New Internationalist articles from January 2003

New Internationalist archives from January 2003

Obituary.(Arno Peters)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
January 1, 2003... Professor Arno Peters Arno Peters, best known for the Peters Map, died in Bremen, Germany, on 2 December 2002 at the age of 86. The guiding doctrine which ran through his thinking is summed up by the word 'equality'. His passionate...

Food and farming.(Brief Article)(Editorial)
January 1, 2003... FROM THIS MONTH'S EDITOR CHARLES DE GAULLE once said of France: 'How can you govern a country that has 246 varieties of cheese?' Diversity in food and farming systems has never been so popular with the public, and yet so far off the policy...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2003... Joy is precious Regarding the pictures on page nine of Get it right! (NI 352). Here, for all to see, were the faces of people who have dreamed the dream of wondrous things, and have awoken to find them a reality. The picture filled my...

'Mama, it's me!' Reem Haddad witnesses a very public reunion. (Letter from Lebanon).
January 1, 2003... I FIRST saw them on television. It was a live satellite broadcast of two women, one older and one younger, crying hysterically. They were obviously in different countries. Suddenly, the older woman fainted and television crew members rushed to...

Southern exposure: highlighting the work of photographers from the Majority World.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... THE Eksotika Karmawibhangga Indonesia (EKI) is a dance group run by a husband and wife who are performance artists. Starting out as a haven for stray youth, the EKI has blossomed into a troupe of talented dancers, singers and musicians who...

Israel: time to divest; in this one-off column, Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls for international campaigners to treat Israel as they treated apartheid South Africa. (Archbishop Desmond Tutu's View from the South).
January 1, 2003... THE end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the past century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure -- in particular the divestment movement of the 1980s. Over the past eight months...

The 'collateral' damage: just some of the people your government is planning to bomb. (Currents: Iraq).
January 1, 2003... In the war rooms of Washington and other Western capitals, Iraq appears as a series of images on strategic maps. No sound radiates from the electronic charts and no faces come into focus as officials adjust their sites and tap their grand...

Caravan. (Word Corner).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... Caravans have a long history before the present motor-hauled vehicles of that name, going back to the Persian karvan (group of desert travellers). A caravanserai (from the Persian) is like a motel for camels and the people travelling with them,...

Pay or die: Salvadoran healthcare workers battle privatization. (Resistance).
January 1, 2003... FOR weeks at the end of last year, the streets of San Salvador -- capital of El Salvador -- were covered in white. In September 2002 doctors and medical workers in the country's social-security healthcare system went on strike to protest...

The new peasants' revolt. (Keynote).
January 1, 2003... Corporate agriculture is turning family and peasant farmers from stewards of the land into servants, or eradicating their livelihoods completely. Katharine Ainger meets the farmers fighting back. EVERYTHING in a supermarket has a story to...

How (not) to feed Africa: Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher takes an alternative look at the Southern African famine. (Famine).
January 1, 2003... THE food shortage in Africa is now widespread. But the drought that has accompanied this shortage is not peculiar to Africa -- it is the condition of Africa that is peculiar and has created the famine conditions. What is a drought? Even in...

Tricks of the trade.
January 1, 2003... The global trade system, dominated by rich-world corporations, keeps poor countries poor. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the international body that makes the rules. These rules require poor countries to cut support to farmers and open...

Robin Hood in reverse: The relentless over-production of food in the US is destroying the rest of the world's agriculture. Anuradha Mittal takes a look at the subsidies driving it. (Subsidies).
January 1, 2003... THE 2002 Farm Bill can be best described as welfare with a difference, robbing the poor to pay the rich. While the Bill is a big bonanza for large producers of favored crops such as corn, soybeans and cotton, small family farms are...

Tainted tortillas: Tania Molina Ramirez reports from Mexico, where indigenous corn varieties have been found to contain genetically engineered material. (Genetic Modification).
January 1, 2003... WHO would have imagined that the environmental news story of the year would surface one Saturday night on the TV channel of the Mexican Congress? 'Our native maize is, in some regions of Oaxaca, contaminated with modified genes,' Lina...

