New Internationalist articles from July 2007

New Internationalist archives from July 2007

Permaculture.(From this month's editor)(Editorial)
July 1, 2007... 'Oh no! Not gardening!' It was too much for one of my colleagues. I'd just decided, in blissful ignorance, to pick up 'permaculture' from the list of topics the co-operative chose at our annual meeting last year. Curiosity got the better of me....

Tragedy foretold.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... Could I add to your excellent reporting in Darfur: Don't look away (NI 401) the vivid snapshot of Darfur in 1880 given by Dr RW Felkin in the second volume of his book Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan (London, 1882). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]...

Calendar conventions.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... Daring to dream (NI 400) was one of the finest, most informative and positive issues ever! Re Tim Crookes' letter in it: the convention of Before Common Era and Common Era allowed the Western Calendar to become acceptable globally because...

Electoral tool.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... I read with interest '40 years is enough' (Special feature, NI 400). Israeli politician Shimon Peres said recently that a Middle East settlement may not be a political one. I disagree. The worst excesses of Israel since its inception have...

Completely unfair.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... I read with interest '40 years is enough', which like all previous articles about this subject in your magazine is completely unfair and presents only one side of the conflict. As an example, I could point out that the maps on page 25 are only...

Taking issue.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... 1 Omar Barghouti ('Boycott Israel', Special feature, NI 400) reminds us of the progressive Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, to the point that Israel may justly be called a 'settler-colonial state'. The present policy of Israel...

Iran inaccuracies.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... Although your recent issue devoted to Iran (NI 398) included some quality writing, I found many inaccuracies, and the piece by Ali Moazzami was especially disappointing for its exaggerated tone. For example, your readers didn't learn that...

Sharing.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... 'Buy Nothing Day' is a great idea for an international campaign versus consumerism (Currents, State of the World's Ocean, NI 397). I will definitely incorporate this in my talks about sapat (Filipino term for 'enough', 'sufficient', 'not more,...

Seeing Red.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2007... I found 'Punk rock capitalism?' (Ethical shopping, NI 395) very disappointing. Not only does it approach the Red Campaign from an extremely biased viewpoint, it also fails to place the Campaign into the context that it was created for:...

Of robbers and planners.(Letter from Mauritius)(Short story)
July 1, 2007... The sun was already high in the sky, beating down hot that weekday. Four young men on bicycles arrived, one by one, outside a small hardware store in a sleepy residential area in Quatre Bornes. No-one noticed them as a team at the time. The...

Edible Earth: David Ransom begins at the beginning with an introductory course--in the last place he expects to find it. He survives befuddlement of mind and gets fired up.(INTRODUCTION)
July 1, 2007... Just up the hill from the Emirates Stadium of Arsenal Football Club in north London is Hornsey Rise. Nothing in this cramped inner-city setting is much older than a red-brick crescent of terraced homes. I hover outside a front door,...

The ethical heart of permaculture: Maddy Harland argues that the design system can bring about social change.(ETHICS)(Column)
July 1, 2007... PERMACULTURE DESIGN is based on observing what makes natural systems endure, establishing simple yet effective principles and using them to mirror nature in whatever we choose to design. This can be gardens, farms, buildings, woodlands,...

Zones 0 and 1: the problem is the solution; David Ransom gets going with whatever's in front of his own nose--in this case, the office. A smaller 'footprint' at home on a Dutch barge may have been involuntary at first--but has satisfactions of its own, and a bit of intelligent design might help even more.(OFFICE AND HOME)
July 1, 2007... Day by working day, right in front of my nose, for the better part of 20 years, has been the NI office in Oxford. You might expect us to be at the cutting edge of design when it comes to our workplace. Not least because of my own behaviour, I...

