New Internationalist articles from June 2006

New Internationalist archives from June 2006

The Venezuelan Revolution.(Editorial)
June 1, 2006... By a happy chance, my research for this magazine coincided with the World Social Forum in Caracas earlier this year. In 2003 I went to the Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, while working on a magazine about what I then thought of as some sort of...

Inside the Venezuelan revolution: David Ransom inhales the heated atmosphere of a changing political climate.
June 1, 2006... Hugo Chavez, wearing his 'trademark' red beret and shirt, stands beneath a giant portrait of himself. He sings, quite tunefully, a patriotic song. Picking up a pair of binoculars, he scans the audience. 'What an immense crowd!' he mutters, as...

THE LITTLE BLUE BOOK: Every Venezuelan has been given a copy of the BOLIVARIAN CONSTITUTION--a little blue book. It was written by a specially elected Constituent Assembly and endorsed by referendum in 1999, followed by laws to implement its provisions. Many Venezuelans can quote from it and a few frequently do. Here is a little of what they might be quoting.
June 1, 2006... PREAMBLE: The Venezuelan people... rebuilding the Republic to establish a democratic, participative and protagonistic society, multiethnic and pluricultural in a federal and decentralized State of justice, which promotes... the universal and...

'The Cuban stays!' Vanessa Davies reports on a radical new system of healthcare.
June 1, 2006... In Venezuela there's a popular saying: 'Opinion pollsters don't climb hills.' Their results never reflect the views of the people who, as far as the mainstream media are concerned, have neither voices nor faces, living as they do in their tens...

The spoils of oil: Ivan Briscoe tastes the poisoned prosperity of petroleum.
June 1, 2006... Somewhere between the oil riches gurgling from the earth and the desperate poverty of the people who live on it, something has gone terribly wrong in Venezuela. This, at least, is the conviction of President Hugo Chavez and his supporters. At...

Civil soldiers: they call it 'co-responsibility'. Elizabeth Nunez explores a peculiarly Venezuelan attempt to integrate civilians with the armed forces.
June 1, 2006... At the age of 19 Eduardo Gonzalez has left his life in Catia, one of the largest slums in Caracas, and his job in a diaper factory, to enlist in Venezuela's armed forces. He stands in line with his best friend, Dervis Gomez, on the patio of a...

If we don't try, we've already made a mistake: Camila Pineiro Harnecker explores 'development from within'.
June 1, 2006... I arrived in Caracas in December 2005 with a few contacts and a good deal of anxiety about how I would ever sort through the 70,000 co-operatives now operating in the country. When President Chavez took power in 1998 there were only 762 of...

A short history of Venezuela.(Country overview)
June 1, 2006... 1. CONQUEST THERE WERE NO great monumental cultures, like the Aztec, Maya or Inca, among the original inhabitants of Venezuela. Instead, there was a great variety of independently minded peoples. Some were nomadic, others practised...

Double vision: Michael Albert quizzes anonymous officials about their visionary plans for a revolution by example, not force.
June 1, 2006... My first and arguably most surprising encounter with the Bolivarian Revolution was at the Ministry for Popular Participation. The Ministry was created, I was told, in accord with President Chavez's desire 'that the people should take power'....

The Bolivarian school: Jose Orozco tests the evidence of change at the chalkface.
June 1, 2006... 'Morals and illumination are our primary necessities.' Simon Bolivar's famous phrase is written in large metal letters outside the entrance to Republic of Bolivia, a 'Bolivarian' school in west Caracas. Inside, the educational revolution is...

Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution the facts.
June 1, 2006... THE RECENT PROGRESS of the Bolivarian Revolution is difficult to chart, in part because the least unreliable statistics--those published by the UN (1)--have yet to reach beyond 2003. In that year the impact of lost production during the oil...

The hive: David Ransom finds uncommon sense in El Valle--the valley--a Caracas barrio.(City overview)
June 1, 2006... The jangle of rusty traffic and street vendors echoes off bleak apartment blocks. We are standing outside the last stop on the Metro at El Valle, south Caracas. A call on a cellphone finds Cletalina Noeman in the crowd, a robust and energetic...

