this month's editor)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... As part of the preparation for doing this issue I travelled to India. It is a commonplace about NI editors that when you make a trip like this, the place you go to always seems so much richer and more complex than your previous understandings....

Cotton: peril and promise; Gentle and breathable to wear; harsh and suffocating to work with. Richard Swift unpicks the world's favourite fabric.(INTRODUCTION)
April 1, 2007... If you want to make money from cotton, best to stay well away from it. Historically, that's how it has always been. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Take the big planters of the US South, who cooled their heels in old New Orleans or perched up...

Whatever happened to cotton? Jim Thomas looks back from a brave new nanotech world at the fabric of history.(FUTURE FABRICS)
April 1, 2007... It was at her wedding in 2035 that Asha first began wondering about cloth. Her grandmother had given her an old-fashioned cotton sari and so they fell into conversation while fingering its brittle texture. Asha declared that she found the sari...

Death by cotton: Richard Swift travels to the troubled cotton belt of eastern Maharashtra, where a tragedy has been unfolding.(FARMER SUICIDE)
April 1, 2007... Ravinder Kisan Piwar's brother came back at five o'clock in the evening as usual to turn on the electric pump. This is the one time the erratic electricity supply can usually be counted on in the eastern Maharashtra village of Chalbardi. He...

Organic and beyond: can 'going organic' save India's besieged cotton farmers? Not on its own, argues Richard Swift, as he sorts through the evidence.(SUSTAINABLE YIELD)(Society for Research for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions and National Innovation Foundation)
April 1, 2007... Anil Gupta is a professor at India's most prestigious management institute. He's a key player in an impressive array of Ahmedabad-based appropriate technology organizations, like the Society for Research for Sustainable Technologies and...

The cotton chain the facts.(cotton distributed, produced and exported all over the world)
April 1, 2007... Cotton clothes the world. It represents 38% of the world fibre market. But backbreaking work, temperamental yields, high production costs, an uncertain market, poor wages and working conditions, environmental fallout and the manipulations of...

Powerloom prison: decent textile jobs were once the backbone of Mumbai's economy. Dionne Bunsha looks at how downsizing technology and outsourcing jobs have changed all that.
April 1, 2007... Tall stone chimneys towering above glass skyscrapers are the only reminders of the textile mills that spurred Mumbai's growth as India's commercial capital. Today, malls and corporate offices have replaced the mills. Workers have made way for...

Natural alternatives to cotton ...
April 1, 2007... WORLD PRODUCTION of other plant-fibre crops for textile use declined sharply as a result of advances in cotton production and the development of synthetic fibres. But promising things are emerging. Fibre crops have traditionally been produced...

Big Cotton: USA.(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Cotton farming in the US is big. It's big business, with the average net worth of the 25,000-odd cotton farmers hovering around $800,000. It uses large machines and often high-tech methods to dominate the world export market in cotton. Most...

Little Cotton: Africa.(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Cotton farming in Africa is small. There are lots of farmers--two million in West Africa alone--with an estimated 25 million of some of the world's poorest people at least partially relying on the crop. They farm on tiny plots, often less than...

Cotton--a history.(Industry overview)
April 1, 2007... The stuff of Roman robes and royal apparel, of slaves and satanic mills, and of a new empire of capital that still holds sway today. For Gandhi, simple and homespun, the cotton khadi shirt was a symbol of a resurgent, democratic India. Today...

Sweat, fire and ethics: the sweatshop is back. Bob Jeffcott argues that citizenship is more likely to get rid of it than shopping.(SWEATSHOPS)
April 1, 2007... At the Maquila Solidarity Network, we get phone calls and emails almost every day of the week from people wanting to know where they can buy clothes that are Fairtrade-certified or sweatshop-free. Alternative retail outlets even contact us to...

Cooking up change.(World Social Forum 2007 special: Creating another world)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... UNITED IN THE conviction that 'another world is possible', around 50,000 grassroots activists from the world's social movements gathered this January in Nairobi, Kenya for the seventh World Social Forum (WSF). The first WSF took place in...

Poverty bites WSF on the backside.(World Social Forum 2007 special: Creating another world)
April 1, 2007... AS WE ARRIVED at the stadium where the 2007 World Social Forum was taking place--a vast concrete Chinese-built vanity project of former Kenyan dictator Daniel Arap Moi--the traffic ground to a halt. While this is pretty normal for Nairobi, it...

