New Internationalist articles from November 2005

New Internationalist archives from November 2005

Disability in the Majority World.(From this month's editor)(Editorial)
November 1, 2005... It was a straightforward request. One of our British subscribers explained that she had a disability and wondered what the lives of persons with disabilities in the Majority World were like. Would NI consider doing an edition about it? It...

Stuff pity! People with disabilities want to get on with their lives. Others keep standing in the way. Dinyar Godrej explores what this can mean in the Majority World.(KEYNOTE)(Column)
November 1, 2005... With his wedding date approaching, Samuel Kabue of Nairobi, Kenya, remembered a past kindness. There had been a man who had intervened when as a child he'd been run over by a cyclist. This man had apprehended the cyclist who tried to flee from...

Body blows: in the thick of Zimbabwe's current turmoil, women with disabilities face hellish prejudice, hunger and rape. Gladys Charowa bears witness.(POVERTY & GENDER)(Column)
November 1, 2005... 'The people that I looked up to let me down. Being a student I always had respect for them and counted on them as my family. I told them all my problems and worries. At the age of seven I never thought that I would be taken as a wife by a...

The tips are my toes: prejudice isolates like little else. But Mosharraf Hossain finds that if people with disabilities are determined, it can be fought.(CULTURAL ATTITUDES / POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT)(Column)
November 1, 2005... In the Bangladeshi village where I was born in the early 1960s, most people, even many health professionals, did not know about polio. At the age of three when I was affected by high fever, the village quack gave me an injection to reduce the...

Revolucion rampista! Tomas Hernandez on how disabled activists shook up a lethargic local government.(CULTURAL ATTITUDES / POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT)(Column)
November 1, 2005... LET ME EXPLAIN. Here in Nicaragua it was not possible for us wheelchair users to get around like you can in places like England. We don't have transport that is adapted to our needs; road kerbs are very high. Up until recently we could not to...

Disability in the Majority World: the facts.
November 1, 2005... People with disabilities are low on the list of official priorities, especially in the Majority World. There is no accurate data to reflect their lives. International institutions like the United Nations are aiming to change this. Losing...

Pili: 'one more chance': mental illness is often misunderstood in the best of circumstances and people who have it are more likely to be feared than helped. In a rural situation, their problems can be compounded by superstition and a lack of proper medical care. Below are the testimonies of two people, from Tanzania and Sri Lanka, who confront the upheavals mental illness has brought to their lives.(Pili Akili )(Biography)
November 1, 2005... Pili Akili lives in Nangwala, a farming village in the Newala District near the east coast of Tanzania. Pili is in her mid-20s and has had bipolar affective disorder for the past four years--a type of mental illness characterized by episodes of...

Piyasena: 'in the right place in the real world'.(Amarakoon Disanayaka Piyasena )(Biography)
November 1, 2005... Amarakoon Disanayaka Piyasena lives in a village in the Angunukolapalessa region of southern Sri Lanka. Now 41, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 19. Piyasena was ambitious and a bit of a dreamer at 16, his head filled with plans of how to...

Learning curve: Latha Janet is the only blind teacher in her village in South India. And the lessons she gives are learned from life.(EDUCATION)
November 1, 2005... I was born in a poor Christian family. My father used to be a farmhand, earning around 100 rupees [$2.30 at current rates] a day. Ours is a large family: I have four elder brothers, a younger brother and a younger sister. I was born blind....

Bright sparks: the will to learn is strong--as these photographs attest. For the vast majority of children with disabilities, schooling is denied entirely--or it can be a hell. But when it works it can be the right start every child needs.
November 1, 2005... (Clockwise from top left) Got it! A hearing test at a school for hearing-impaired children, Chazanga, Zambia; When knowing the right answer won't let you sit still, in Egypt; Mum and son work together in Tuguegarao, The Philippines. It's not...

Power struggle: Uganda has an impressive array of people with disabilities involved in politics. But do they get to have their say? Joseph Walugembe reports with Julia Peckett.(National Union of Disabled Persons of Uganda)
November 1, 2005... As recently as the 1960s and 1970s, disabled people in Uganda were subject only to pity and charity. However, in the mid-1980s, Disabled Peoples' Organizations (DPOs) in the rich world started arguing that international development agencies...

Out of the shadows: Beatriz Satizabal has taken the knocks of Colombia's macho society to emerge as her own woman.(GENDER, RELATIONSHIPS & WORK)(Column)
November 1, 2005... Just last year I discovered the truth about why I was born the way I was. I now know that I have a genetic disorder that meant I was born with a malformed mouth, hands and left foot. But for years my family and I thought this was caused by the...

Hotel Solidarity: worker-control opens hotel doors to more than tourism in Buenos Aires.(ARGENTINA)
November 1, 2005... WHILE the Argentine economy has been plunging down, life at Hotel Bauen has only been going up. Two years after being 'taken' by the hotel employees, the legendary Hotel Bauen has been reborn. The hotel was built in the run-up to the 1978...