Pink 'iPods' for democracy: NGO delivers US messages to rural Afghanistan.(Voice for Humanity )
June 1, 2006... THE workers of the NGO Voice for Humanity (VFH) have brought a different kind of aid to Afghanistan. Travelling six hours on donkeys and horses to the most remote parts of the Afghan countryside, their mission--righteous and idealistic--was to...

Starbucks at Guantanamo.(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Customer Gordon Quilty recently queried Starbucks about the transnational's outlet at Guantanamo Bay. 'I would hope that the reports are not true,' wrote Gordon, 'as it would seriously damage your company's reputation and lead people to...

Blog-on Africa!(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... While the number of Africans who blog has grown over the past years, women bloggers are still a minority in most countries' blogospheres (except for Kenya, where there is almost a 50-50 split between men and women). To try and redress the...

Sexual cleansing: terrorized Iraqi gays ignored by west.
June 1, 2006... AMMAR, a young gay man of 27, was abducted and shot in the back of the head in Iraq's capital, Baghdad. In the same city, Haydar Faiek, aged 40--a transsexual--was beaten and burned to death by militias on a main street in September 2005....

Tajikistan's last synagogue to go.(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... The destruction of the only remaining synagogue in Tajikistan has left the small Jewish community there angry and shocked. The Institute for War & Peace Reporting says that appeals from international Jewish organizations have fallen on deaf...

Speechmarks.(H. Norman Schwarzkopf )(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... "Here we were, not only winning this war--absolutely routing the enemy--and yet our casualties were practically... non-existent. You know, that kind of made you feel that God was on your side.' General H Norman Schwarzkopf (1934 -),...

The language of gender.(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Word power emasculation n. irrational fear of the colour pink. gender gap n. distance between husband and wife--in certain societies about five metres behind. his-and-hers n. mathematical term denoting 70:30 split. manly adj....

Dam lies: Indian Government refuses to stop drowning homes and villages.
June 1, 2006... IT started as just another VIP visit. With platoons of security guards, fleets of flashing cars and bowing bureaucrats in tow, three Ministers of the Indian Government were sent by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to assess whether villagers...

Amazonian psychics, Muppets and the Antichrist.(amazon.com)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Isn't it creepy the way amazon.com, the online book and stuff seller, is able to know what items you might be interested in each time you visit the site? Some anoraks will try to tell you that Amazon's predictive abilities are simply the result...

Meles Zenawi.(Worldbeaters)(Biography)
June 1, 2006... Meles Zenawi Is a versatile fellow. He has been a medical student, a guerrilla leader and now moves in the upper echelons of Africa's political class as Ethiopia's leader. His politics have adapted along with his shifting fortunes. He once...

Sprinting Gazelle.(Sound recording review)
June 1, 2006... Sprinting Gazelle by Reem Kelani (Fuse CFCD048 CD) Born in Manchester, raised in Kuwait and, musically, a citizen of the world, Reem Kelani is a singer who brings a new sensibility and drama to the sounds of her ancestral Palestine. Sprinting...

Live in Ramallah.(Sound recording review)
June 1, 2006... Live in Ramallah by West-Eastern Divan Orchestra/Daniel Barenboim (Warner Classics 2564 62791 2 CD) The phrase 'in concert' refers not just to musicians performing a work, but any group of people acting together with a single aim. The...

Culture Is Our Weapon: Afroreggae in the Favelas of Rio.(Book review)
June 1, 2006... Culture is Our Weapon: Afroreggae in the Favelas of Rio by Patrick Neate and Damian Platt (Latin American Bureau ISBN 1 899365 69 9) Favela Rising directed by Jeff Zimbalist Rio is a city at war. Novelist Patrick Neate and...

Black Gold.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2006... Black Gold directed by Marc and Nick Francis Black Gold is a quiet film. There's no voiceover narration telling the viewer how to react as the scenes unfold. It simply shows us how the coffee trade works through the eyes of Ethiopian...

After the Neocons: America at the Crossroads.(Book review)
June 1, 2006... After The Neocons America at the Crossroads by Francis Fukuyama (Profile Books, ISBN 13 978 186197 922 3) Francis Fukuyama built his reputation as a pundit on a single notion: with the collapse of communism, history was 'at an end'....

