New Internationalist articles from December 2003

New Internationalist archives from December 2003

From this month's editor.(Editorial)
December 1, 2003... PERSONALLY, I blame rationing. While I was growing up, through the years of post-war austerity, food was scarce in Britain and dispensed rather like medicine: cod-liver oil, concentrated orange juice, milk, malt, porridge, offal, greens, more...

Stop the free ride.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... Although, as Pipeline cowboys (NI 361) explained, the World Bank is heavily involved in oil pipelines, export credit agencies (ECAs)--the new kids on the international financial block--are also scrambling to provide public funds. ...

Illegal propaganda.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... Thank you for recommending a book examining the issue of war propaganda (Mixed Media, NI 361). Few people realize that such propaganda is a violation of our, human rights. Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,...

Action is the key.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... David Ransom's review of Samantha Power's book A Problem From Hell (Mixed Media, NI 361) exposes some extremely dangerous prejudices about the US that currently exist on the Left. Ransom argues that there is little evidence to suggest that if...

Mugabe offends.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... The introduction to your Worldbeaters article on Paul Biya (NI 361) implied that the President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, 'offends' only a particular 'group'--white farmers. This is far from the truth. He is starving his people (apart from...

Socialist worker.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... Katherine Ainger's strategy of community self-help (Keynote, Reinventing power, NI 360) just doesn't measure up to the urgent needs of billions of ordinary people in today's world. She is right to say the strategy of electing governments to...

Take power.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... Community based support ('The power of the cooking pot', NI 360) seems like a good idea for those places where it will work, though we need to be careful to avoid developing a new tribalism with it (I've seen the adverse consequences of...

DIY.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... Urvashi Butalia conveyed the oppressive heat and difficult conditions of New Delhi ('Hot and bothered', View from the South, NI 360) and how hard it is especially on the poorest members of society. But we who live in the wealthier parts of the...

Pay to drive.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... I disagree with S J Lees (Letters, NI 360) that relatively environmentally friendly fuel for cars--such as cooking oil produced renewably--should be exempt from tax, even though it should be taxed at a lower rate than conventional fuel. A...

Fuelled up.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... As a studying artist, I am constantly scouring my world for new sources of inspiration and the NI has never let me down. I was inspired to write and to paint, by your Sounds of dissent issue (NI 359). It was my first exposure to many of the...

Stark choice.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... I resent the accusation that Westerners are 'shopping' for babies in India (Currents, NI 359). If a couple in this overpopulated world is infertile, the socially responsible thing to do is not to go for fertility treatments but to adopt a child...

Nuisance value.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... After reading about Australia's carbon dioxide emissions (Climate Change Solutions, NI 357) I have never been more ashamed of living where I do. I believe I am going to start making a nuisance of myself to my local representatives until we sign...

The protector.(Letter From)
December 1, 2003... HE calls me every few months. 'I'm passing out copies of your article to everyone who comes,' he says excitedly over the telephone. It's been more than a year since I wrote a small article about the Roman quarry located near the...

Highlighting the work of photographers from the Majority World.(Southern Exposure)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... WHEN I was working as a photojournalist, a colleague advised me to come to Government House in Bangkok for the Cabinet meeting every Tuesday. The chance for protesters to make the news is higher on a Tuesday than on other days, when journalists...

When culture kills.(Urvashi Butalia's View From the South)
December 1, 2003... HESHU YONES was 16 and in love. For this her father slit her throat and killed her. Heshu's 'crime' was that she fell in love with a fellow student at her college. The young man belonged to a different religion and the two planned to...

Ethical threads: Nicaraguan women's co-op offers alternative to sweatshops.(Fair Trade)
December 1, 2003... WITHOUT a home, job or money after Hurricane Mitch's devastation in 1998, Zulema Mena could not foresee that she would eventually become part of a small group acting as role models for the estimated 40,000 maquila (garment export factory)...

Pioneers for a saner world.(Currents)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... It has been said that if the Nobel Prizes reflected world concerns of the 20th century, the Right Livelihood Awards should epitomize those of the 21st. Founded in 1980, the Right Livelihood Awards (sometimes known as the Alternative...

Indian court causes a stir.(Currents)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Since the early 1990s India has set itself on the World Bank and IMF-approved path of liberalization. This has included letting in foreign investment and allowing companies to take over carefully nurtured Indian industries. Retired Supreme...

Still waiting for liberation: rapists and politicians keep Iraqi women off the streets and out of sight.(Iraq)
December 1, 2003... THESE days one can see very few young female Iraqis, married or single, walking alone in the streets of Baghdad during the day, much less after dark. Six months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi women are waiting on the sidelines to...

