New Internationalist articles from November 2004

New Internationalist archives from November 2004

From this month's editor.(Editorial)
November 1, 2004... A magazine about women's rights with a man on the cover? A decade ago, when I did the last New Internationalist on women, I would never have dreamed of such a thing. I believed women's rights were about women, and women needed their own space....

Naked power.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... Re: 'The body as weapon' (View from the South, NI 371): These women were walking proof that men are responsible for their actions--undermining the myth that rape is the woman's fault because of what she wore/said, where she was, the...

Ethical consumption.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... Re: Dieter Gerhardt's letter (NI 371)--there is already an ethical rating system of global (commercial) enterprises being developed by the Ethical Consumer Research Association (www.ethicalconsumer.org). Their very readable and informative...

Beyond the feel-good factor.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... In the name of God (NI 370) was informative and interesting. Tackling a topic that divides so many people was gutsy, as was delving into something which Western lefties prefer to ignore. I agree that the possibility of receiving forgiveness...

Secular fundamentalism?(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... I take issue with David Boulton's implication ('Who Needs Religion?', NI 370) that the only socially acceptable form of faith is one in which a person concedes that their beliefs are entirely 'made up' constructs of the human mind. It is...

Schools of belief.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... If religion is always viewed from outside, and never from within, it can never be understood as it exists for those who practise it. One example from many debatable or unbalanced statements about religion was made by Marilyn Mason ('Suffer...

Democracy and dictatorship.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... In 'Let us speak!' (Keynote, Mao or never, NI 371) a Chinese activist is quoted as saying: 'A lot of officials are prepared to take our views very seriously. They give you an opportunity to be heard.' [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] What a...

Mao the mass murderer.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... I found your inclusion of Mao's comments unwelcome and offensive (NI 371). Mao ranks amongst one of the worst mass murdering dictators in history. Having his 'thoughts and predictions'--while ironic, given the atrocious conditions Chinese...

Slavery distinctions.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... In the otherwise excellent 'The white curse' (View from the South, NI 370) Eduardo Galeano fails to distinguish clearly between slavery and the slave trade. It was the slave trade that Britain abolished in 1807. Slavery itself continued in...

Social responsibility.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... Hooked on tobacco (NI 369) opens our eyes to the extent of power the tobacco industry wields and to the manipulative, devious and underhand ways by which they continue to market themselves. Did you know that British American Tobacco fund...

O little town.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... Bethlehem is indeed a town of significance to Christians, not least to the thousands of Palestinian Christians who call it home (Crossword 88, 10 Across, NI 369). However, it is not in Israel, but was illegally occupied by the Israeli military...

Written in the stars: Reem Haddad finds herself up against the fatalism of her compatriots.(Letter from Lebanon)
November 1, 2004... I listened with shock to my carpenter relating the events of his weekend. His young brother-in-law and wife were killed in a car accident, leaving their three-year-old-child an orphan. The bewildered boy kept calling for his mother. ...

Confessions of the torturer.(EDUARDO GALEANO'S VIEW FROM THE SOUTH)
November 1, 2004... The confessions of the tortured are worth little or nothing. Since the days of the Inquisition it has been clear that the information obtained through torture is not credible, or barely so, for the simple reason that pain transforms anyone into...

The energy tug-of-war.(SUSTAINABILITY)
November 1, 2004... Many Indians remain unconnected to the power system but the World Bank is offering no strategies that would help increase poor people's access to electricity. This mosque in New Delhi is silhouetted against power lines that have been hacked...

More evidence of how the World Bank teams up with profit, not the poor.(CURRENTS)
November 1, 2004... WHEN the World Bank finances oil, gas and coal projects, it wades into a global energy tug-of-war. Pulling on one side of the rope are the world's poorest: the nearly two billion people whose basic energy needs remain unfulfilled. Political and...

Lest we forget Shell ...(CURRENTS)(Royal Dutch-Shell Group of Cos.'s involvement in suppression of Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People )(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... In November 1995 the New York Times called it the morality tale of the 20th century: the judicial murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight colleagues from the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MoSOP) by the Nigerian Government at the...

Environmental blue in the Danube.(CURRENTS)(Ukraine's shipping canal construction may damage nesting sites of rarest birds)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... The Ukraine Government's construction of a 160-kilometre shipping canal through the Danube Delta--Europe's last great wetlands--is defying a chorus of condemnation from international environmental bodies, foreign governments and neighbouring...

