New Internationalist articles from December 2008

New Internationalist archives from December 2008

Told ye so! there, I said it--but for those of us long sceptical.(economic depressions)
December 1, 2008... Told ye so! There, I said it--but for those of us long sceptical of corporate power and the money machine, it's hard to resist the temptation. As stock markets tumble, banks plead for public bailout and predictions of a gloomy future cloud the...

Cars vs bikes.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2008... Scots have long understood that it was Kilpatrick Macmillan who was father of the modern bicycle and not Ernest Michaux as claimed in 'Pedal power' (Special Feature, Through Afghan eyes, NI 417). His invention dates to 1839 and was made of...

No surprise.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2008... I was not surprised to see your article on 'Death camps in Kosovo' (Currents, NI 417) after reading Graham Hancock's book Lords of Poverty in which he exposes the extremely high salaries, overgenerous perks, officials' jet-setting lifestyles,...

Cuban commitment.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2008... Katherine Edyvane's Essay on Cuban medical superpower (Tax Justice, NI 416) has touched me greatly. Several years ago, at age 59, I decided to join a Canadian brigade of coffee harvesters in the highlands of Nicaragua during the time of the...

Nuclear clarity.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2008... Re: Joe Hanania's letter in NI 416. The United States did not test an atomic device in secret a 'full year' before the atomic strike against Hiroshima. The 'Trinity' test was staged on 16 July 1945 and the Hiroshima attack occurred on 6 August...

Lingering trash.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2008... One thing is very clear from Drowning in plastic (NI 415) -to make ephemeral consumer goods and packaging intended only to be thrown away, out of materials that last almost forever is completely crazy! Susan Francis Malvern, England

Toxic disregard.(Letters)(animal experimentation)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Whilst 'This Toxic Life' (Keynote, Drowning in plastic, NI 415) is informative and shocking, I was dismayed at the disregard for animal experimentation issues. The so-called 'safety testing' of chemicals involves the incarceration,...

Useful shit.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2008... Your edition on Toilets (Nl 414) was a good one, but one-sided. Largely missing was the vital importance of retrieval and reuse of human excrement. Every ounce of living material removed from an area of land, for animal or human food (or for...

Only planet.(Cartoon)
December 1, 2008... GORT & KLAATU'S INTER-GALACTIC HEALTH & SAFETY INSPECTORATE. These anti-human COMPLAINTS go ON and ON, Gort. TORTURE, MURDER, WRONGFUL IMPRISONMENT, GENOCIDE. It's a catalogue of WOE! [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The VICTIMS say that...

Correction.(Correction notice)
December 1, 2008... In our Tax Justice edition, the image on page four comes from Monrovia, Liberia and not from Freetown as we stated.

Manners and the man: queuing at the pharmacy becomes torture for Maria Golia.(Letter from Cairo)
December 1, 2008... Cairo wasn't made for winter, and despite its overall decrepitude, looks better beneath a blazing sun. Dark days reveal its weaknesses, the shadows of dirt, neglect and want. The worst is when it rains, which isn't often but comes in winter,...

Year of living dangerously: the global food crisis threatens to spread in the wake of economic chaos. Richard Swift sees both peril and promise in the future.(KEYNOTE)
December 1, 2008... 2008 - what a year! First the price of petroleum doubled, then a global food crisis, now a complete financial meltdown. People can be forgiven for wondering 'what next?' The runaway cost of basic foodstuffs hit hard earlier in the year. The...

Action.(KEYNOTE)(food security)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... The seeds of a movement to change the way we produce and consume food are already in place. In almost every community one can find farmers' markets, fair trade shops, food co-operatives, direct buying schemes, organic food stores, urban...

Profits in hungry times: there is always money to be made out of human misery. The campaigning group Grain traces the corporate manipulation behind the global food crisis.(AGRIBUSINESS)
December 1, 2008... The current hunger crisis is forcing millions of the world's most vulnerable people to the edge. The most recent headlines come from Ethiopia but it was Haiti earlier this year that provided a quick snapshot of the dynamics of starvation....