Slum lowdown.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... UN-HABITAT's Global Report on Human Settlements reveals some stunning statistics about the world's slums and slum dwellers. The proportion of the world's urban population living in slums is 32 per cent. But in developing countries that...

"The powerful piss on us, and the press says it is raining.".(Speechmarks)
December 1, 2003... Motto on a fundraising badge being sold by alternative news outlet Uruguay indymedia. The motto first started appearing as graffiti in the poor barrios of Argentina in the wake of the recent financial crisis.

Guerrilla/war.(Word Corner)
December 1, 2003... A present-day guerrilla is someone engaged in irregular warfare. The first known use of guerrilla is by the Duke of Wellington in 1809. Guerrilla is the diminutive of the Spanish guerra (war), so the literal meaning is 'little war'. The English...

People power: globalization resistance brings down a President.(Bolivia)
December 1, 2003... On the night of 17 October, those Bolivians who own TVs were witness to a split-screen image of history unfolding. At the bottom was a Boeing 767 taking off for an overnight flight to Miami, carrying aboard Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, who had...

Cannibals apologize to the eaten: true tales of the absurd.(Seriously ...)
December 1, 2003... A village on the island of Viti Levu in Fiji has invited the British descendants of the last man their ancestors cooked and ate to visit in order to issue a formal apology. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Reverend Baker was a 19th-century...

Help the gnomeless.(Seriously ...)
December 1, 2003... A police station in the French city of Strasbourg was disappointed when only one person showed up to claim their missing gnome during an official 'gnome return day'. In 2001, the underground Garden Gnome Liberation Front stole 75 gnomes...

The sugar trap: David Ransom finds the way out.(Keynote)
December 1, 2003... From the moment infants first taste lactose in milk, humans seem to find sweetness alluring. 'I want a little sugar in my bowl,' pleaded Nina Simone, 'I want a little sweetness down in my soul.' The refined sucrose we usually call 'sugar'...

Perilous pleasure: people can easily get confused about sugar. We are supposed to. The sugar pushers go to great lengths to make us--and keep us--that way. Though the science may be complex, the truth is simple: refined 'free' sugar is not food.
December 1, 2003... WHAT IS SUGAR? * Sugar takes several forms, most commonly fructose in fruit and vegetables, lactose in milk, and refined or 'pure' sucrose extracted from sugarcane or beet. * Sucrose--C12H22O11--is composed of carbon, hydrogen and...

Sugar daddies: sugarcane has fuelled the corruption of political power in some states of India--the world's largest sugar producer. But, as Dionne Bunsha reveals, it's the small farmers who pay the price.(Production)
December 1, 2003... MEET Balasaheb Shinde. He's wondering how he will abandon his children. Balasaheb is a small farmer of sugarcane in Beed, Maharashtra. He's so deep in debt that this year he and his wife will have to migrate to find work as cane cutters. His...

Hungry ghosts: eating disorders and sugar are close companions. Anita Ferruzzi examines the relationship.(Diet)
December 1, 2003... ADDICTS are known to Buddhism as 'hungry ghosts'. No matter how much they consume, it is not enough. They are lured by the voices of sirens, their cravings, which lead them to self-destruction. Hungry ghosts are on the increase and food has...

Sugar squad! Agent oppy-pay obridge-tray (not her real name) breaks cover to reveal the truth about a ruthless cereal killer.(Diet)
December 1, 2003... I CAN'T tell you who I work for. But I can assure you that I am out there--on the beat daily. You might even have crossed my path. Unaware, we could have bumped carts, simultaneously reached for the last pot of yoghourt or maybe exchanged that...

Twin trap the facts: trap one--production how the world says hooked! trap two--consumption.
December 1, 2003... Although sugar is present in all plants, there are just two that are cultivated to produce sucrose (refined sugar). Cane grows only in tropical or subtropical climates. Beet grows in cooler, temperate climates. A few large countries that have...

Sweet nothings in Cancun: the World Trade Organization (WTO) claims to have 'development' at the top of its agenda. But as Katharine Ainger discovered outside its latest meeting in Mexico, it's killing people instead.(Trade)
December 1, 2003... THE state of Quintana Roo, on the furthest eastern shore of Mexico, was a lush, overgrown, tropical outpost for most of its history--a haven for Caribbean pirates, outlaws and indigenous Maya living beyond the reach of government. In 1970...

Tales from Tagalog: the odds may be against them, but the people of a village in the Philippines are determined to reclaim their land from sugar. Devlin Kuyek and Andrew Skinner report.(Land)
December 1, 2003... THE ride home through the sugar hacienda can be disheartening for the residents of Buntog, a small village within the Canlubang Sugar Estate in the Filipino province of Southern Tagalog. The jeepneys (the distinctive national mode of...

