New Internationalist articles from December 2006

New Internationalist archives from December 2006

Corruption.(From this month's editor)
December 1, 2006... There's nothing like a good corruption scandal. Especially if it involves the high and mighty with their pants down. Judges and politicians are especially good value. At times it seems we almost revel in the depths to which the powerful will...

Can the rot be stopped? High rhetoric, low deeds. Vanessa Baird examines the murky world of corruption.
December 1, 2006... They were not a happy pair. The two Nepalese teachers of journalism seemed to get glummer by the day. Finally, one morning, over breakfast in the Dhaka guesthouse where we were staying, they explained. For three months they had been...

Big mouths.(humour about corruption)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... Some people are corrupt as hell... OBVIOUSLY... Once in a while they get caught with their pants down. Like the men at ENRON. But most times corrupt people just get away with it... They abuse their power and use their influence...

I was a city boy, a soft Asian: novelist MG Vassanji describes growing up with graft in Tanzania.(PSYCHOLOGY)(corruption)
December 1, 2006... In the 1960s the Tanzanian government instituted compulsory National Service for the nation's high-school leavers. This was in order to make us more tough and patriotic. After my final exams, when the National Service placements appeared in the...

Arms, farts and bribe fairies: activist comedian Mark Thomas is on the warpath.(ARMS TRADE)
December 1, 2006... John Entwhistle, the now dead bass player for The Who, once said that liking heavy metal music was akin to passing wind; you didn't mind the smell of your own farts but object to everyone else's. Given Entwhistle's proclivity for cocaine it is...

Corruption busters: there are no quick fixes, no magic cleaners to get rid of corruption. But the courageous stand of both groups and individuals shows that corruption is not insurmountable.(Association of Women Against the Mafia)(Organization overview)
December 1, 2006... MOVIMENTO ANTIMAFIA On a summer's day in 1992, women in Palermo were hanging out their sheets from their balconies. Nothing unusual about that--except that the sheets were inscribed with anti-mafia slogans. Soon the sheet protest turned...

Killersting: the World Bank has vowed to tackle corruption and fight for transparency in the development programmes it funds. In light of this Sandhya Srinivasan takes a close look at one of its pet programmes in India.(WORLD BANK)
December 1, 2006... The thick forests and natural wealth of Gomia in Northern India conceal an appalling poverty and a variety of illness. Malaria is one of these illnesses. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Men and women survive by selling coal extracted from...

Corruption's big funder--or how to 'lose' $100 billion without really trying.(WORLD BANK)
December 1, 2006... The World Bank is a massive funder of sleaze. This is largely due to close ties between rich-world governments--represented on the World Bank Board of Governors--and transnational corporations which make financial donations to these...

Corruption around the world: due to the hidden nature of corruption and the paucity of criminal convictions, scientific evidence is difficult to come by. Much of the information on these pages comes from surveys of people's opinion, experience and perceptions of corruption.(Statistical table)
December 1, 2006... [GRAPHIC OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] leaders (3) The ten most corrupt heads of state, based on the estimated sums they are alleged to have stolen, are: MOHAMED SUHARTO Indonesia 1967-1998 LOOT: $15 - $35...

Anatomy of a scam: John Githongo, Kenya's exiled anti-corruption chief, speaks to Vanessa Baird.(WHISTLE BLOWER)(Interview)
December 1, 2006... 'I'm careful with interviews,' says John Githongo, as he settles his large frame into one of the Oxford college armchairs. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] With reason. The exiled former anti-corruption tsar of Kenya has been making powerful...

'I knew too much'.(WHISTLE BLOWER)(Kenya)(Chronology)
December 1, 2006... In a 91-page dossier addressed to his employer, His Excellency the President of Kenya, former Permanent Secretary for Governance and Ethics John Githongo provides a rather sinister insight into corruption in high places. Here are some extracts:...

More scary than terrorism? A word of warning from Anna Winterbottom.(RHETORIC)(corruption)
December 1, 2006... It is a commonplace of anti-corruption campaigns that the world has more to fear from corruption than terrorism. Indeed, the current use of the term 'corruption' can be compared to the term 'terrorism' with which it is often linked. 'Fear'...

Action against corruption.
December 1, 2006... A few principles... * Fighting corruption begins at home. * Transparency is key. * Anti-corruption Conventions are useless without prosecutions. * Naming and shaming wrongdoers is a powerful deterrent. * Confidentiality...