Food and farming the facts.
January 1, 2003... Hunger Many people still do not get anything like enough to eat -- while others eat far too much. (1,2) In 1997-99 (the most recent figures) there were: * 815 million undernourished (without enough food to meet their daily energy...

The market and the monsoon. (India).
January 1, 2003... A quarter of the world's farmers are Indian. In this three-part report Katharine Ainger journeys through Andhra Pradesh to uncover their problems, solutions -- and a grandiose plan to transform agriculture that will ride roughshod over the...

Cutting the wire: fewer people own more of the land in Brazil than anywhere else in the world--but now, as Sue Branford reports, landless people are taking matters into their own hands. (Land Reform).
January 1, 2003... AT about midday, several jeeps and cars drew up on the road near the rough camp in front of an abandoned church. Here, about seven hours earlier, I had helped three-dozen landless peasants to occupy the land and build makeshift huts out of...

Islands in the forest. (South America: Brazil).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... The deforested landscape of Pontal do Paranapanema in Sao Paulo, Brazil, is being reinvigorated by community tree-planting in an effort to save threatened species in the 35,000 hectares of Morro do Diabo State Park. One of the biggest threats...

Red worms downtown. (South America: Argentina).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... The urban poor in Rosario, Argentina's third-largest city, are employing the Californian red worm to munch the city's organic waste. With unemployment up following the economic meltdown and a continuing flood of settlers to the city, more and...

Sticky rice rules. (South America: Laos).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... Forty-seven ethnic groups inhabit Laos and between them cultivate up to 4,000 varieties of rice--a diversity rivalled only by India. Individual villages and even families may cultivate up to a dozen varieties, the majority using traditional and...

Rice intensification. (Africa: Madagascar).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... In Madagascar a system of intensification is dramatically increasing rice yields without introducing new varieties or using chemical fertilizers. The system, developed by academics and NGOs, requires only simple changes to traditional rice...

Greening the Oasis. (Africa: Tunisia).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... Surrounded by the Sahara Desert, the Matmata Mountains and the sea, the Chnini Oasis in Tunisia is being revitalized by locals who formed the Save the Chnini Oasis Organization (ASOC) in 1994. For years the oasis had been degraded by pollution....

Push and pull the pests. (Africa: Kenya).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... Stemborers are a moth-larvae pest in Kenya that wipes out much of the maize or sorghum crop, as does the dreaded witchweed (striga) root parasite, often leaving little to harvest. In response the International Centre for Insect Physiology and...

The dome forest garden. (Europe: Germany).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... Agroforestry is often associated with the tropics because the increased light and warmth make cultivation of plants beneath the tree canopy a viable option. German agroforester Harald Wedig has spent years developing an agroforestry system...

Do nothing. (Asia/Pacific: Japan).
January 1, 2003... Masanobu Fukuoka returned to his father's mountain farm in southern Japan over 50 years ago, after a serious illness caused him to rethink his training. He sums up his Zen-inspired approach to farming thus: 'Do nothing, but do it...

Farmers are scientists. (Asia/Pacific: Philippines).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... The Farmer-Scientist Partnership for Development, or MASIPAG, was started in the Philippines in 1985 by farmers concerned about their dependence on the chemicals and seeds needed to grow the rice varieties that were introduced by the Green...

Saving the seed. (Asia/Pacific: Bangladesh).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... Over 100,000 farming families are part of the Bangladeshi Nayakrishi Andolan or 'New Agriculture Movement'. They have set up seed banks that they call 'community seed wealth centres' of traditional varieties, and by engaging in seed swapping,...

Ancient harvest. (Asia/Pacific: China).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... Just as their ancestors did, the tribal Jiluo people of Xishuangbanna, southern China, still gather food and medicines from the tropical forests. Now the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden is researching which plants and fungi make it to...

