New Internationalist articles from May 2002

New Internationalist archives from May 2002

Letters.
May 1, 2002... The New Internationalist welcomes your letters But please keep them short. They may be edited for purposes of space or clarity. Letters should be sent to letters@newint.org or to your local NI office. Please remember to include a town and...

The ring of security: Reem Haddad observes how faith in each other has worked miracles for cash-pressed refugees. (Letter from Lebanon).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... AT every bank they were refused. Even loan sharks turned them away. But they were desperate. Without money or insurance, Lebanese hospitals don't admit poor Palestinian refugees. And without some kind of dowry, couples were unable to get...

Southern exposure.(photographing war)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... On the 22 September 1980 Iraqi forces attacked Iran's key airports and a war broke out that nobody believed could last for eight years and cost so many lives on both sides. Bahman Jalali is an Iranian photographer who has been teaching...

Ethnic inheritance. (View from the South).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... THE African nation-state, in most cases fabricated during the 19th-century European Scramble for Africa, has often seemed like a makeshift vehicle doomed to fall apart. After creating these states, the colonial powers saw immediately, that it...

Independent voices: press crackdowns fuel online journalism. (Zimbabwe).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... IN response to the Zimbabwean elections in March, the international community peeled off along largely colonial lines -- in either their condemnation of, or support for, the ruling ZANU-PF party fixing of the result. All African observers but...

US cyber-waste dumped in Asia. (Currents).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Farmers in China, India and Pakistan have been duped into believing that they are to become a part of the US's booming technology industry. In reality, their land has become a dumping ground for US cyber-waste. Unwanted computer hardware and...

Mystery ingredient. (Currents).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... An international body has ruled that governments are not allowed to trace the sources of their food's genetic origins, unless a food turns out to be dangerous and the culprit is o modified gene. The UN panel which ruled on issues about...

Tree-sitters: protecting forest in Ecuador from a pipeline. (Environment).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... ON 27 February this year in Ecuador -- day of national celebration --children in schools around the country were swearing to defend their country and kiss their national flag. But in Proyecto Educativo Raices -- a school in the capital, Quito...

Cabbie conspiracy. (Currents).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... 'Why are oil the people who know how to run the country driving cabs?' goes the old joke. But Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is not amused by Bangkok's opinionated cabbies - and he's ordered an investigation into what he claims is a...

Rubber. (World Corner).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Rubber is made from the milky sap of various tropical plants including the Hevea caoutchouc. Charles-Marie de La Condamine (1701-1774), a French soldier and explorer, went to South America in the 1730s and noted local rubber production...

Tigerland: Tamil rebels ready to talk. (Sri Lanka).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... IN May -- after more than a decade of continuous warfare -- the Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sinhalesedominated government of Sri Lanka will attempt to work out a peace settlement. Sri Lanka is an island with a...

Politics kidnapped in Colombia. (Currents).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... The Green Presidential candidate in this month's election in Colombia -- Senator Ingrid Betancourt -- won't be doing much campaigning. She was kidnapped in February by the the country's main group of leftist rebels, the Revolutionary Forces of...

Seriously...: you couldn't make this stuff up. (Currents).(Maoist analysis of motion pictures)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... If you needed any reasons not to go to the cinema with a Maoist, here are some film reviews from the website of the Maoist International Movement (MIM): Independence Day What should the international proletariat do when space aliens...

Resistance and reform. (Islam: Keynote).
May 1, 2002... Immediately after 11 September, I was caught in a pincer movement by my neighbours, writes Ziauddin Sardar. My English neighbour, a highly educated man addicted to news, fired a series of angry questions at me. Why are Muslims so violent? How...

Key moments of Islamic civiliztion.
May 1, 2002... 570 Prophet Muhammad is born in Mecca. At the age of six he becomes an orphan and is taken into the care of his grandfather. When the latter dies, the young Muhammad is entrusted to his uncle. 610 Muhammad receives the first revelation...

Islam: the basics.
May 1, 2002... The word 'Islam' has the dual meaning of 'peace' and 'submission to the will of God'. Islam is a monotheistic religion, believing there is only one God. It traces its lineage right hack to Prophets Abraham and Adam and describes itself as...

A'ishah's legacy: Amina Wadud looks at the struggle for women's rights within Islam. (Islam: Women).
May 1, 2002... I converted to Islam during the second wave feminist movement in the 1970s. I saw everything through a prism of religious euphoria and idealism. Within the Islamic system of thought I have struggled to transform idealism into pragmatic reforms...

Muslims the facts.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2002... Muslims of the world Islam is considered the fastest growing religion in the world. There are approximately 1.3 million Muslims constituting a fifth of humanity. Most are under 25. (1,2) TOTAL WORLD POPULATION 6.1 billion MAJOR...

From this month's editor.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... 'GOD is gentle,' Prophet Muhammad once said, 'and loves gentleness in all things.' And he added: 'Gentleness should adorn everything; its absence leaves everything tainted.' Islam, it seems to me, has been tainted by a serious lack of...

Do Muslims deserve democracy? What's stopping democracy from taking root in Muslim countries? Abdelwahab El-Affendi tackles a thorny issue. (Islam Democracy).
May 1, 2002... To gain a revealing insight into why many Muslim countries fail to develop or sustain democratic systems, one has just to follow the news stories of recent times. Prominent among these was the vigorous campaign by Britain and its allies against...

