New Internationalist articles from May 2008

New Internationalist archives from May 2008

Burma.(From this month's editor)(Viewpoint essay)
May 1, 2008... An elderly Burmese man suffering from chronic toothache makes his way across the border to Thailand to consult a dentist. A bit surprised, the Thai dentist asks him: 'Don't you have dentists in your own country?' 'Oh sure we do,' comes the...

Fresh look.(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... So much of the land of indigenous peoples (I will return, NI 410) has been destroyed and devalued by those who imagine that progress (the greatest illusion) is some sort of reality. From the genocide of the Native Americans to the brutal...

Jet trails.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... Re: 'To fly or not to fly?' (Ethical Travel, NI 409). I was astonished that the article concentrated exclusively on the tourist use of jet aircraft and failed to mention what might be a larger source of pollution--military aircraft. Just...

Reduce emissions not airports.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... I wanted to offer a counter argument to your call for a ban on airport expansion (NI 409). Our national economy increasingly depends on good access by air so any ban will affect it negatively. Not only that, the worsening congestion commonly...

Dizzy flyer.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... Reading 'To fly or not to fly?' (Nl 409) has left me dizzy. My confession: last year I took more than 60 flights; much higher than the 4 flights apparently needed to qualify me for insanity. But wait. My flights were for my job...

True cost.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... Several contributors to the Ethical Travel issue saw the principal alternative to flying being no overseas travel at all. This is only the case because the increase in cheap flights over the last couple of decades has forced alternative...

Go slow--and learn.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... Flying cannot be justified on the grounds of education about 'abroad'. Many youngsters travelling today, my own included, are not really learning very much about the countries they visit. They would do better to travel slowly. On a bicycle or...

Reduce now.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... The rising cost of oil, and the likely introduction of carbon charges to address climate change, surely mean that the days are numbered for cheap flights. Therefore, investing in new runways is simply money down the drain. As is investing in...

Spare a thought.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... Some of your readers will know of your occasional correspondent Brandon Astor Jones ('Bitter crop', Human Rights in a time of terror, NI 408); some, like my husband and I -- and, more recently, my 13-year-old daughter -- will have been writing...

DU dangers.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... Randal Leavitt (Letters, NI 409) is mistaken when he states that there is an 'absence of data' on the health effects of depleted uranium (DU) and talks of 'conspiracy fanatics'. He also states that health changes due to movement of small...

Beyond nature.(Letter from Cairo)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... My friend and lawyer Bassim is a knowledgeable man, whose repertoire includes the salient points of Egypt's history and legislation, every joke, proverb, conspiracy theory and fait divers worth repeating, not to mention the Qur' an that he...

City of whispers; On the 60th anniversary of Burma's independence, the country is colonized from within by its military rulers. Dinyar Godrej travels to its former capital, Rangoon, to catch what's in the air.(Burma INTRODUCTION)(Essay)
May 1, 2008... I'm riding a ghost plane. Apart from the roar of engines, there is an uneasy silence. No holidaymakers of the raucous variety. Just the occasional short, murmured exchange. An elderly Burmese man is fumbling with his immigration form. He turns...

Stale news is best: Aye Chan Myate worked in a newsroom in Rangoon that was like no other. She looks back on a typical day.(DAILY LIFE
May 1, 2008... The morning sun enters my room quietly. Though I don't want to leave bed just yet, today is Monday, deadline day. So, I have to report at work as early as possible. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I am under a lot of pressure--both at work and...

The price of defiance; It doesn't take much to be branded an enemy of the state in Burma. Former political prisoners speak out about why they will keep fighting the power, even if their lives are torn apart.(POLITICAL PRISONERS)
May 1, 2008... Bo Kyi is in debt; a debt of honour to which his working life is now devoted. Toward the end of our conversation, he tells me about it. 'I salute those democracy activists who are in prison, those who still continue inside Burma. It is...

'All history is propaganda'.(Burma EDUCATION)(Viewpoint essay)
May 1, 2008... 'We don't need no education,' goes the song. In Burma, they take it literally. The country has reasonable rates of literacy but appalling academic standards. I met up with a group of young people from Shan State and they told me their...