Sri Lankan ecosystems in dire straits.(Currents)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... Environmental activists, fisherpeople, community organizations and trade unions from all over Sri Lanka have called on the Indian Government to halt a controversial ship canal project in the Palk Strait until an Environmental Impact Assessment...

No refuge: Russian terrorism against Chechens ignored.(CHECHNYA)
November 1, 2005... FATIMA is not in good shape. She suffers from hypertension. But she is better than she was. Before, she used to get angry about everything. Now she laughs as she explains: 'When they come in the middle of the night with their masks and guns,...

Robots address child abuse.(Currents)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... For years human rights activists have been campaigning against the use of South Asian child jockeys (some as young as five) in the popular camel races in Gulf countries such as Kuwait, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates (Essay NI 380). The...

Crunch time over Fairtrade mark for Nestle.(Currents)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... The world's largest food corporation, Nestle, has applied to the Fairtrade Foundation in Britain for a Fairtrade (FT) mark for a new 'Partner's Brand' of coffee, according to documents leaked to The Guardian newspaper (21 September 2005). Our...

Speechmarks.(Dorothy Thompson)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... A little more matriarchy is what the world needs, and I know it. Period. Paragraph. Dorothy Thompson (1893-1961), US journalist. Thompson was the first American journalist expelled from Germany by Hitler, in 1934.

Word power.(Currents)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... The language of film blockbuster n. film that removes the need for thought by grossly oversimplifying celluloid n. creature made from the fat liposuctioned from movie stars Disney n. mythical beast that consumes everything in...

Petro-provocation: the likely fallout for the US when Iran dumps petrodollars next year.(ECONOMICS)
November 1, 2005... THE current reasons for US antagonism towards Iran extend well beyond its publicly stated concerns regarding Iran's nuclear intentions. In mid-2003 Iran broke from tradition and began accepting euros as payment for its oil exports from its...

Buy British ... and Slovakian! True tales of a mixed-up world.(Seriously ...)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... British National Party (the UK's ultra-nationalist Nazi wannabes) members are infamous for their anti-foreigner, anti-immigrant, generally racist rhetoric as regularly featured in their party's monthly newspaper. Unfortunately for eager readers...

Robertson's wrath.(Pat Robertson)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... Speaking of fascists, the United States' own Goebbels wannabe, Pat Robertson, recently came to an unusual conclusion about the cause of the disaster that befell New Orleans. Apparently 'lesbianism' (adding 'ism' to anything in the States is a...

Thaksin Shinawatra: taking aim at the rich and powerful.(Worldbeaters)
November 1, 2005... Thais take family responsibilities very seriously. Reassuring, therefore, that Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra leads by example. He has, for instance, appointed his cousin as supreme commander of the armed forces, and his brother-in-law as...

Brothers.(Movie Review)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... Brothers directed by Susanne Blier 'They fuck you up, your mum and dad,' as the poet said. The Dogme-inspired Brothers takes this as its starting point, and shows how pernicious war is too. Brothers deftly criss-crosses two...

A Letter to the Prime Minister Jo Wilding's Diary from Iraq.(Movie Review)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... A Letter to the Prime Minister Jo Wilding's Diary from Iraq directed by Julia Guest Jo Wilding is a peace activist, not a professional journalist or filmmaker, but she makes a revealing guide to events in Iraq. Without any slickness,...

Dimanche a Bamako.(Brief Article)(Sound Recording Review)
November 1, 2005... Dimanche a Bamako by Amadou & Mariam (Because 3099952 CD) Guitarist Amadou Bagayoko and singer Mariam Doumbia have several albums, all endlessly inventive, to their credit. But it's only now with the release of the marvellous Dimanche...

tChorba.(Sound Recording Review)
November 1, 2005... tChorba by Les Yeux Noirs (Recall/Sony RECALL 055 CD) Ever since the demise of Les Negresses Vertes, there's been a vacancy for a band, Parisian or otherwise, capable of putting on their own vagabond swagger. Enter Les Yeux Noirs, a...

The Story of My Life Refugee Writing in Oxford.(The Silver Throat of the Moon Writing in Exile)(Book Review)
November 1, 2005... The Story of My Life Refugee Writing in Oxford edited by Carole Angier (The Charlbury Press ISBN 0 9546342 4 1) The Silver Throat of the Moon Writing in Exile edited by Jennifer Langer (Five Leaves Publications ISBN 0907123651) ...

Suicide Bombers Allah's New Martyrs.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 1, 2005... Suicide Bombers Allah's New Martyrs by Farhad Khosrokhavar (Pluto Press ISBN 0 7453 2283 2) This scholarly study looks at how some Islamist intellectuals--Syed Qutb, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ali Shariati and others--have attempted to...

Greenham Non-Violent Women v The Crown Prerogative.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 1, 2005... Greenham Non-Violent Women v The Crown Prerogative by Sarah Hipperson (Greenham Publications 2005) There was always something special about the protests at Greenham Common. They were anti-nuclear at a time when nuclear war seemed an...