The magic bean: Jules Pretty argues that the time has come to put the wonder back into nature--and the culture back into agriculture. (Sustainable Agriculture).(velvet bean, Mucuna pruriens)
January 1, 2003... WHEN you gaze from the top of the Temple of the Giant Jaguar, 96 metres above the floor of Tikal, you look down upon the crowns of giant rainforest trees, the branches of which crack and snap as howler and spider monkeys leap and chatter. Had...

You don't have to eat boiled turnips. (The Delicious Revolution).(farmers markets, community-supported agriculture)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... REGIONAL VARIETY Fresh, local and seasonal food is better for you, reduces the environmental impact of transport and is good for the local economy. Buying straight from the farmer can do you, your family, the farmer and the planet a world of...

Ethical shopping. (The Delicious Revolution).(fair-trade brands, organic food, co-operatives)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... The Good Shopping Guide is a handy tool for ethical shoppers, with a large 'Good Food and Drink' section. NI readers in Britain can order it at a special price of [pounds sterling]10 (including p&p). Send a cheque made out to The Ethical...

Grow your own. (The Delicious Revolution).(urban gardens, allotments, seed saving)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... From urban gardens to allotments to school projects, growing your own is a fun option and a great way to teach children about health, the environment and food. Australia: West Pacific urban agriculture network fawmpl@powerup.com.au ...

Campaigning. (The Delicious Revolution).(web sites on farming & food issues)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... Australia: Australian Gene Ethics Network (AGEN) www.geneethics.org Britain: Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) www.ciwf.co.uk Pesticides Action Network (PAN) www.pan-uk.org Sustain www.sustainweb.org Friends of the Earth...

Abouna. (Best of the Year: Behind the Sun).(plus Djomeh & Behind the Sun)(Movie Review)
January 1, 2003... Abouna (reviewed in NI 352) is that rarest of things: an African film we have the chance to see. Set in Chad, it follows two boys' efforts to trace their father who's abandoned his family. It is tragic, gently paced and poignant, and has the...

Life of Pi. (Best of the Year: Books).(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Canongate, reviewed in NI 348) stands out from everything else. We gave it five stars -- and a few months later the book went on to win the influential Booker Prize. The eponymous Pi is a 16-year-old boy who, due to a...

Stupid White Men. (Best of the Year: Books).(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... Also warranting the five-star treatment was Michael Moore's Stupid White Men (ReganBooks, reviewed in NI 346) -- a humane, deeply serious, and joyfully hilarious assault on the band of white men and their corporations who rule us all. If you...

Feminist Sweepstakes. (Best of the Year: Music).(plus The Fire This Time)(Sound Recording Review)
January 1, 2003... Two records share the honours -- and neither are shy about their politics. Le Tigre's Feminist Sweepstakes (Chicks on Speed, reviewed in NI 343) takes an energetic swipe at the various phobes around and is a wake-up call to those made...

Divine intervention. (Mixed Media).(Palestinian film)(Movie Review)
January 1, 2003... directed by Elia Suleiman Suleiman's mostly silent comedy -- the first Palestinian film to be distributed across Europe -- is a bold, original, sometimes puzzling dramatization of contemporary Palestinian life. It opens in Nazareth,...

The Summit. (Mixed Media).(Movie Review)
January 1, 2003... - a critical look at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg by Nick Francis and Max Pugh Summits may come and summits may go but before long they're usually forgotten altogether. As a reminder of what the issues were in Johannesburg and...

11' 09" 01 -- September 11. (Mixed Media).(Movie Review)
January 1, 2003... Artistic producer Alain Brigand This is a collection of 11 shorts by 11 filmmakers from 11 countries. Each is about the attack on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001. Each is symbolically 11 minutes, 9 seconds and 1 frame in...

The Fire this Time. (Mixed Media).(Sound Recording Review)
January 1, 2003... by Various (Hidden Art HI-ART 11 2CD) Three years ago camera operator Grant Wakefield came across a book called The Fire This Time. Written by the former US Attorney-General Ramsey Clark, the book was a warning to the US Government that its...

Jerusalem. (Mixed Media).(Sound Recording Review)
January 1, 2003... by Steve Earle (E Squared/LLC/Artemis 5094802 CD) Jerusalem isn't going to win grizzly old country man Steve Earle any fans among the Bush administration, but then again, never has a record been so designed not to. Topics are various--as...