Queer eye for the WSF.(World Social Forum 2007 special: Creating another world)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... THE MANY AFRICAN lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex activists made this one of the largest public gatherings mobilizing for sexual rights in Africa to date. The Q-Spot, a venue set up by the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya, was...

'Privatization brings the rain'.(World Social Forum 2007 special: Creating another world)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... A NEW AFRICAN Water Network was launched at the WSF to co-ordinate opposition to 'water privatization in all its forms'. 'Today we celebrate the birth of this network to resist the theft of our water, tomorrow we will celebrate access to clean...

Coked up.(World Social Forum 2007 special: Creating another world)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... FARMER GILBERT RODRIGO from Tamil Nadu in India spent the WSF marching around telling people not to drink Coke. His list of complaints is long. 'Coca-Cola are coming to our communities, occupying land and taking the water. About 10 kilometres...

Breaking with 'tradition'.(World Social Forum 2007 special: Creating another world)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... WOMEN'S MOVEMENTS WERE much in evidence at the Nairobi gathering. According to Basilla Renju Urasa from the Network Against Female Genital Mutilation in Tanzania: 'Women are increasingly standing up together in the fight for equality... A few...

Shell still hell.(World Social Forum 2007 special: Creating another world)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... SHELL MAY BE pumping the petrodollars into glossy PR campaigns, but Nigerians remain unimpressed. Ifieniya Festavera Lott (pictured left) from the Ijaw people in the Niger Delta went to the WSF to tell the world about Shell's activities in her...

The language of banks ...(Currents)
April 1, 2007... Word power 26 bank holiday n. vacation funded by tax avoidance cash-cow n. bovine whose milk is used to make cream for the fat cat feeding n. act of making profits from extortionate penalties offshore adj. descriptive of a bank...

What next? Future threats and counter-strategies.(World Social Forum 2007 special: Creating another world)
April 1, 2007... 'I'M NOT PESSIMISTIC. I'm angry!' US writer James Baldwin's quote neatly sums up the collective feeling at the end of a visionary WSF session entitled 'What next? New Global Challenges, Trendlines and Alternatives'. The event brought together...

Second strife.(Seriously)(Website overview)
April 1, 2007... OK, so the world is a crazy place. There's war, poverty, racism, environmental destruction, Paris Hilton. Visit the Seriously newsroom on a bad day, and you might even find our team of jaded journalists starting to wonder if there's more to...

Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski.(Worldbeaters)
April 1, 2007... Job: President and Prime Minister of Poland respectively Reputation: Ultra-Catholic, populist, right wing, anti-communist, anti-free-market, anti-Russian, vengeful yokels that don't understand modern Europe. They're anti-gay and...

Neruda Songs.(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Neruda Songs by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (Nonesuch 7559 799 542 CD) There is a poignancy about Neruda Songs, a setting of five of the Chilean poet's love songs by Peter Lieberson, before his wife has sounded the first note. This...

Grinderman.(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Grinderman by Grinderman (Mute LC05834 CD) It's now over 25 years since the Birthday Party, possibly the most riotous assembly that Australia has yet produced, splintered under the weight of its own excesses. The subsequent trajectory...

Beyond Hatred.(Movie review)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Beyond Hatred directed by Olivier Meyrou Three young French skinheads, influenced by the extreme Right, go out one evening to beat up Arabs, but instead murder Francois Chenu, a young gay man. Meyrou's unusually unintrusive cinema...

The Last King of Scotland.(Movie review)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... The Last King of Scotland directed by Kevin MacDonald Films set in Africa by non-African directors often do very well at the box office--but what do they reveal about the continent? Usually, not a lot, and The Last King of Scotland is...

Unbowed: One Woman's Story.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 1, 2007... Unbowed: One Woman's Story by Wangari Maathai (William Heinemann, ISBN 9780434017393) Born into rural poverty in Kenya in 1940, Wangari Maathai is a remarkable woman who has led an extraordinary life. A simple list of her achievements...

Carbon Trading: a critical conversation on climate change, privatisation and power.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 1, 2007... Carbon Trading: a critical conversation on climate change, privatisation and power by Larry Lohmann (author and editor) (Dag Hammarskjold Foundation/Development Dialogue ISSN 0345 2328) Tony Blair is doing it. Coldplay does it. The...

The Successor.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 1, 2007... The Successor by Ismail Kadare translated from the French of Tedi Papavrami by David Bellos (Canongate ISBN 978 1 84195 887 3) This book by Albania's foremost author and the inaugural winner of the Man Booker International Prize...