Parkicide: Colombian wilderness sacrificed to spraying programme.(WAR ON DRUGS)
December 1, 2006... IN the depths of the mountainous jungle terrain of the Macarena National Park in southern Colombia, hundreds of labourers toiled amid endless fields of coca bushes under a scorching sun. Using their bare hands, they tore out the green coca...

Bordering on ridiculous.(IMMIGRATION)(plans to build two-layer fence along the US-Mexico border)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... The US Congress has approved a plan to build a 1,100-kilometre-long, two-layer fence along the US-Mexico border in an attempt to keep out illegal immigrants. This has elicited an overwhelmingly negative reaction from environmentalists. ...

Speechmarks.(Currents)
December 1, 2006... "The frog does not drink up the pond in which it lives" Chinese proverb

Musharraf's hidden war: stubborn Baloch resistance sparked by Pakistani assassination.(PAKISTAN)(General Pervez Musharraf, Balochistan)
December 1, 2006... As Pakistani ruler General Pervez Musharraf completed his diplomatic-cum-book-tour of Western capitals he raised many eyebrows with his blunt talk. But there was one subject that wasn't part of his shoot-from-the-lip candour--the current...

Word power.(Currents)(language used in Middle East)(Brief article)(Glossary)
December 1, 2006... The language of the Middle East... ceasefire v. to stop firing unless you really want to. Gaza Strip n. landing site for Israeli bombs. Hizbullah n. Middle Eastern bird, relative of cuckoo; makes its home in other birds' nests....

Small-but-scary symbol sought.(NANOTECHNOLOGY)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... Nuclear power, toxic chemicals, electromagnetic radiation: each of these techno-hazards has a universally recognized warning symbol. So why not nanotechnology, invisible to the human eye but more powerful and potentially more dangerous? It used...

Lunatic beetroot: AIDS activists demand that health minister be fired.(SOUTH AFRICA)(Manto Tshabalala-Msimang)
December 1, 2006... IN August this year an HIV-positive prisoner died at Westville correctional centre in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province, a region with one of the highest HIV rates in the world. For Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) it was the last straw. ...

All fired up.(Seriously ...)(Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 banned )
December 1, 2006... Seriously has found irony heaven in the recent news coming out of Conroe, Texas. It seems a secondary school reading assignment upset one student and her father so much that they moved to have the school ban the book from the curriculum...

Robert Kocharian.(Worldbeaters)(Biography)
December 1, 2006... When Robert Kocharian became President of the Republic of Armenia in 1998, many analysts and international observers hoped that peace with neighbouring Azerbaijan would follow. Although a ceasefire had been in effect since 1994, the frozen...

Queer Noises: From the Closet to the Charts 1961-1978.(Sound recording review)
December 1, 2006... Queer Noises: From the Closet to the Charts 1961-1978 by Various Artists (Trikont CD) A long time before the Village People, there was a mass of pop ephemera that was out and loud. Queer Noises, a 24 tracker, 15 years in the making,...

Plague Songs.(Sound recording review)
December 1, 2006... Plague Songs by Various Artists (4AD CAD 2616 CD) The Book of Exodus provides the starting point for this inspired collection of ten songs based on the plagues sent to bother the Old Testament Egyptians. Commissioned by the British art...

Esma's Secret.(Movie review)
December 1, 2006... Esma's Secret written and directed by Jasmila Zbanic Sara plays football with boys, gets in trouble at school, bunks off, and is touchy and unappreciative. Her mother, Esma, struggles with two jobs--she needs the money to send Sara on...

Rampage.(Movie review)
December 1, 2006... Rampage directed by George Gittoes While in Baghdad, Gittoes, an Australian photographer and documentary film maker, hears Elliott Lovett, an American soldier, claim that the streets of his Miami neighbourhood are even more dangerous....

Two to avoid ... Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait.(Movie review)
December 1, 2006... Two to avoid... Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait directed by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno Is Zidane sweating better than David Beckham sleeping? Maybe. But drips off the man's nose, even from 17 different cameras, say...

Container.(Movie review)
December 1, 2006... Container written and directed by Lukas Moodysson Moodysson has made two great films--Together and Lilya 4-ever. This, though, is hardly a film. It's more an audio novel, a monologue about gender, religion and death. The arbitrary...