Food last! hungry Peruvians are taking to the streets while the government and foreign corporations feast on the spoils from the country's natural resources. Stephanie Boyd reports from Cuzco.(PROTEST)
December 1, 2008... With cries of 'Down with the cost of living!', thousands of angry marchers filed past crowds of startled tourists in Cuzco's main square. Over 500 years ago the last Inca ruler, Tupac Amaru, was decapitated in this plaza by Spanish conquerors,...

Meat's too expensive: Chris Brazier believes that having flesh at the centre of our diets is both unjust and unsustainable.(MEAT)(Viewpoint essay)
December 1, 2008... When I first became a vegetarian 30 years ago I used to find myself in passionate discussions about food issues all the time. The situation seemed so urgent. There were so many reasons to be vegetarian that I felt (and still feel) that the...

Food crisis the facts: the increase in global food prices may have temporarily stalled but food is expected to remain at record price levels for the foreseeable future. Industrial agriculture's chickens have come home to roost. But the price is being paid not by agribusiness and food retailers but by small farmers who income remains low, and by the millions being pushed into malnutrition.
December 1, 2008... Food price take-off Rise in food prices 2005-2008(3) [GRAPHIC OMITTED] Who wins? Big companies: * The share price of two of the world's biggest agribusinesses-Monsanto and Syngenta AG-almost doubled between June 2007 and June...

Peak soil: in a world plagued with worries about depleting resources, having enough dirt to go round seems like the least of our problems. David Montgomery dissents.(SOIL DEPLETION)
December 1, 2008... Oil is what most of us think of as a strategic resource, yet in the long run it is soil which is the more important. Even so, people's eyes tend to glaze over when talk turns to soil conservation, maybe because it's so much easier to see the...

Selling out the farm: Ray Burley's story is all too familiar to Canadian farmers.(FARMING)
December 1, 2008... 'Why do they bury dead farmers only two feet deep?' asks the farmer. 'So they can still get their hand out...' It is gallows humour, the kind of canary-in-the-coalmine commentary used by race comedians. Many farmers tell the story because...

Fusion time: with industrial agriculture getting a failing grade for its inability to feed the hungry and its high ecological costs, Wayne Roberts thinks we need to mix and match to restore a sustainable and fair food system.(ALTERNATIVES)(Viewpoint essay)
December 1, 2008... I've got to thinking that Fusion may be just the answer to the world's power shortage problem. Calm down--I'm not thinking about nuclear fusion for electrical power! I'm thinking about Fusion foods, which offer new ways of combining a wide...

The road to meltdown: David Ransom takes a global look at a financial crisis still largely couched in parochial terms.(Financial crisis)(Viewpoint essay)
December 1, 2008... 'You mean, we're giving the banks all this money just so they can lend it back to us with interest? Well yes, that is precisely what the bank bailout currently means-and an incredulous vox pop' interviewee on a radio station in Britain had got...

Clean start-creating a fair economy: with capitalism crashing about our ears, now is the time to make a fairer future. We have asked writers, thinkers and activists from around the world to look at the opportunities presented by the current crises and to propose strategies for radical change.(Financial crisis)
December 1, 2008... TRADE First and foremost, the crisis has debunked the theory that deregulation of markets will bring greater prosperity. The 'light touch' approach is now universally recognized as one of the main causes of the current crisis. Yet the...

An historic opportunity for transformation.(THE BEIJING DECLARATION)(Conference notes)
December 1, 2008... At the recent Asia-Europe People's Forum meeting in Beijing, the Transnational Institute and Focus on the Global South convened informal nightly meetings to take stock of the unfolding global economic crisis. Participants discussed the...

Interview about the War on Terror boardgame.(Making Waves)(Interview)
December 1, 2008... Sitting on the couch watching TV, you hear the news that your country is about to invade another. Horror and amazement mixes with frustration as you realize how absolutely powerless you are to stop it. 'Hang on a minute,' said Andy Sheerin to...

The Baader Meinhof complex.(Mixed Media)(Movie review)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... The Baader Meinhof Complex written and produced by Bernd Eichinger, directed by Uli Edel (150 minutes) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Eichinger's last film, Downfall, showed Hitler as ruthless--but idealistic. It took flak for humanizing a...

Waltz with Bashir.(Mixed Media)(Movie review)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Waltz With Bashir written, produced and directed by Ari Folman (87 minutes) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman's latest is an animated docudrama in which the director and his friends play key roles. One night, in a...