Southern exposure: highlighting the work of photographers from the Majority World.(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... This image is of a poverty alleviation project for women in the Msinga region of KwaZulu/Natal. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The women are engaging in backbreaking work in a region that is itself hard and unrelenting. But what struck me was...

Lagos versus Abuja.(View from Lagos)
April 1, 2007... Lekki is one of the fastest-growing parts of Lagos, the former capital of Nigeria. New housing estates sprout all the time beside old fishing villages, offering three-, four- and five-bedroom homes to the middle class. Large swathes of swamp...

Mountains & freedom: Jay Griffiths climbs to the heights.(Essay)
April 1, 2007... MERDEKA. ELEUTHERIA. SAOIRSE. AZAADI. AZADI. RANGWANG. WOLNO. FREIHEIT. LIRI. SVOBODA. VRIJHEID. OZGURLUK. VABADUS. LIBERTADEA. LA LIBERTAD. LA LIBERTE. LIBERTAS. LIBERTATE. The very words for freedom make the air ring. Freedom is...

NI prize crossword.(New Internationalit)
April 1, 2007... 117 by AXE Win a copy of the latest World Guide reference book... All correct solutions received by the 25th of the cover month will be put into a draw--though only the winner will be notified. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Post your...

Big bad world.(Cartoon)
April 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Interview with Haunani-Kay Trask on her campaigning for indigenous language and human rights in Hawai'i.(Making Waves)(Interview)
April 1, 2007... My mum was a native speaker but by the time she went to school the language had already been banned. She had one of those terrible experiences where you speak English at school but Hawaiian at home. You know they had little rulers that rapped...

Ring ring.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... Re: Seriously, 'Mo Better Blues' (Inside Iran, NI 398). You are implying that the Mo Ibrahim Foundation is 'rewarding despots that stand down'. Actually, the prize can only be awarded to an African Head of State who is elected to office in free...

Not on the menu.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... State of the World's Ocean (NI 397) was great. It's amazing how many people don't know just how much trouble our oceans are in. The overfishing of our seas, trawling and the lack of marine reserves is something I am very passionate about. When...

Fascinating.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... As someone who has been working on the Greenpeace Defending Our Oceans (DOO) expedition for two years now, I just wanted to thank you so much for your informative, thorough and fascinating Ocean issue. I think I speak for all of Team DOO when I...

Sea Shepherd.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... I was very disappointed not to find any reference to Sea Shepherd in State of the World's Ocean. Sea Shepherd is an environmental law enforcement agency, ie it has stopped 'illegal' whaling, etc. They do this because the Australian and New...

Another version.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... 'The unreported year 2006' supplement, referring to the fighting between Tamil Tigers and Sri Lankan government troops in August says: 'In one incident 61 schoolgirls are killed when an orphanage in a Tamil Tiger controlled area is bombed by...

Top-end corruption.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... The dominant Western political philosophy is that of the so-called free market, championing private enterprise, privatization, user pays, etc--Howard and Bush certainly promote such policies, and even Labour-led Britain seems to be painted in...

News will out.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... Accept thanks for the article about Robert Kocharyan (Worldbeaters, NI 396). I'm glad and inspired that your magazine gives an opportunity to international society to know about Armenia's dictator. As a sign of solidarity I call upon us...

Challenge.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... I'm worried. Not just about my long term and true friend the NI, but about the movement for social justice in general. I fear that we spend a terrible amount of time, energy and resources preaching to the converted and, in so doing, moving our...

Bright not blue.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... I'm finding the magazine rather depressing as long-term food for thought and action. Each month we receive a new highlighted issue and other articles to worry about. They all have shock value and we are made aware of yet another issue or...

Cryptic clues at dusk.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... We love your crosswords! We live in a remote area--no mains electricity, TV, etc--and your crosswords keep us entertained and curious for some time. We look forward to NI crosswords by evenings. Ross and Holly Kendall Diggers Camp,...

Tongue twisters.(Letter from Mauritius)
April 1, 2007... I'd popped in to see my friend, Anne-Marie, for a few minutes of chatter and laughter while she was doing housework. But her four-year-old was bent, it seemed, on interrupting any conversation between us. As soon as we started talking, 'Mom,...

Nicaragua.(Country Profile)
April 1, 2007... Known as the 'land of lakes and volcanoes', Nicaragua is a land of turbulent history and social conflict. All eyes turned to Nicaragua last November as former guerrilla leader Daniel Ortega bounced back to power in an electoral victory that,...