New Internationalist articles from January 2004

New Internationalist archives from January 2004

From this month's editor.
January 1, 2004... ODD how you don't always see what's staring you in the face. It was only after I'd completed a refined plan for this magazine that I noticed there was nothing on equality and work. That was soon remedied, but it did make me realize how...

Costly paradox.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... Big Pharma (NI 362) was chock-full of information on the big pharmaceutical companies' unprincipled addiction to profits. Compared to the majority of people living with AIDS in the world, I am filthy rich in that I have a hybrid private...

Low paid and legal.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... While I sympathize with the conditions that Pranav Budhathoki endured while here as an 'illegal worker' (Essay, 'Lost in the Lowlands' NI 362), I would like to assure him that things are not a great deal better for a lot of people who work here...

Fundamental disappointment.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... A very disappointing article from Reem Haddad (Letter from Lebanon, NI 362) about 'fundamentalism' in Lebanon. The reasons for people becoming strict in their religion are complex and numerous. I would certainly not describe myself as a...

Toxic shock.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... I can appreciate the need to expose the huge corruption of Big Pharma (NI 362) with respect to affordable drugs. However, a crucial argument is lost by not emphasizing how toxic many of these chemical drugs can be, even when affordable. ...

Give a dog a bone.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... Susan Watkin (Word Corner, NI 362) states that 'the origin of dog is not known', but then immediately suggests the most obvious explanation. The Old English docga is probably derived from Diogenes, the Greek Philosopher whom Aristotle called...

Just intervention.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... I am not a military or warlike person. I am not generally a supporter of Mr Blair. I was against the invasion of Iraq. But I have to say that you were quite wrong to include (Worldbeaters, NI 362) Sierra Leone in a list of military...

Oil campaigns.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... Thanks for a thorough and incisive issue on pipelines (Pipeline cowboys, NI 361). But where are the contact details for the myriad groups who are running campaigns against specific oil companies and their destructive activities? Or of the...

Put on the pressure.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... Congratulations on the excellent article on Australia's stealing of East Timor's oil ('The blessed curse', NI 361). As I write, East Timor's PM, Mari Alkatiri, is attempting to pressure Australia to conform to international law with a...

Caption trouble.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... 'The blessed curse' (NI 361) has changed my perceptions of the relationship between Australia and East Timor. Unfortunately I must doubt the veracity of that report because of the caption placed next to the photo of Alkatiri and Howard. It is...

Free choice.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... Re: the cover image of the US demonstrator (The Other America, NI 351), I was concerned by comments made by Stephanie Kells (Letters, NI 360) equating public nakedness with 'psychological degradation during wartime, in prison environments and...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
January 1, 2004... Yves Champey ('Bucking the trend', Big Pharma, NI 362) is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) and not its Director as stated in the article.

Satellite wars: how you like your news cooked depends on where you're coming from. Reem Haddad on the surge in Arab media.(Letter from Lebanon)
January 1, 2004... My father couldn't wait to return from his travels in the United States. 'Finally,' he declared as he switched on the television, 'I'll know what is really happening.' For several days, he stayed glued to the television, only...

Southern exposure.
January 1, 2004... The funeral ceremony of seven peasants killed on 18 October 1997 in the community of Vergel by the paramilitary group UNAL (Unidad Nacional Lombardista), which had been trained and armed by the Mexican army. Eight peasants, leaders of the...

Odysseys.(View from the South)
January 1, 2004... The History We Never Learned Christopher Columbus couldn't discover America because he didn't have a visa or even a passport. Pedro Alvares Cabral couldn't get off the boat in Brazil because he might have been carrying smallpox,...

Blood money: women take on hard-line Islam in a campaign for equal rights.(Currents)
January 1, 2004... WHEN 19-year-old Roxana was killed in a car accident in Tehran, her father, Hadjimashhady, was appalled to be offered dieh (blood money). A lawyer and avowed socialist, he refused to take the money. 'It would not solve anything,' he says. 'This...