A shrunken world: caught in the crossfire of armed resistance and the Burmese military's attacks, many villages are being burned off the map. Dinyar Godrej meets with some of the people who have fled through the jungle.(INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE)(Essay)
May 1, 2008... The red mud path slopes down almost vertically. Riding pillion, with my belongings strapped to my back, I grit my teeth as my young motorcyclist descends it, braking all the time. At the bottom, he revs up and lets fly for an almost vertical...

Eye candy.(DAILY LIFE / MEDIA)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Who wants to watch pricey satellite television, with its rolling news and international distractions, when there's a garden of propaganda delights to be explored on TV Myanmar? The channel has a short morning burst until 9:00am, then breaks off...

Burma--the facts: Burma is a country with very poor reporting on most basic indicators. International agencies have limited access.(Country overview)
May 1, 2008... the basics Population: reported variously as 48.37 million (2006), 49 million (current) and 51 million (2006) by UNICEF, United Nations Economic and Social Commission forAsia and Pacific, and the World Bank respectively. The last...

Caucus of terrorists: the spectre of democracy keeps haunting Burma's generals. Here's what some of the people involved in raising it have to say.(POLITICS / THE FUTURE)(Essay)
May 1, 2008... Burma's ruling generals have a catchall word for all those outside the country who want to usher in democracy--terrorists. Whizzing about northern Thailand, meeting exiled politicians and activists, I feel somewhat let down--they are, in the...

Corporate hogwash: workers' rights leader Maung Maung condemns the corporations doing business with the regime.(POLITICS/THE FUTURE)(Essay)
May 1, 2008... There's no great difference between any country in the world when it comes to doing business with Burma. Look at the US--the Bush executive order is pretty good, but what is Chevron doing? The British Prime Minister and parliamentarians are...

"Please use your liberty to promote ours".(ACTION)(Website list)
May 1, 2008... Join the dots Give your active support to organizations that lobby on behalf of the issues that matter to Burma's people. Here are just some in reader countries: [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] AUSTRALIA Australia Burma Network ...

Was Jesus Christ a revolutionary? Terry Eagleton sifts through the texts of the Gospels and comes up with some ambiguous answers.
May 1, 2008... Jesus certainly kept some shady political company. One of his inner circle was known as Simon the Zealot, the Zealots being an underground anti-imperialist movement dedicated to driving the Romans out of Palestine. The Roman presence in the...

Saving the sacred sea: Russian nuclear plant threatens ancient lake.(ENVIRONMENT)
May 1, 2008... Locals call it the Sacred Sea, Russians consider it a national treasure and the world has declared it a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Siberia's Lake Baikal is one of the world's oldest, largest and deepest lakes. Its age and isolation have...

Bearing witness to a crime.(DIEGO GARCIA)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... 'You had better examine your consciences,' Jon Castte told officials at the hastily convened British magistrates' court. He and fellow crew member Pete Bouquet, part of the 'People's Navy', had been put on trial for entering the three-mile...

The language of gun culture ...(Word power)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... deterrent n. exponential effect of buying a bigger weapon than the other person drive-by n. quick killing for those people who haven't got time for a proper murder Heston v. to remove from cold dead fingers NRA n. village idiots'...

Journey to justice: a long way travelled but still far to go on debt relief.(DEBT)
May 1, 2008... Campaigners from around the world will gather in the British city of Birmingham on 18 May for Journey to Justice--an event marking 10 years of the campaign to Drop the Debt. It will be a decade since the day in 1998 when 70,000 people formed a...

Mother's misery.(PHILIPPINES)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... A contraceptive ban imposed in Manila eight years ago has badly affected the city's poor. Some 70 per cent of Filipinos rely on public health facilities and many use family planning clinics to obtain free contraceptives. The ban .was pushed...

Dow cowed.(INDIA)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Protesters have had a dramatic victory at the site of Dow Chemical's proposed new chemical plant at Pune, 150 kilometres southeast of Mumbai in India. Since 16 January, reports SchNEWS, villagers and other supporters have occupied a...

Hands off our oil: unions lead fight against Western oil theft.(IRAQ)
May 1, 2008... Five years into the war and occupation of Iraq, and following five missed deadlines, the proposed Iraqi Oil Law remains off the statute books, despite the best efforts of those whom it would benefit. The law would allow foreign oil companies to...