Tasmanian roots: Russ Grayson and Steve Payne tell the tale of how two Australians first put 'permanent' and 'culture' together.(Bill Mollison and David Holmgren)
July 1, 2007... Teacher Bill Mollison was born in 1928 in the small fishing village of Stanley, Tasmania. He left school at 15 to help run his family's bakery. Among the jobs that followed were mill worker, seafarer, animal trapper and shark fisher. These...

Zone 2: no-dig for victory; It's a short bicycle ride for David Ransom along a railway path to the heart of inner-city Bristol. And there's no lack of ambition--to make the place into Britain's first 'Transition City'. Even in the East End of London, a new forest of networks is flourishing.(CITIES)(Travel narrative)
July 1, 2007... Most of us don't have land--nor the time, money, even inclination to work it. We live in towns and cities. And in front of our noses here we find concrete, cars and other people. What might we be able to do to provide for ourselves in such...

Zones 3 & 4: Barns to beacons; Out into the countryside--where food should flourish but often doesn't. So a co-operative of smallholders has started to live off the land. And, as close as you can get to wilderness in Wales, a remarkable woman sets an example.(FARM AND WILDERNESS)(Joyti Fernandez)
July 1, 2007... Even if citizens were to produce more food, and cities like London--which alone, in terms of the resources it consumes, has a 'footprint' larger than the entire country--were to use a lot less, they'd still need supplies from the countryside,...

10 DIY permaculture ideas.(do it yourself)
July 1, 2007... 1. LIVING ROOFS It really couldn't be simpler. The roof can even be flat, as long as there is a slight pitch for drainage. Make sure the rafters are adequately load-bearing for a small volume of soil. Cover with old carpet. Fix with...

Global common sense.(INTERNATIONAL)(permaculture)
July 1, 2007... 'Zone Sectoring' does not reach much beyond Zone V--Wilderness--or out into the world beyond. Yet bright ideas like permaculture have a habit of making their own way around, into every 'niche'. And I can explore where they've got to by...

Permanent culture.(CONCLUSION)(Travel narrative)
July 1, 2007... Westcliff, a suburb of Southend on Sea, east of London, is where I finish my journey. Graham Burnett (pictured right), who lives here, taught the course I began with and I've read two of his delightful, self-published booklets. (1) We share a...

The Islamophobia debate.
July 1, 2007... The politics surrounding Islam, as a religion and as a political project, have become a veritable hot potato. While well-meaning assertions about dialogue and cross-cultural understanding are important, they often evade the really sticky points...

Patent busting: getting up Big Pharma's nose in order to save lives.(CORPORATE POWER)
July 1, 2007... Until he was appointed Minister of Public Health last October, Mongkol na Songkla was known among sections of Thailand's medical community for his work among the poor. He had spent over 10 years as a doctor healing patients in the country's...

Right of return.(CHAGOS ISLANDS)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... 'A decision so outrageous, in defiance of logic or accepted moral standards, that no sensible person would have arrived at it'--that's how Sydney Kentridge QC summed up before the Court of Appeal the forced removal of some 2,000 people from the...

The language of fashion ...(Currents)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Word power 29 catwalk n. strange gait caused by malnutrition fashionable n. state of wealth that allows you to obsess about personal appearance fashion-victim n. garment maker working long hours for low wages label n. name tag...

Bank off! Countries are booting out the World Bank.(LATIN AMERICA)
July 1, 2007... Paul Wolfowitz's indiscretions are not the only cause of headaches at the World Bank. Latin American countries are paying off their loans early, cutting ties with the institution, and creating their own financing instruments instead. Since...

Pseudo-Guantanamo.(ETHIOPIA)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... As fighting continues to rage in Somalia, accusations have emerged that Ethiopia is running Guantanamo Bay-like jails where dozens of men, women and children have been held without trial for months. The Ethiopian authorities have admitted to...

(RED)[TM] herring.(CONSUMERISM)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Red faces all round, report Corporate Watch, at the revelation that Bono's celebrity-backed 'Product Red' campaign spent $100 million on promotion and only brought in $18 million for charity last year. Red is a campaign to raise money for AIDS...