Bhutan kicks goals for well-being.
January 1, 2004... When the world's worst two soccer teams played off in the 2002 World Cup in 'the other final', Bhutan--ranked 202--was there, with its Foreign Minister telling film-makers that Gross National Happiness, not winning finals, was his country's...

Young people face facts.
January 1, 2004... * Nearly half the world's people are under 25 years old. * 87 per cent live in the Majority World. * 462 million live on less than $2 daily. * 5,000 become refugees every day. * Every 14 seconds, another youth becomes infected...

Oilisms: first of an occasional series in which Adam Porter ventures into the muckier reaches of big oil.(Human Rights)
January 1, 2004... YET another oil man has been caught greasing palms: US banker and oil negotiator James Giffen. The head of the Mercator Corporation, a 'boutique bank' from Washington, this 62-year-old CEO has been charged with funnelling $78 million into...

Brukman workers win their factory.(Currents)
January 1, 2004... Since December 2002, the NI has reported on the battles by the Brukman textile workers to keep working in the Buenos Aires factory that their employers walked away from. After winning and losing many battles (including three evictions, police...

Elephant.(Word Corner)
January 1, 2004... There are two types of elephant, the Indian (Elephas maximus) and the larger-eared African (Loxodonto africana). An elephant's tusks are made of ivory. Elephant is from the Greek elephas which originally meant ivory, not the animal. The Old...

One step forward, two steps back: China's new environmental assessment procedure waters down opposition to damming.(Currents)
January 1, 2004... THE Nujiang river is famous in China for its steep, grand gorge which surpasses many world-famous canyons. Rising in the Danggula Mountains, it winds 2,400 kilometres through Tibet, into China's Yunnan province, then into the Andaman Sea in...

Seriously ... true tales of the absurd: tales from the front.(Currents)
January 1, 2004... Seriously's quote of 2003 comes from a 40-year-old veteran of the US Marine Corps in a letter to anti-war comedian Michael Moore: 'No wonder the world hates us, who do they get to see? Young assholes in uniforms with guns, and rich, old, white...

Tales of sheer front.(Currents)
January 1, 2004... Meanwhile, another kind of effrontery has been going on in the state of California where an internal American Chemistry Council (ACC) memo has been leaked to campaigners in the Environmental Working Group. The memo exposes PR firm...

Equality's progress: Vanessa Baird charts the passage of a troubled ideal.(Keynote)
January 1, 2004... GEORGE BERGERON wears a 21-kilo canvas bag, weighted down with birdshot, padlocked to his neck. Plugged into his ear is a little mental-handicap radio which he is required by law to wear at all times. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This radio...

Power makes you proud.
January 1, 2004... Power makes you proud, and power Comes in many fine forms. Supple and rich as butterfly wings. It is music when you practise opening your mouth And liking what you hear Because it is the sound of your own True voice. It is...

Strong & smart: Aboriginal children are expected to do poorly at school. Teacher Chris Sarra blasts away the prejudice.(Race)
January 1, 2004... WHEN I was in teachers' college I spent some time reflecting on my days in high school. In Grade 11 I'd done advanced maths and I remembered one day the teacher handing back our exam papers and saying: 'Sarra got 75 per cent for that test! It...

I was born white ...: Mark Minchinton makes a personal--and national--journey to a suppressed indigenous past.(Race)
January 1, 2004... Beginning This journey begins with my awakening to my indigenous identity. This awakening has taken more than 40 years. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The awakening is performed. I walk from Busselton--where my grandmother was known as...

Betrayal: equality for women was non-existent in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. But is the situation any better today? Mariam Rawi of the revolutionary association of women of Afghanistan reports.(Women)
January 1, 2004... WHEN the US began bombing Afghanistan on 7 October 2001, the oppression of Afghan women was used as a justification to overthrow the Taliban regime. Five weeks later the US First Lady, Laura Bush, stated triumphantly: 'Because of our recent...

