New Internationalist articles from June 2007

New Internationalist archives from June 2007

Darfur.(From this month's editor)(Editorial)
June 1, 2007... 'God, how grim,' is the most common reaction I've been getting when I tell people I'm doing a magazine on Darfur. Often followed by: 'It's just so awful--but there doesn't seem to be anything we can do...' This feeling of powerlessness in...

Origin of occupation.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2007... Re: 40 years is enough (Daring to dream, NI 400). I lived in the Middle East for 20 years during the 1960s and 1970s and, while studying Arabic, stayed with a Palestinian family in east Jerusalem. Consequently I developed an understanding and...

No response.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2007... Your special feature on the occupation of Palestine (NI 400) was welcome and Omar Barghouti's call for a boycott of Israel was reasoned and convincing. It echoes the UN Special Rapporteur John Durgard's recent call for civil society to take...

Keeping it real.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2007... Richard Swift's introduction to Cotton (NI 399) called to mind someone's observation that those who spend a week in India write a book, those there for a month write an article, those staying a year remain silent. The complexity is, indeed,...

White gold.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2007... Re: Cotton--I was surprised there was no mention of White Gold: The True Cost of Cotton, the Environmental Justice Foundation's report on Uzbekistan's cotton industry (available on their website www.ejfoundation.org). I was also surprised...

Language death.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2007... It was great to see the issue of minority languages and linguistic diversity finally picked up in the New Internationalist ('Letter from Mauritius', NI 399). Speakers of minority languages worldwide often find themselves oppressed, overtly or...

Open to change.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2007... Jay Griffiths' 'Mountains and Freedom' (Essay, NI 399) was thought-provoking. Abstract nouns are illusions and freedom is one of them. Not only is it a concept which resides solely in the brain of Homo sapiens, but it takes a different form and...

Iranian cinema.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2007... Inside Iran (NI 398) was interesting, but why was there no mention of Iranian film? There are some wonderful filmmakers from Iran, like Samira Makhmalbaf, whose classics At Five in the Afternoon and The Apple are real masterpieces of social...

Baha'is' plight.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2007... 1 Your excellent issue on life inside Iran (NI 398) cites violations of the rights of women, youth, journalists and homosexuals, but does not mention the persecution of the Baha'is, a community of 350,000 who comprise the country's largest...

On air.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2007... I have just been listening to the latest podcast of Radio New Internationalist: 'Cotton Pickin'. There was a quick mention of a university in Canada boycotting Coca-Cola. I would just like it to be known we did exactly the same at Manchester...

The neighbourhood.(Letter from Mauritius)
June 1, 2007... Last weekend my husband Ram and I sat under the thick-leaved atemoya tree, its fruit already ripening, and mulled over a request from a European ethnologist. 'She's studying what she calls mixed marriages,' Ram explained. 'An anthropologist of...

Sick of promises: the UN calls it 'the world's worst humanitarian crisis'. But what is causing the violence in Darfur, and why hasn't the world acted to stop it? Jess Worth goes in search of answers.(KEYNOTE)
June 1, 2007... 'We are innocent, but so many of us have been killed.' Marian Hassan Adam seems bewildered. We are sitting in a tiny, bare mud hut in Kakuma, a refugee camp in northern Kenya. I have come to spend time with the thousand-strong Darfurian...

Darfur: facts and timeline.
June 1, 2007... Sudan is the largest country in Africa (2.5 million square kilometres) and has a population of 35 million. Despite an abundance of oil and other natural resources, the vast majority of Sudan's people live in poverty, and its Government has been...

War against women: many thousands of women have been raped in Darfur--yet they are the ones who end up being punished. Femke van Zeijl listens to their stories.(VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN)
June 1, 2007... Nura sits quietly in her family's recently built hut. She leans against the bamboo fence and stays silent. Newly arrived in Duma, a small town in the middle of the barren plains of South Darfur, the 15-year-old girl has refused to come out for...

Salaam Darfur: the Arab world has kept silent about Darfur. In an article first published in Arabic, human rights activists Moataz El Fegiery and Ridwan Ziyada blast such double standards.
June 1, 2007... For many people in the Arab world the 'humanitarian catastrophe' unfolding in Darfur just doesn't exist--and the simple reason for that is that the Arab media have ignored it. So it's little wonder that there has been no unease or disapproval...

An African struggle: the campaign to protect Darfur is growing steadily across Africa. Dismas Nkunda--one of its founders--finds hope there.(AFRICAN ACTIVISM)
June 1, 2007... In 2003 I knew little about what or even where Darfur was. Then I met Abdelbagi Jibril, a Darfurian human rights advocate. 'Bagi', as we now fondly call him, is a quiet man, almost shy. Yet the agony of what was being done to his home weighed...

Darfur: a history.
June 1, 2007... Multi-ethnic Darfur Darfur's people are a complex mosaic of between 40 and 90 ethnic groups, some of 'African' origin (mostly settled farmers), some Arabs. All Darfurians are Muslim. The Arabs began arriving in the 14th century and...

Over a barrel: Sudan's rich oil reserves have generated many of the regime's atrocities, whilst shielding its leaders from the consequences. Leben Nelson Moro lays them bare.(OIL)
June 1, 2007... A Nuer man, his body almost entirely covered by bandages, was the sole patient in the men's ward. When I met him he had spent nearly a month in this most basic of hospitals. His ordeal began in February 2006, when he sought a job at Petrodar, a...

Don't ignore Darfur take action: the international campaign to protect Darfur is growing. There are several ways you can play a part.
June 1, 2007... 1 Pressure your government In 2005 UN members agreed that governments had a 'responsibility to protect' their populations from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that the 'international community' has a...