Girl power? What is really happening to girls in a post-feminist world.(GENDER)
July 1, 2007... Aminata Palmer is an unusual 13-year-old. Born and brought up in Sierra Leone, she joined the Children's Forum Network, a campaigning group run by children for children, thinking that it would give her an opportunity to use her acting skills in...

Speechmarks.(Currents)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... "I defend the farmers' dignity and their right to survival because, for me, peasants are the most creative and productive individuals on this planet, not the people who gamble on Wall Street and make billions overnight. I think the real wealth...

Canadian's 'seamier' side.(Seriously)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... While Canada's neighbour to the south is not exactly feeling the love of the international community, it is hard to find anyone who has anything bad to say about the land of wheat and maple syrup. In a recent global street survey conducted by...

NI prize crossword.(New Internationalist)
July 1, 2007... 121 by AXE Win a copy of the latest World Guide reference book... All correct solutions received by the 25th of the cover month will be put into a draw--though only the winner will be notified. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Post your...

Big bad world.(Cartoon)
July 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The ISI.(Woridbeaters)(Inter-Service Intelligence)
July 1, 2007... Job: Pakistan's Intelligence Agency Reputation: Battler in the War on Terror, cat's paw for the military, expert at the double game By anyone's standards Pakistani politics is not for the faint of heart. Hardly surprising, when the...

HOTDOCS Special.
July 1, 2007... Toronto's HOTDOCS festival is now the largest and most diverse documentary film festival in North America. Activists could do worse than use these films in their campaigns or start their own local festivals. Here are some highlights: USA...

Shtetl Superstars.(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Shtetl Superstars by Various (Trikont CD) Working on the premise that the idea of any single type of 'Jewish' music is a modern impossibility, Yuriy Gurzhy and Lemez Lovas, the two musicians and DJs behind Shtetl Superstars, have...

Goodbye Lucille.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 1, 2007... Goodbye Lucille by Segun Afolabi (Jonathan Cape, ISBN 9780224076036) When Segun Afolabi's debut collection of stories, A Life Elsewhere, was published to some acclaim last year, reviewers, including this one, used words such as...

The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn.(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn by CocoRosie (Touch & Go TG314CD) New folk might be a term that's been bandied about ever since Bob Dylan first struck out, if not before, but in the past several years it's a genre that has...

Loving Women: Being Lesbian and Unprivileged in India.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 1, 2007... Loving Women Being Lesbian and Unprivileged in India by Maya Sharma (Yoda Press) 'You ask me if I have heard the word "lesbian". No, I have not heard it," says factory worker Vimlesh, one of the women interviewed by Maya Sharma in...

Southern exposure: highlighting the work of photographers from the Majority World.(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... A Palestinian boy wearing a gas mask rides his bicycle to escape teargas thrown by Israeli soldiers during clashes with Palestinian stone throwers near the office of then-President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah in January...

Mugabe: saint, sinner or same?(View from Kutama)(President Robert Mugabe)(Column)
July 1, 2007... There is a dangerous notion about the story unfolding in Zimbabwe which needs some frank analysis so that historians may in future not accuse us of stupidity and dishonesty. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Somehow the notion has gained currency...

Much ado about oil: the US may not like it, but Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is charting an independent foreign policy. And according to Alex Sanchez Nieto it makes complete sense.(Essay)
July 1, 2007... Venezuela's feisty president, Hugo Chavez, is a vocal critic of corporate-led globalization and a major thorn in the side of Washington. He may have few admirers in the Bush Administration but in Caracas he governs with a solid majority, while...

Burundi.(Country Profile)(Country overview)
July 1, 2007... A small landlocked state in central Africa, sandwiched between its vast neighbours Tanzania and Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi has suffered as much from ethnic conflict as its other (equally tiny) neighbour, Rwanda. Yet while the 1993...