The facts measures of equality: equality--and its opposite cannot be measured in numbers and calculations alone. Neverthess the statistics can be quite revealing.
January 1, 2004... RICH & POOR Income equality worldwide Today the richest 1% of the world's people receive as much as the poorest 57%. The 25 million richest Americans have as much income as almost two billion of the world's poorest people. (1) ...

Each in their place: caste and class are both complex defence systems against equality. But they have important differences too. Mari Marcel Thekaekara takes a look at the evil twins from an Indian perspective.(Caste & Class)
January 1, 2004... IF you live with something long enough, it ceases to shock you. That's caste in India. I rant and I rage at the injustice of it, the sheer cruelty of it. But I'm not shocked by it. Class in Britain, on the other hand, shocks me. Recently I...

The self I will never know: Esther Morris, born with an intersex condition, writes about the scandal of 'corrective surgery' whereby thousands of children are mutilated without consent.(Sexual & Gender Diversity)
January 1, 2004... THERE are times when I wish I didn't know so much. And I realize that what I know, I learned too late. Reclaiming a childhood of medicalization can be challenging at best, but key to my survival. The challenge is not that I was born with...

A few thoughts on equality.
January 1, 2004... JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS The greatest influence on contemporary thinking about equality is John Rawls. His 1971 book A Theory of Justice has been a springboard for other connected theories and counter theories. His 'justice as fairness' theory...

Do we really want equality? An interview with writer and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips.
January 1, 2004... Do we really want equality? The curious thing about equality is that lots of people value it and aspire to it. And yet at an individual level people are really quite phobic of it. There is an anxiety about losing a sense of specialness...

Another coinage: if you love your family, go out and get a job--on the other side of the world. Jeremy Seabrook looks at what globalization is doing to intimate human bonds.(Economics)
January 1, 2004... A FLIGHT to Kuwait. More than half the passengers are young women; scared, bodies clenched, they sit rigidly in their seats during the flight. Some hold hands. They refuse the meal that is offered. They scarcely dare to move. Dark, apprehensive...

Gem in a world of rocks; former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez explains why he puts his faith in co-operatives.(Co-operative Working)
January 1, 2004... OVER the past decade we have seen a period of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity but also depressing levels of human need and extreme suffering. While wealth accumulates in the hands of a privileged few, more than 40,000 children die...

Equality in action.
January 1, 2004... HOW TO DO IT * Keep alive the ideal of equality and the notion of the citizen, equal in worth, dignity and rights. * Find out about the tools, policies and practices that already exist, especially in the area of equal opportunities....

Best of the year: music.(Mixed Media)
January 1, 2004... Annual time for both celebration and wringing of hands. The latter first: There are many deserving causes whose latest offerings did not hit the review pages of the NI (guilty mentions to Nick Cave, Ani DiFranco, Oi Va Voi, Cat Power, Nina...

Best of the year: books.(Mixed Media)
January 1, 2004... Muhammad Kamil al-Khatib's Just Like A River (Arris Books, NI 359) got a five-star fiction rating. This superbly intricate narrative follows the lives of a cross-section of Damascus society against a background of escalating tension. The book's...

Best of the year: film +video.(Mixed Media)
January 1, 2004... Strong female leads seem to be the common thread of the NI's best films of the year. In Far from Heaven (NI 354), writer-director Todd Haynes' subversive retake of the Hollywood 'women's picture', Cathy lives the 'American Dream--executive...

Defixiones, Will and Testament, Orders from the Dead.
January 1, 2004... Defixiones, Will and Testament, Orders from the Dead by Diamanda Galas (Mute STUMM 205 2CD) 'My voice was given to me as an instrument of inspiration for my friends,' Diamanda Galas, never lost for a line, once said, 'and a tool in the...