Wilful imaginings: Merryl Wyn Davies shows how Orientalism feeds both Islamophobia and Muslim fundamentalism. (Islam: Islamophobia).
May 1, 2002... How does a nice, sensible Welsh girl like you end up joining a religion of militant fundamentalists who suppress women?' Interviewers have endlessly asked me this question. The question is predicated on the proposition that nice and...

Good company: what have Islamic economics, animal rights protesters, social justice activists and ethical investors got in common? M Iqbal Asaria highlights the links. (Islam: Economics).
May 1, 2002... THE social justice protesters who disrupted gatherings of leaders of the industrial world in Seattle, Genoa and Quebec have highlighted on the international stage a growing unease with the operations of unfettered markets. For protesters the...

Building bridges: there's a long history of Muslim migration which has some important lessons for today, argues Ehsan Masood. (Islam: Migration).
May 1, 2002... The word 'migration' has acquired negative connotations. It is used to describe people fleeing wars, political turmoil, famine, poverty. Migrants are depicted in the popular press as taking jobs and housing from indigenous people in the...

Books to read.
May 1, 2002... The Koran Interpreted by AJ Arberry (Oxford University Press, 1964) is perhaps the best and the most poetic translation of the Qur'an. MM Picthall's The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (available in various editions and from various publishers)...

Website to check out.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... www.islam-online.net Masses of news, comment, basic information as well as its own cyber-counsellor. www.wluml.org Women's human-rights issues intelligently explored on this Women Living Under Muslim Laws site. www.islam21.org For...

Elizabeth II: taking aim at the rich and powerful. (Worldbeaters).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... As a celebrity, famous for being famous but for little else, Queen Elizabeth II was once in a league of her own. No other 'Firm' - as the Royal Family likes to refer to itself-could boost the circulation of tabloid newspapers around the world...

Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh. (Books).
May 1, 2002... by Mo Yan translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-Chum Lin (Methuen, ISBN 0 413 77118 0) In an illuminating introduction to this collection, Mo Yan identifies the roots of his writing impulse as hunger and loneliness. His...

Heaven's Edge. (Books).
May 1, 2002... by Romesh Gunesekera (Bloomsbury, ISBN 0 7475 5813 2) Romesh Gunesekera's third novel is set in the near future on an unnamed tropical island, once a gentle and fertile semi-paradise -- the 'edge of heaven' -- but now poisoned by...

Mugabe: Power and Plunder in Zimbabwe. (Books).
May 1, 2002... Power and Plunder in Zimbabwe by Martin Meredith (Public Affairs ISBN 1 903985 28 5) This book does what it says on the tin, It paints the now-familiar picture of Mugabe as a power-crazy despot whose cronies have embezzled at the...

The Video Activist Handbook. (Books).
May 1, 2002... by Thomas Harding (Pluto Press ISBN 07453 17707) Video activism is spreading fast and this book is invaluable both to the novice and the experienced user. It opens by chronicling the diverse use of camcorders by activists...

Saudade do Futuro. (Film + Video).
May 1, 2002... directed by Marie-Clemence and Cesar Paes This film reveals the sprawling, commercial city of Sao Paulo through the lives of Nordestino Repentistas: street-poets originally from the rural northeast of Brazil who come to make their living in...

The Warrior. (Film + Video).
May 1, 2002... directed by Asif Kapadia In the Rajasthan desert light, the mounted warriors are magnificent. Their costumes and weapons, their long jet-black locks, even their flesh tones, glow in the pellucid light. Lafcadia, their leader, is skilled,...

The Rough Guide to Bollywood. (Music).
May 1, 2002... by Various (Rough Guides RGNET 1074 CD) Brace yourselves. Yes, we know that Andrew Lloyd Webber has suddenly declared Bollywood -- the lush, inventive and often outrageously camp music that drives India's film soundtracks -- the next...

Digdig. (Music).
May 1, 2002... by Rene Lacaille and Bob Brozman (Riverboat TUGCD 2025 CD) Imagine a little French cafe, somewhere far from the boulevards of Paris, an outside table -- and the Indian Ocean gently lapping at your feet. It's difficult to convey quite...

Sharp focus on Robert Leapage: Louise Gray celebrates the strange craft of a maestro of film, theatre -- and duality.(Brief Article)(Critical Essay)
May 1, 2002... In Possible Worlds (2001), the first English-language film from Quebecois director Robert Lepage, there is a moment when a scientist tells the protagonist, George, that he intends to kill him in all possible worlds'. It is a scene to ponder. If...

Loving my land dying inside. (Essay).
May 1, 2002... Poems from Malaysia by Anushka Anastasia Solomon Raped, Draped and Relegated I slept with the Prime Minister, Mahathir, jangan kuhatir *, why not, 1 am not telling a soul. He unloaded his songkok *, bald, ribald and bare...

Kyrgyzstan. (Country Profile).
May 1, 2002... KYRGYZSTAN's president Askar Akaev declared upon independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 that he would transform his landlocked, mountainous country into a wealthy and democratic 'Switzerland of Central Asia'. However, lacking few resources...