The silence of Lorna.(Mixed Media)(Movie review)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... The Silence of Lorna written and directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (105 minutes) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Lorna, an Albanian working in a Belgian laundry, needs money to open a snack bar. The first step is citizenship, so she...

Gomidas songs.(Mixed Media)(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Gomidas Songs by Isabel Bayrakdarian (Nonesuch 075597991055 CD) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the closing years of the Ottoman Empire, Gomidas Vartabed, a priest and composer, set out across his native Armenia--then a Turkish territory--to...

Deserted villages.(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... Deserted Villages by George Dalaras (Tropical Music/Universal Music Greece 68 865 CD) Born in Piraeus in 1949, the son of a rembetika musician, George Dalaras could not have come from any place closer to the crucible of Greek rembetika...

A most wanted man.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 1, 2008... A Most Wanted Man by John le Carre (Hodder & Stoughton ISBN 9780340977064) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When the Cold War ended, many critics wondered whether its chronicler-in-chief John le Carre had lost his subject matter. In a series of...

Belching out the devil.(Book review)
December 1, 2008... Belching Out the Devil by Mark Thomas (Ebury Press, ISBN 9780091922931) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There is a company which manufactures and distributes concentrated sugary syrup and the way it conducts its affairs is the subject of Mark...

Cuban birthday feast.(books and movie about the Cuban Revolution)(Movie review)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 1, 2008... The imminent 50th anniversary of the Revolution has produced a feast for Cuba buffs and novices alike. There's the comprehensive and highly accessible Cuban Revolution Reader by Julio Garcia Luis, in a new expanded and updated version (Ocean...

NI prize crossword 137 by AXE.
December 1, 2008... Win a Special Map Set--laminated Peter's Map, Peters' Atlas, Seeing Through Maps plus DVD... All correct solutions received by the 25th of the cover month will be put into a draw--though only the winner will be notified. Post to: NI Crossword,...

Big bad world.(Cartoon)
December 1, 2008... I HIDE MYSELF UNDER LAYERS OF MAKE UP BECAUSE ADVERTISING SAYS MY FACE ISN'T ATTRACTIVE ENOUGH TO MEN... I HIDE MYSELF UNDER LAYERS OF CLOTH BECAUSE THE IMAM SAYS MY FACE IS TOO ATTRACTIVE TO MEN... -AND WE'RE BOTH PISSING OURSELVES...

Clean start building a fairer global economy.(SPECIAL EVENT!)
December 1, 2008... Confused by the credit crunch? Maddened by the meltdown? The events of the last few weeks will change the world. Will that change be positive? Putting people before profit? Giving the world's poor a say in how the global economy is run? Or will...

Artful Bono dodges tax.(CAMPAIGNS UPDATE)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... BONO has been named MOST ARTFUL TAX DODGER for dodging tax due on U2's huge fortune. Readers of NEW INTERNATIONALIST magazine voted overwhelmingly for the Irish rock star in a recent on-line poll. His prize for the uncomfortable title? We have...

Spanish take-off.(SAVE YASuNI!)(Mayor Anita Rivas)
December 1, 2008... After her visit to the UK last month, Anita Rivas, mayor of Yasuni's province in Ecuador, took a trip to Europe. She spent a week in Spain, accompanied by Georgie and Gines from the Yasuni Green Gold campaign, spreading the message that rich...

Get your postcards here!(SAVE YASuNI!)
December 1, 2008... With requests from supporters coming in every day for postcards urging Gordon Brown to take a global lead on Yasuni, we're currently out of stock. We're reprinting now so if you can use some just email yasuni@newint.org [ILLUSTRATION...

Take action: get your MP to sign the EDM.(SAVE YASuNl!)
December 1, 2008... Now that Anita's visit has raised the British Government's awareness of the Yasuni proposal to leave the oil in the ground, we need to put pressure on them to ensure they support it, in an improved form that takes the needs and rights of local...

Send-a-book success.(SAVE YASuNI!)(Yasuni National Park, Ecuador)(Brief article)
December 1, 2008... More thanks to campaign supporters around the world who have so far donated over 160 of the target of 200 Yasuni Green Gold books to be sent to decision-makers and influencers. They have been sent to foreign affairs, development and environment...