What next?(NI Special Feature)(Resilience in the High Andes)
June 1, 2007... At the turn of the new millennium a group of activists and scholars came together at the Dag Hammarskjold Centre in Sweden. They began by asking: what is a likely scenario for the next 30 years--and what are the alternatives? To deal with...

Eupocalypse: the scary booklist of the men who run the world.(NEOCONSERVATIVES)
June 1, 2007... Despite the temptation to think the US Right is illiterate, they occasionally crack the spine of a book. A 'literary luncheon' at the White House in late February suggests that President George W Bush's reading material is moving ever...

Healthy competition, anyone?(SOLOMON ISLANDS)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... In April 2007 the director of the Silvania Logging Company in the Solomon Islands, Joseph Wong, was denied bail and remains in police custody until another court hearing. According to the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation, Wong was...

The language of education ...(Currents)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Word power 28 bookend n. lack of teaching materials classroom n. private school girLie n. belief that girls have no right to education homework v. to stay off school in order to provide for your family re-create v. to only...

I'm still alive: lesbian Palestinians break taboos.(SEXUAL MINORITIES)
June 1, 2007... Rauda Morcos didn't intend to reveal her sexual preference when she acknowledged she was lesbian to a newspaper reporter writing about her poetry. Although Morcos, a Palestinian Arab living in Israel, lost her job working with at-risk youth...

The African cinema lion roars!(Festival panafricain du cinema et de la television de Ouagadougou)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... FESPACO (Festival panafricain du cinema et de la television de Ouagadougou) is an annual source of tremendous local pride in Burkina Faso, reports Pambazuka News. The largest cultural event on the continent, and the premier pan-African film...

Supersize me cruising.(TOURISM)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Growing demand for mega-cruiseships is causing increasing headaches for port authorities in major tourist destinations struggling to cope with the ever-larger vessels, according to caribbeannewsnet.com. Adapting ports to accommodate the...

Earth summit.(INDIGENOUS PEOPLES)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Thousands of indigenous peoples from 24 countries gathered in Guatemala on 26 March 2007 for the Third Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities of Abya Yala, reports Upside Down World. The weeklong summit was held in Iximche,...

Green America steps up.(CLIMATE CHANGE)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... No longer prepared to tolerate being responsible for a quarter of the world's carbon emissions, 14 April saw an extraordinary day of action across the US. Over 1,400 demonstrations, large and small, took place in all 50 states, each with the...

Speechmarks.(Currents)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... "To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what...

Dog day afternoon.(Seriously)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Once upon a time in a land where economies got depressed, and people got depressed because they were 'economized', a pharmaceutical company made a fortune selling antidepressants, which made the economists happy. But not their pets... until...

NI prize crossword.(New Internationalist)
June 1, 2007... 120 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)
June 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Mahboubeh Hossein Zadeh.(Making Waves)
June 1, 2007... Mahboubeh Hossein Zadeh writes an open letter from Evin Prison in Tehran. She was arrested on 2 April for organizing a 'One Million Signatures' campaign for women's rights in Iran. Most of the women arrested with her, including NI contributor...

Water.(Movie review)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Water written and directed by Deep Mehta Chuyia, seven years old, doesn't remember her elderly husband or getting married, but when he dies, her father takes her to a house of widows, on the banks of the Ganges. There she'll live,...

Ten Canoes.(Movie review)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Ten Canoes directed by Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr The ancestors are setting out to gather goose eggs. It's young Dayindi's first expedition and the elder Minygululu, who knows the unmarried Dayindi fancies his youngest wife, is...

Aman Iman.(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Aman Iman by Tinariwen (Independiente ISOM 65CD) Finding a band that is focused on its art to the exclusion of all else has been something of a holy grail for many record executives, but in Tinariwen it's quite possible that producer...

The Taqwacores.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2007... The Taqwacores by Michael Muhammad Knight (Telegram ISBN 9781 84859 017 7) This is a very unusual novel with a peculiar history. Written in 2003 by Michael Muhammad Knight, who converted from Catholicism to Islam aged 16, it first...

My Father's Notebook.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 1, 2007... My Father's Notebook by Kader Abdolah, translated from the Dutch by Susan Massotty (Canongate ISBN 978 1 84195 927 6) The author of My Father's Notebook is an Iranian exile, now living in Holland and writing in Dutch. His pseudonym,...

Goza Pepillo.(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Goza Pepillo by Interactivo (DM Ahora! DM0002 CD) Without wanting to denigrate the achievements of Buena Vista Social Club (and its myriad spin-off solo projects), the album--as probably the biggest international hit for Cuban music in...

Southern exposure: highlighting the work of photographers from the Majority World.(Kolmanskop, Namibia)
June 1, 2007... The ghost town of Kolmanskop is one of Namibia's most famous relics. Situated between Luderitz and the Bogenfels rock arch on the southern Atlantic coast, it is one of many former diamond settlements that lie disintegrating in the sands of the...

The landscape of the future.(View from Abu Dhabi)
June 1, 2007... Like many rulers before him, Sheikh Zayed of the United Arab Emirates had a dream about his city, Abu Dhabi. The dream, now in detailed architectural models in a permanent exhibit, is well on its way to becoming a reality. 'The shape of our...

Myths of the global market: free markets are often presented as the sole solution to poverty and human development. But the global market is inefficient and life-destructive, writes John McMurtry.
June 1, 2007... At the end of 2006, the UK-based journal of world economic affairs, The Economist, produced a banner issue on 'Happiness and Economics'. Not surprisingly, the magazine concluded that human happiness and market economies are closely linked. But...

Antigua and Barbuda.(Country overview)
June 1, 2007... When new Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer moved into Antigua's government offices in 2004, his predecessors had bequeathed him a scene of desolation. Wilmoth Daniel, his deputy, explained that they found 'the drawers open--all the files were...