Western charity undermines African textiles.(UGANDA)
November 1, 2004... UGANDAN manufacturers want their Government to put controls on the importation of all second-hand clothing (commonly known as mivumba). They argue that the imported clothing--much of it donated to leading charities in the US and Europe before...

Brazil cancels most of Mozambique's debt.(CURRENTS)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... Brazil has announced that it will write off $314 million of the $331 million that it is owed by Mozambique--around 95 per cent of the debt. Brazilian President Luis Inacio 'Lula' da Silva said that through this gesture his country wants to show...

Dramatic fall in asylum numbers.(CURRENTS)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... The number of people seeking asylum in industrialized countries has dropped to the lowest level in 17 years, according to statistics released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The total number of claims in 30 selected...

The language of oil ...(CURRENTS)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... Word power 3 oil rig v. to win a contract through close personal links to a government. spoil v. to spill oil. Shell n. protective layer that separates money from conscience. unsustainable adj. (environmental) precious; in...

Speechmarks.(CURRENTS)
November 1, 2004... Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think. Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism

Countryside suffers opium withdrawal: hill peoples are the casualties of the war on drugs.(LADS)
November 1, 2004... The Laotian Government's headlong rush towards their 2005 UN deadline for total opium eradication has been hailed by international drug control agencies as a remarkable success. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in July...

Making a clean killing.(Seriously)(Air Force's research of antimatter munitions)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... Sci-fi fans may be familiar with antimatter--the strange mirror to matter--which is often used as a power source in the famous Star Trek series. Recently, investigations by Keay Davidson of the San Francisco Chronicle reveals that the US...

Nikki van der Gaag looks at what women have gained in the fight for equality with men--and what they are in danger of losing.(KEYNOTE)
November 1, 2004... 'IT was very difficult at first,' said Lisa. 'Some of the women found it hard to get permission from their husbands to come. And some came even though they had been told not to.' [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This is not a rural village in...

'A black woman took my job': Michael Kimmel argues that it is in men's interest to work for gender equality.(MEN)
November 1, 2004... OVER the past three generations, women's lives have been utterly and completely transformed--in politics, the military, the workplace, professions and education. But during that time, the ideology of masculinity has remained relatively intact....

A woman's rite: they call it 'something of which you should never speak', though many African countries have now explicitly outlawed the practice. Not so in the Gambia, Nikki van der Gaag discovers.(FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION)
November 1, 2004... IT always happens on a Monday. On the Sunday, the drumming and dancing go on all night. All the women get dressed in their best and most brightly coloured clothes--purples, lime green, orange, vellow, sky blue--and they dance until they drop,...

Women's rights: the facts.
November 1, 2004... While women's lives have improved enormously in many ways, especially in the West, women still make up 70 per cent of the world's poorest people and two-thirds of those who cannot read and write. And there is a danger that some of the rights...

What price freedom? Seven months in Baghdad as an activist, writer and circus clown has given Jo Wilding an insight into how women's lives have changed in the 'new' Iraq.(IRAQ)
November 1, 2004... ON my visits to pre-war Iraq. it was safe, as a woman, to walk on the streets alone at three in the morning. Of course that's partly because the Ba'athists suppressed any crimes other than their own. Now my women friends don't feel safe on the...

Fish money: for most of the world's population, daily life is based on often unspoken agreements between men and women. Nikki van der Gaag reports from the Gambian coastal village of Gunjur.(GAMBIA)
November 1, 2004... MONEY in Gunjur smells of fish. Not the larger, more pristine 50-delassie notes, but the crumpled smaller ones: the red 5, the green 10 and the small tinny silver one-delassie coins with the alligator on the back. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]...

A drama unfolds: Uruguay was about to vote in a groundbreaking law on abortion. It was to be a model for the whole of Latin America. But then things started going wrong ... Hersilia Fonseca and Patricia Pujol report on a battle that may still be won.(ABORTION)
November 1, 2004... FLAVIA was 16 and had a six-month-old baby that she was still breastfeeding at night. Her period was late and she was afraid of being pregnant again. She had no access to sex education or abortion clinics; only an abortion pill that she had put...