Cattail country: Mark Engler describes how Florida sugar barons built their fortunes by abusing migrant farm workers, milking US taxpayers and destroying endangered wetlands.(Environment)
December 1, 2003... CATTAILS love sugar almost as much as people do. The stalky marshland plants huddle in dense bunches on uncultivated areas bordering South Florida's sugar farms. And the bunches are expanding ever southward into the wetlands. It's not the sweet...

Dirty business.
December 1, 2003... A few months ago the NI received an email from ALMAZ MEQUANINT, an Ethiopian now resident in the US. She described her former life in Wonji, a sugar-refining town in Ethiopia. We forwarded her email to the Dutch company HVA, which built and ran...

Slave sugar.
December 1, 2003... Between the 16th and 19th centuries upwards of 10 million Africans were enslaved by Europeans and transported to the 'New World'--arguably the most prolonged episode of savagery in human history. Many slaves did not survive the 'middle passage'...

Refined white.(Labour)
December 1, 2003... SLAVE-LIKE LABOUR helped establish many of Australia's primary industries, and the sugar industry was no exception. The promise of free transported labour that was provided by convicts to early Australian kings of commerce ceased in 1853,...

Boris Berezovsky.(Worldbeaters)
December 1, 2003... Status: Successful Asylum Seeker Reputation: Entrepreneur, Victim of Unjust Persecution, Battler for Freedom and Democracy in the former Soviet Union HELL hath no fury like an oligarch scorned. Boris Berezovsky (aka Borya) is hopping...

Cuckooland.(MixedMedia)(Sound Recording Review)
December 1, 2003... It's six years since his last album, Shleep, but as always with Robert Wyatt the wait is worth it. With 16 tracks--and a little help from old friends such as Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, Gilad Atzmon as well as Wyatt's partner Alfreda Benge--it...

The Festival in the Desert.(MixedMedia)(Brief Article)(Sound Recording Review)
December 1, 2003... Those who find the usual music festivals a little too run-of-the-mill these days are advised to head for Mali. With a little forward planning, you should just get there in time for the January Festival in the Desert. Start first in Essouk and...

Battle's Poison Cloud.(MixedMedia)(Movie Review)
December 1, 2003... During their 'American War', the Vietcong, although poorly equipped, were able to control large areas of South Vietnam using the cover of the jungle. The US military, with its massively superior firepower, could never find, and so could not...

The Fountain at the Centre of the World.(MixedMedia)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Robert Newman's third novel ambitiously combines a thriller plotline with an anti-globalization message. The story follows the intertwined lives of three men. Chano Salgado is a disillusioned Mexican activist, newly released from jail. Evan...

Caravanserai: journey among Australian Muslims.(MixedMedia)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Ten years ago, Hanifa Deen travelled throughout Australia recording the daily realities of Australian Muslims. Here she revisits that same caravan trail and the changes are astounding. During the intervening years, which have included...

Regime Unchanged.(MixedMedia)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Regime Unchanged is the follow-up to Milan Rai's excellent anti-war argument War Plan Iraq. It provides a fascinating close reading of the events leading up to the war, dissecting the lies that attempted to sustain the Weapons of Mass...

Flip-Flotsam.(MixedMedia)(Movie Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Flip-Flotsam is a Kenyan short made in association with the Kenyan Wildlife Service. It follows the working life of the ubiquitous flip-flop from production in a Mombasa factory to disposal and eventual rebirth as children's toys. Tens of...

Interview with Meena Menon.(Making Waves)(Interview)
December 1, 2003... 'THERE are huge social movements in India--dam movements, farmers, trade unions--and millions of struggles against globalization,' declares Meena Menon, an emphatic Indian activist working on the committee of the 2004 World Social Forum (WSF),...

Star struck: a banal cult of celebrity is spreading round the globe, argues John F Schumaker. And it's pushing aside political engagement in the process.(Essay)
December 1, 2003... Would you gladly die for Robbie Williams or Anna Kournikova? Or rob a bank if asked to by Russell Crowe or Shakira? If you won $1,000 would you buy a toilet seat once owned by Mick Jagger or Demi Moore? Do you lose it when Jamie Oliver twirls a...

Somaliland.(Country Profile)
December 1, 2003... THE death of President Mohamed Ibrahim Egal in May 2002 put back in jeopardy the autonomous but unrecognized state of Somaliland. His government had survived pariah status for nine years, in spite of inheriting a war-devastated infrastructure,...