Sleepwalking Land.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2006... Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto translated by David Brookshaw (Serpent's Tail ISBN 1 85242 897 6) An old man and a boy trek through a desolate and war-torn African landscape. Seeking shelter in a burnt-out bus, they find a corpse and,...

Southern exposure: highlighting the work of photographers from the majority world.(Subhankar Banerjee)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... The photograph shows sea ice on coastal water of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. Photographer Subhankar Banerjee spent 14 months over a period of two years in the Arctic Refuge to document the cycles of seasons, the lives of the...

Apartheid versus sumud.(View from Jerusalem)
June 1, 2006... This is, as they say, the crunch. This is the political moment all Israeli governments--all of them, Labour, Likud and 'National Unity'--have been working towards the past four decades of Occupation: the final push for an expanded Israel, the...

Haunted mornings, sleepless nights: Jean Baptiste Kayigamba describes how he survived genocide in Rwanda.
June 1, 2006... As a Tutsi and a genocide survivor, my account here is not neutral, but a deeply personal one. It is a narrative of how I survived an attempt to annihilate all Tutsi in Rwanda and of the events I witnessed first-hand in the lead-up to, and...

Big bad world.(Cartoon)
June 1, 2006... IF WE'D ALL LIVED IN FREE LOVE COMMUNES AND EATEN VEGAN GRUEL LIKE I SAID, THEN THIS WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] YET ANOTHER REASON TO TACKLE GLOBAL WARMING

Interview with the Rescue Foundation: liberating sex slaves in India.(Triveni Acharaya)(Interview)
June 1, 2006... Within hours of arriving in Mumbai, Neetu found herself in a world unlike anything she could have imagined. A world of threats and violence in dark alleys and hidden rooms filled with cramped and brutalized bodies--the world of stolen women....

Local priorities.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... Congratulations on highlighting the important differences within the trade justice movement (Trade Justice!, NI 388). BINGOs such as Oxfam simply advocate making trade fair, a naive or ideological position that gives credence to the neoliberal...

Moral shift.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... I couldn't agree more with Vanessa Baird's conclusion that there is no one 'blueprint' for just trade (Trade Justicel, NI 388) and, being a 'moral' issue, trade justice would allow freedom for countries to create conditions that best serve...

Stay out.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... Re: 'Mr Rockwell is adamant' (NI 388). My heartfelt congratulations on being denied press entry to the trade summit in Hong Kong! You have obviously not passed the crucial test of being the compliant, lapdog, pro-WTO press who will be relied...

NGO critique.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... Your issue on Trade Justice failed to properly critique the slogans of some Northern NGOs on trade issues and the way that they have ignored the views of democratically elected governments of Southern countries. For example, you quote Christian...

Shake off the dollar.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... Trade Justice contained many fine articles but didn't include much analysis of the most important factor in any trading system--money. The terms of international trade are skewed towards the rich nations for the simple reason that they can...

Devil in the detail.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... In 'Laboratory for Change' (NI 388) you say: 'Blushes rose and hearts fell when the Fairtrade Foundation in Britain gave the mark to Nestle...' It did no such thing. It gave the mark to the one product which Nestle sources according to the...

Partial truths.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... Mark Freeman is right to ask the question 'Whose truth?' do truth commissions (TCs) claim to provide (Justice after genocide, NI 385). Since their conception, TCs have been a site of contestation, largely over controversial grants of amnesty in...

Mutual respect.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... Thank you for the thought-provoking article by Mari Marcel Thekaekara in Bingo! (NI 383). Having spent several months in various villages in India, the image of the rich Northern expert, arriving by Landrover, laptop and mobile phone in hand,...

'I see a human being': the Mauritian legal system ties itself up in knots over race and religion at each general election. It's pointless and pernicious, says Lindsey Collen.
June 1, 2006... I MAGINE this. You are in Mauritius in 2000, and not, by some space-time warp, in apartheid South Africa. You distinctly hear a lawyer, Yousouf Mohamed QC, in the Supreme Court putting it to a defendant, as lawyers are wont to do: 'Mr Sardanand...

Maldives.(Country overview)
June 1, 2006... The distinctive topography of the Maldives--an archipelago of more than 1,200 small islands--allows for a strict demarcation of function. One island houses the two square-kilometre capital, Male', while an adjacent one serves as the...