Southern exposure.(Coca-Cola India advertising in Chennai)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... Highlighting the work of photographers from the Majority World Transnational corporations often plaster India with billboards, ads and wall paintings without much thought about the surroundings. The trouble with such an approach is that...

Garbage blues.(garbage recycling in Japan and India)
November 1, 2005... I'm sitting in an elegant coffee bar in Tokyo talking to my friend Chihiro. It's an unlikely place to be discussing garbage but that's the subject on her mind. A professor of political science at a prestigious university, Chihiro has just come...

The North Caspian-what am I bid? Horatio Morpurgo's travels to the newest oil frontier provoke some uncomfortable questions, from sturgeon with muscular dystrophy to oil corporations in deep denial.
November 1, 2005... When the first Soviet atom bomb was exploded in 1949 what the world heard was the starting gun for the arms race. It was a less abstract sensation for Kazakhstan, where the test took place and where uranium exploration had begun the previous...

Interview with Damu Smith.(Making Waves)(Interview)
November 1, 2005... Damu Smith was in Washington, DC when he heard the doctor's diagnosis. Stage four colorectal cancer! It had already metastasized to his liver. And, said the doctor, his treatment would cost approximately $500,000. This he must pay himself, as...

More power.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2005... The NI deserves to be congratulated for a brilliant issue on nuclear power (Nuclear's second wind, NI 382), that delved into the destruction at every level of the nuclear fuel cycle, and deconstructed the new 'green' marketing spin on a...

It's getting late.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2005... Many thanks for the excellent issue on nuclear power, which nevertheless fails to state the conclusion made inevitable by the information it so unflinchingly details: there is no means of energy production (except muscle power) without cost to...

Links in the chain.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2005... Re: 'Blenheim & Bangalore' (Essay, NI 382). Farmers continue to lose out, to be squeezed by the system that encourages huge agribusinesses to plough their corporate furrows deep and straight to the public purse, for it is the taxpayers' money...

Greenpeace responds.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2005... Aligning Greenpeace with organizations like The Nature Conservancy ('The Stain in Sustainability', Bingo!, NI 383) is both misleading and disingenuous. TNC openly accepts funding from any organization to pursue its work; Greenpeace, quite...

Hitler Youth.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2005... Re: the dispute over the nature of Pope Benedict XVI's membership of the Hitler Youth (Letters, NI 382). I was born and lived in Upper Silesia from 1930 to 1946. I was a member of the Hitler Youth (HJ). Baldur von Schirach, the Minister for...

Tibet's autonomy.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2005... Re: 'Railway to the top of the world' (Essay, NI 381)--nowhere does Erling Hoh acknowledge that Tibet is an independent country which was brutally invaded by the Chinese in 1950 and illegally occupied ever since. The Chinese Government has no...

Creative peace.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2005... I applaud you on The Challenge to Violence (NI 381). We need to hear that not only are there peaceful solutions to violence but also positive results of these solutions. How refreshing to hear that there are countries without armies! I...

Collective rights.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2005... Ike Oguine's View from the South was outstanding (NI 381). The recognition of the importance to people of collective identities is indeed an advance in understanding. It is, therefore, disappointing that the British Government should be so...

Dismay and delight.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2005... I was dismayed that Dr BR Ambedkar found only passing reference in Combating Caste (NI 380). He infused self-respect and hope into the soul of Dalits. The chief architect of the Indian Constitution, Ambedkar had the courage to resign his post...

Charmless change: the old neighbourhood ain't what it used to be, discovers Reem Haddad.
November 1, 2005... IT used to take me a good 20 minutes to reach my car, parked a few metres away from my home in Gemaizeh--one of the few quarters of Beirut to retain its original pre-civil war charm. There was the grocer to greet, the butcher to chat to, the...

Morocco.(Country Profile)
November 1, 2005... Standing beside the extraordinary Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca--the world's second-largest religious building, built jutting out Into the Atlantic Ocean between 1986 and 1993--it is easy to conceive of Morocco as a country on the edge. On the...

At a glance.(Country Profile)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... Leader: King Muhammad VI (Sayyidi ibn al-Hasan) Economy: GNI per capita $1,320 (Algeria $1,890, France $24,770) Monetary unit: Dirham Main exports: Tea, coffee, hides, tin ore. The recent fishing deal will benefit the EU far more...

Star ratings.(Country Profile)(Morocco)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... INCOME DISTRIBUTION POOR The elite in the cities are a world away not only from the traditional villages but also from the potentially explosive urban poor. 1994 POOR POSITION OF WOMEN FAIR Moroccan women are less constrained...

NI assessment.(Country Profile)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... POLITICS POOR The Government is a coalition between the Socialist Union and the Istiqlal or Independence Party, with the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party in opposition. But the King appoints the Prime Minister (currently...

Advertorial.(control of automotive emissions)(Advertisement)
November 1, 2005... Q 'With winter upon us once again, I'm aware that driving my car poses more of a threat to the environment than ever. Have you any advice about how to reduce wastage and get more out of my car over the next few months?' Andrew Davis,...