A Guide to the Perplexed. (Mixed Media).(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... by Gilad Atzmon (Serpent's Tail, ISBN 1 85242 826 0) Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli profoundly unhappy with the description and a fervent anti-Zionist. His politics were formed by his experiences serving in the Israeli military and he now lives in...

The screaming of the innocent. (Mixed Media).(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... by Unity Dow (Spinifex, ISBN 1 876756 20 9) This is a remarkable novel by a woman who already has a string of outstanding achievements to her name. Unity Dow is widely known for her distinguished record as a campaigning human-rights lawyer...

A map of the gardens. (Mixed Media).(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... by Gillian Mears (Picador/Pan Macmillan ISBN 0-330-36346-8) For Gillian Mears, it's all about the warp and weave of human relationships: making a birthday cake for a neglected child, protecting a loved one, making a trek to Tibet in the...

China. (Country Profile).
January 1, 2003... ON a small hill beside a lake in central China, an illegal firecrackers factory has just been set up. Village women work in small rooms assembling fuses and filling coils by hand: they are paid two yuan (26 cents) an hour. Most of their...

2002: The year of insecurity; Richard Swift looks at how the politics of insecurity played out in 2002--and holds out for a different notion of safety. (The World: Chronicle 2002).
January 1, 2003... I have been to New York's Natural History Museum on the upper west side many times before. But this December was the first time my bags were thoroughly searched and I was made to open my coat to ensure that I was not a suicide bomber about to...

Enter the dragon. (East Asia and Pacific: Chronicle 2002).
January 1, 2003... China is building the Asian-Pacific empire that escaped japan 60 years ago. ROWAN CALLICK reports on the underlying processes, as well as the dramatic events, in the region during the past year. THE biggest impact felt in this region during...

Oil under waters. (Eastern Europe, Russia and the Former Soviet Republic: Chronicle 2002).
January 1, 2003... Russia has finally been stamped with approval as a 'market economy' -- but OLIVIA WARD wonders whether pride may not come before a fall into more turbulent issues beneath the surface. RUSSIA ended the last century under the fading shadow of...

Faultlines and bridges: Urvashi Butalia listens to the voices of hope and change in a year marred by conflict. (South Asia: Chronicle 2002).
January 1, 2003... APRIL, said TS Eliot many years ago, is the cruellest month. Had he been looking at contemporary South Asia he might well have named any other month, for cruelty -- death, destruction, war and mayhem -- have been there in plenty this year. If...

Shattered dreams and new hopes: while Africa's rock of stability collapsed into the chaos of conflict, a new hope for African unity was born. Desmond Davies reports on a mixed year. (Africa: Chronicle 2002).
January 1, 2003... 19 SEPTEMBER 2002. The Ivorian dream, which was nurtured by the late President Felix Houphouet-Boigny, was shattered. On that day, rebellious members of the Ivorian army decided to mutiny in protest against the Government's plans to demobilize...

On the brink: trouble aplenty in the Middle East. Steve Sherman focuses on the two explosive hotspots. What happens here affects the entire region. (The Middle East: Chronicle 2002).
January 1, 2003... 'VOLATILE' is the epithet most commonly used to describe the Middle East. But the year 2002 leaves observers in search of new adjectives to apply. The period has seen a spectacular deterioration of political stability along with the security...

Lula leads the way. (Latin America: Chronicle 2002).(Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva)
January 1, 2003... Brazil's election brought socialist leadership to the continent's biggest country. ROBERTO ELISSALDE assesses the serious challenge to economic liberalization that is emerging in Latin America. THE biggest event in Latin America this year...

Food Sovereignty.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... HUNGER IS NOT ABOUT A LACK OF FOOD BUT A LACK OF RIGHTS. THE RIGHT TO FOOD SOVEREIGNTY INVOLVES: REFORMING GLOBAL FOOD TRADE * End 'dumping' * No subsidies for intensive agriculture * Fair prices for farmers * Protect...