The Book of Chameleons.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa translated by Daniel Hahn (Arcadia ISBN 1905147 15 5) In Creole, his only other novel translated into English, Jose Eduardo Agualusa took the reader on a journey of high adventure and...

The Body Hunters.(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Body Hunters by Sonia Shah (The New Press ISBN 978 1 56584 912 9) If ever there was an industry that believed the ends justify the means it has to be Pharmaceuticals. The ends in question are often believed to be pioneering...

Southern exposure: highlighting the work of photographers from the majority world.( street violence in Guatemala )(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... I couldn't believe that passers-by weren't killed when a shooting occurred between drug traffickers on a busy day in one of the principal avenues in Guatemala City. Two presumed drug traffickers were murdered in their car, which had lots of...

A visit to my hometown.(View from Osumenyi)
December 1, 2006... My oldest paternal uncle died in July. He was probably almost 100, and was born long before we began to keep written records. He was the oldest man in my extended family and also one of the few people in my hometown--in Anambra State,...

Costing climate change: George Monbiot resists the urge to do battle in a fog of meaningless statistics.
December 1, 2006... Now that the dismissal of climate change is no longer fashionable, the professional deniers are trying another means of stopping us from taking action. It would be cheaper, they say, to wait for the impacts of climate change and then adapt...

Big bad world.(Cartoon)
December 1, 2006... BiG BaD WoRLd [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Interview with Vandana Gopikumar about tackling mental disability on the streets of an Indian city.(The Banyan, nonprofit organization)(Interview)
December 1, 2006... In the sweltering congestion of Chennai (formerly Madras), a woman runs from one end of busy Harrows Road to the other. She is half-naked, with lice crawling over her body. Her hair is matted with dirt. Clearly delusional, she is oblivious to...

Save ourselves, not the planet.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... Can I have some clarity about what is actually at risk as a result of the unsustainable existence that large numbers of the human race appear hopelessly addicted to? I constantly see references to 'saving the planet' and 'the destruction of the...

Social protection.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... While wholeheartedly agreeing with Susan George ('Whose Europe? Our Europe!', Europa! NI 394) that we have in Europe 'a social system worth safeguarding and fighting for' which should be an example to the rest of the world, I should like to...

Migration symptoms.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... I was dismayed to read the article by Sharif Gemie ('To Barcelona or Hell', NI 394) because promoting freedom to migrate to Europe for citizens of Africa is a treatment of the symptom, not the cause of the problem. Millions of people wanting to...

Unsafe and ineffective.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... In addition to being cruel, animal testing does not protect human beings (Letters, NIs 393 and 394). In July 2004, the US Food and Drug Administration published a report indicating that of all drugs that test safe and effective in animals, a...

Appalled.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... As an advertiser with 12 years' experience in top London agencies, I was appalled at Advertising overload (NI 393). You call advertising 'a bit of a compulsive liar' yet you use misinformation and half truths to create a diatribe against my...

Oil from gold.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... New Internationalist is always a good read, but Advertising overload was especially excellent. The oil company mentioned in 'Beneath the gloss' has an interesting history. It was originally Commonwealth Oil Refineries. It was started by William...

Private purpose.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... Good to read your expose of the banking system (Banks exposed, NI 392). However, it would have been good also to read about the fact that the private banks create money out of nothing, as a debt, for private profit. The private banking system...

Spiralling debt.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... The amount of debt in the economy has long ago surpassed the amount of money created by banks (NI 392), so inevitably more borrowing is required to pay off existing debts. It is an unsustainable and iniquitous system, which by creating money...

Where the streets have no shame: an ages-old form of public expression is squeezed out. Lindsey Collen surveys the encroaching slick.(Letter from Mauritius)
December 1, 2006... On a dark and rather blustery night two of my friends were out in the capital, Port Louis, pasting up the usual big-format letter-press posters announcing a coming public political meeting to be held in the vicinity. Navy-blue ink on off-white...

Mozambique.(Country Profile)(Country overview)
December 1, 2006... As customers arrive at the capital's bustling Costa Do Sol fish market, raggedly dressed boys descend, jostling with each other to be the first to sell plastic bags, or their services, which include carrying and scaling fish or guarding cars....