Speechmarks.
May 1, 2008... "When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die." Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), French writer and philosopher For further information see www.basraoilunion.org www.handsoffiraqioil.org

Recreating the Big Bang is 'perfectly safe', honest! True tales of a mixed-up world.(Seriously...)
May 1, 2008... A lawsuit in the US has raised safety concerns over the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) -- the world's biggest particle collider -- which is to be switched on later this year. The suit simply seeks a safety and environmental review and a delay of a...

Big bad world.
May 1, 2008... DON'T IT ALWAYS SEEM TO GO THAT YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'VE GOT TILL IT'S GONE [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Jamaica constabulary force: taking aim at the rich and powerful.(Worldbeaters)
May 1, 2008... Job: Maintaining law and order in Jamaica. Reputation: Inefficient, trigger-happy, brutal and sometimes corrupt. A spate of murders of gays (known locally as 'batty men') and lesbians is just the most recent chapter in the sordid...

XXY.(Movie review)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... scripted and directed by Lucia Puenzo This is a sensitive and unprecedented drama about a teenager exploring her sexuality. Hardly groundbreaking, you might think, but Alex is intersex-the XXY of the title refers to an extra chromosome...

Why We Fight.(Movie review)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... written and directed by Eugene Jarecki The Cold War imbued people in the West with propaganda images of the Soviet Union and China as aggressive militarized states. Jarecki's closely argued documentary presents the United States as...

The Bairns.(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... by Rachel Unthank and the Winterset (EMI 5099950438020 CD) Out of Britain's blustery Northumbria comes Rachel Unthank and her Winterset trio. The Bairns is Unthank's second album and it is so bold that it almost undoes the folk...

Plan B 3.0 Mobilizing to Save Civilization.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... by Lester R Brown (WW Norton & Co, ISBN 9780393330878) 'We are in a race between tipping points in the earth's natural systems and those in the world's political systems. Which will tip first?' is how Lester R Brown puts it. To win, we...

Final Silence.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... by Ronald Flores translated from Spanish by Gavin O'Toole (Aflame Books, ISBN 9780955233920) The recent history of Latin America has given its artists and writers the dubious privilege of being able to draw on actual events and...

Transition Handbook From oil dependency to local resilience.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... by Rob Hopkins (Green Books, ISBN 9781900322188) Since its inception just two years ago, the Transition movement has grown with a surprising rapidity. There are now nearly 40 official Transition Initiatives around Britain and some 600 at...

African Scream Contest.(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... by Various Artists (Analog Africa AA 063 CD/LP) If the subtitle to African Scream Contest--'Raw and Psychedelic Sounds from Benin and Togo 70s'--isn't enough to engender your curiosity, maybe the story of the label and its founder, a...

Southern exposure: highlighting the work of artists and photographers from the Majority World.(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Managing a weapon was something that became quite familiar to Mozambicans during the southeast African country's 16-year civil war that ended with the 1992 peace accords. Sixteen years on, the same objects that once served to kill hundreds of...

Errant paradox.(View from Montevideo)
May 1, 2008... Reading the paper each day is a sort of history class. The papers teach through both what they say and what they don't. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] History is an errant paradox. It is the contradictions that keep its legs moving. Maybe this...

Homeless in Delhi: Jeremy Seabrook meets the people who shelter in the 'rainshadow of wealth' in India's capital city.(Essay)(Essay)
May 1, 2008... A smoky sunset in the choking streets around Old Delhi Railway Station, where the traffic is permanently stalled. Low sunlight through a violet cloud bathes the scene in blood. Stringy cycle-rickshaw driver strain every muscle with a...

Uruguay.(Country Profile)(Country overview)
May 1, 2008... It was the meddling British who used their cartographic skills to delineate the country that would become Uruguay in the early 19th century, as a buffer zone between the two regional giants, Argentina and Brazil. The result was a country stuck...

At a glance.(Country overview)
May 1, 2008... Leader: President Tabare Vasquez Economy: GNI per capita: $5,310 (Argentina $5,150, United States $44,970). Monetary unit: Peso Uruguayo. Main exports: Meat, rice, leather, wool, dairy products. Tourism remains strong despite the fall...