Bowmboi.
January 1, 2004... Bowmboi by Rokia Traore (Tama Records LBLC 2594 CD) If Mali is shaping itself up to become Africa's musical powerhouse--and it very much looks that way--then take note of Rokia Traore, the young singer-songwriter whose music is...

Modern Jihad Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks.
January 1, 2004... Modern Jihad Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks by Loretta Napoleoni (Pluto Press ISBN o 7453 2117 8) The widespread phenomenon of Islamist terror groups and suicide bombers that comprise the Modern Jihad is largely a mess...

Asiye's Story.
January 1, 2004... Asiye's Story by Asiye Guzel (Saqi books ISBN: D 86356 1942) Political activist Asiye Guzel has chosen not to tell the reader everything that happened to her during the two weeks she was held at 'Security HQ' by the Turkish security...

The Barbarian Invasions.
January 1, 2004... The Barbarian Invasions written and directed by Denys Arcand History professor Remy is terminally ill. Irreligious and free-loving, and with the help of his wife, his estranged son, his many friends and several of his mistresses, who...

Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack.
January 1, 2004... Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack by Austin Clarke (Signal Books/lan Randle Publishers, ISBN 1902669 70 3/976 637 108 3) First published in 1980, Austin Clarke's memoir of his education in 1940s Barbados is, on the surface, an...

Brazil.(Country Profile)
January 1, 2004... On 27 October 2002 a huge mass of Brazilians, waving red flags and shouting slogans, took over the heart of the banking centre in Sao Paulo, the country's largest city. They were celebrating the victory in the presidential elections of Luis...

Department X: what passes for news in the Middle East leaves most of the news unreported. Sa'eda Kilani considers the consequences.(The Middle East)
January 1, 2004... FEW people know about the death of Ahmed Shawkat. He was the editor of the weekly Bilah Ittijah ('Without Direction'), in the northern city of Mosul in Iraq. Shawkat was shot dead on 28 October 2003 on the roof of his office. According to the...

Things fall into place: news from Africa generally makes for grim reading. But every year there are many positive stories from the continent which go unnoticed by the global media--and 2003 was no exception, as Adam Ma'anit explains.(Africa)
January 1, 2004... WHEN the village of Naga in the Lake Chad region quietly unfurled a new flag on 8 December, it made little impact on the international media. Yet the ceremony, which signified the peaceful transfer of control from Nigeria to Cameroon of this...

The welfare of strangers; remittances home from Latin Americans abroad have become big business--with a difference. Michael McCaughan explores the paradoxical results.(Latin America)
January 1, 2004... DURING the past two decades Latin America's military juntas have been replaced by democratic regimes that have implemented the economic policies of the 'Washington Consensus'. From Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego governments have repealed labour...

The cost of war.
January 1, 2004... Destruction * $87 billion additional US funding for the continued occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2004, of which * $66 billion will go to military operations * $30 billion will go to private companies Reconstruction ...

Marching orders: Fred Weir describes the creeping authoritarianism that is gradually taking hold of the world's biggest country and its immediate neighbours.(Eastern Europe, Russia and the Former Soviet Republics)
January 1, 2004... IT was a year of deepening authoritarian drift across much of the former Soviet Union. In Russia, President Vladimir Putin honed the tools of 'managed democracy' to tighten the Kremlin's grip on the media, limit political debate and control the...

The fire this time: Dionne Bunsha on the slow burn of deepening poverty.(South Asia)
January 1, 2004... FORT--the business hub of Mumbai, India's commercial capital. Large corporations and banks have their headquarters here. The stock exchange is just around the corner. Here, on a blistering October afternoon, just outside the office headquarters...

Ballots, guns and money; as East Asia and the Pacific reach out towards the global economy, the region is still struggling with democracy. Rowan Callick takes stock.(East Asia and Pacific)
January 1, 2004... WHEN the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) met on the Indonesian island of Bali in August, it announced plans to bring its 500 million people within a single economic market by 2020, to stimulate growth and keep up with China. ...