Women who have moved worlds: fighting for justice may require more than the capacity to organize and campaign. It can also demand courage and personal sacrifice. Here are just a few of the many women who have shown these qualities in recent times.
November 1, 2004... MEDHA PATKAR is a leader in one of the largest social movements in the world--the fight against dam projects that threaten the right to life and livelihood for the people of India's Narmada valley. In 1985 Patkar began mobilizing massive...

The other side of silence: women are still being beaten and killed by their husbands and partners, but they are finding ways to fight back. Nikki van der Gaag reports.(VIOLENCE)
November 1, 2004... RANIA AL BAZ's husband was angry because he came in and found her on the telephone. It was not the first time he had beaten her, but this time when she begged him not to hit her, his reply was: 'Hit you? I'm not going to hit you, I am going to...

Action & reading.(VIOLENCE)(women organizations and books on womens rights)
November 1, 2004... These are some of the many groups that exist to support women's rights and work on gender issues. INTERNATIONAL DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era) a Third World feminist network which looks at the cultural and...

Iran's neo-conservatives.(WORLDBEATERS)(Saeed Mortazavi, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nezhad )
November 1, 2004... Status: The Powers That Be in Iran. Reputation: Inheritors of Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution, Defenders of the Faith, Roadblocks Against Vice and Corruption, The Instruments of God's Will. It may not have made the Hollywood...

Gaza Blues: Different Stories.(mixedmedia)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 1, 2004... Gaza Blues Different Stories Samir El-Youssef and Etgar Keret (David Paul Books, ISBN 0 9540542 4 5) Israeli Etgar Keret and Palestinian Samir El-Youssef met at a conference in Switzerland called 'Fear in One's Own Land'....

The In-Between World of Vikram Lall.(mixedmedia)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 1, 2004... The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by MG Vassanji (Canongate, ISBN 1 84195 538 8) MG Vassanji's expansive family saga centres on the figure of Vikram Lall, born in Kenya of Indian parents and destined to be reviled as 'one of...

Spirit of Mambesak.(mixedmedia)(Sound Recording Review)
November 1, 2004... Spirit of Mambesak by Black Paradise (Blunt 20046 CD) When more than one of your songwriters dies mysteriously of food poisoning, you begin to suspect the hand of the Borgias, or some latter-day equivalent, has been hovering over...

Sold Out: The true cost of supermarket shopping.(mixedmedia)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 1, 2004... Sold Out The true cost of supermarket shopping by William Young (Vision Paperbacks ISBN 1904132 405) It is widely acknowledged that the major supermarket chains in Europe and North America take advantage of their huge buying...

A Way of Life.(mixedmedia)(Movie Review)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... A Way of Life directed by Amma Asante The opening scene hits hard--a teenage gang beating up a defenceless man. Don't be put off, this is not a violent film. Rather, it's a film about violence, a serious and subtle study of why the...

Mapou.(mixedmedia)(Sound Recording Review)
November 1, 2004... Mapou by Rene Lacaille (Riverboat TUG 1033 CD) Hearing Rene Lacaille for the first time is like discovering Serge Gainsbourg adrift in the Indian Ocean--while a blast of his accordion suggests that French band Les Negresses Vertes...

The NI prize crossword.
November 1, 2004... Win a copy of the latest World Guide reference book... All correct solutions received by the 27th of the cover month will be put into a draw--though only the winner will be notified. Post your entry to NI Crossword, 55 Rectory Road, Oxford,...

Big bad world.
November 1, 2004... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Interview with OLAVA: Shaina from OLAVA talked to Vanessa Baird.(making waves)(Organized Lesbian Alliance for Visibility and Action)(Interview)
November 1, 2004... Shaina does not want us to publish her full name. This may seem ironic considering the organization she belongs to--OLAVA--stands for Organized Lesbian Alliance for Visibility and Action. But in India, where homosexuality is still illegal and...

Democracy is dead: free markets have eaten democracy for breakfast. Paul Kingsnorth wonders what's for dinner.(ESSAY)
November 1, 2004... Benjamin Franklin is an American icon. One of the 'Founding Fathers' of the United States, he was a man of many talents: inventor, diplomat, traveller, media mogul, statesperson. He was also one of the small group who drew up the Constitution...

Mexico.(COUNTRY PROFILE)
November 1, 2004... IN 1994, Mexico was thrust into the headlines after the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) seized four towns in the poor southern state of Chiapas. The rebellion occurred on the day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came...