New Internationalist articles from October 2006

New Internationalist archives from October 2006

Europa!(From this month's editor)(Editorial)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... The other members of NI's editorial staff thought it might be amusing to get a Canadian to edit this issue on Europe. So I have drawn the short straw. Not really. I have long been a Europhile and I hope that some of that sympathy has crept into...

Dictatorship of no alternatives: Richard Swift reports on how an internationalist vision fell among the wolves.(THE EUROPEAN UNION)(Cover story)
October 1, 2006... Nicole was born in Brussels but feels like it is two different cities these days. 'Only EU people eat in these fancy restaurants now,' she says gesturing to a couple of eateries for the well-heeled on either corner from where we are standing....

Whose Europe? Our Europe! Susan George celebrates a model of fairness and equity.(THE SOCIAL MODEL)
October 1, 2006... Like the famous Dickens opener in A Tale of Two Cities--'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times'--Europe has always excelled at both the best and the worst. In the 20th century alone, Europeans committed some of the most horrendous...

Worth fighting for: since Sweden joined the European Union in 1995, battle has raged. Peter Gustavsson traces the faultlines of conflict.(SWEDEN)
October 1, 2006... It was a nervous crowd that gathered on that September night in 2003 in Stockholm to watch a referendum special on big screens in a bar. But eventually the tension gave way to emotional celebration. As the results poured in from district after...

To Barcelona or Hell: African migrants are storming Fortress Europe. Sharif Gemie charts their path.(MIGRATION)
October 1, 2006... Flying in over the Atlantic to Senegal, you might think that you had arrived in a tropical paradise. The first impression you get of this West African country is of 300 kilometres of beautiful, golden-white sandy beaches, lapped by a deep,...

Bad cop, worse cop: John Hilary is sceptical about Europe's reputation as a friend of the Global South.(MIGRATION)
October 1, 2006... It's hard for us Europeans not to look down on the United States of America. First up, they've got a president who is patently off the wall. Then the US electorate asks him back for a second term of office. When not actually invading third...

Europe in question the facts: the defeat of the European constitution last year has left many wondering about the future. NI charts both the resilience of European achievement and the market-driven inequality designed to undermine it.
October 1, 2006... EU--Where is the power? (3) The European Commission -- the main everyday governing body of the EU, made up of 25 commissioners nominated by each member state. The Commission not only runs the EU bureaucracy (largely in Brussels) but also...

Aux armes, citoyens! Veronique Mistiaen chronicles the stubborn French resistance to neoliberalism.(FRANCE)
October 1, 2006... 'We chanted slogans like: "Villepin, if you want to know where we're going to put your CPE, it's up your arse, up your arse; no hesitation! No, no, no to the rubbish CPE.' [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Lou Pestel, a 17-year-old high school...

The old lady and new Europe: Horatio Morpurgo faces the difficult questions about EU enlargement.(ROMANIA & BULGARIA)
October 1, 2006... I start early one frosty morning from a small town in The Netherlands, close to the Belgian border. Someone in the ticket office, hearing my question and having the same train to catch, accompanies me to the platform and we fall into...

Tug of justice two visions of Europe.
October 1, 2006... SOCIAL EUROPE PEACE A majority of Europeans living today have no personal memory of going to war with their neighbours. Considering Europeans have been slaughtering each other for centuries culminating in the 20th century where...

The next move? Richard Swift explores how Europe might do it differently.(EURO-FUTURES)
October 1, 2006... It should have been different. The EU could have grown slowly and paid careful attention to the quality of a way of life rather than rush headlong to expand a single market based on the lowest common denominator. It could have put democracy at...

Schools in peril: missile and arson attacks on education.(AFGHANISTAN)
October 1, 2006... MORE than 100 schools have been set ablaze in recent months and dozens of others closed because of bombs and threats, according to the Afghan education ministry. Teachers have been killed and UNICEF claims that six children have died. Schools...

Not lovin' it.(LABOUR RIGHTS)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... Protests by Chinese workers, manufacturing the garish plastic toys McDonald's uses to lure children through its golden arches, descended into a riot last month. China Labor Watch reports that 1,000 of the 10,000 workers who live and work in the...

Foot-in-mouth disease.(AMBITION)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... Remember Michael Ignatieff, who made it as an NI Worldbeater back in December last year? The erstwhile human rights campaigner who takes great pride in being a 'tough-minded' liberal has stuck his foot in it again. When asked what he thought of...

Not backing down.(MEXICO)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... An activist from the demonstration at Reforma in the centre of Mexico City displays the daily newspaper of the occupation. Mexico is living through probably the most politically important time since its Revolution in 1910. Suspecting massive...

Caribbean conundrum: Arubans defend their native tongue.(LANGUAGE EXTINCTION)
October 1, 2006... AT Aruba's weekly Bonbini festival, tourists come to marvel at the Carnaval costumes and take in a bit of the island's folklore. A petite solo singer in a slinky red dress takes the stage, and is belting out a song dedicated to her island and...

Speechmarks.(Currents)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... "I believe the idea you can fight your way to peace is absurd. There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. Westerners think peace is an absence of war. But in Rastafarian terms, we use peace like a verb--it's a doing word." Benjamin...

Word power.(Currents)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... The language of the climate debate... CarBon n. C[O.sub.2] created by a love of automobiles. Dr No n. government-sponsored scientist denying climate change. hothouse n. domestic inefficient use of energy. offset n. use of...

Picture this: photos of dead Lebanese children outrage both critics and supporters of Israel.(LEBANON)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... 'BARBARIC' read the bold red headline greeting Middle Eastern subscribers to the The Gulf News on the morning of the 20th day of 'Israel's war on Lebanon' (31 July 2006). To prove the point, the report was accompanied by a picture of the child...

WTF?(Seriously ...)(Column)
October 1, 2006... This month Seriously reports on the increasing controversy surrounding the use of UJuMiNuBA--Useless or Just Mind-Numbingly Blinkered Acronyms--which has linguists all in a tizzy. The pages of NI notwithstanding, acronyms seem all the rage...

Condoleezza Rice.(Worldbeaters)(Biography)
October 1, 2006... Status: US Secretary of State. Reputation: Warrior Princess, pooper-scooper for President George W Bush. On 11 December 2005 Condoleezza Rice wrote in the Washington Post: 'It is sheer fantasy to assume that the Middle East was just...

Care in the Community.(Sound recording review)
October 1, 2006... by Babar Luck (Rebel Music RMR 003 CD) This debut album from the London-based singer Babar Luck is extraordinary by anyone's standards. From the opening bars of '1 Luv', featuring a stratospheric guitar that sounds like it's channelling a...

Falling Through the Earth.(Book review)
October 1, 2006... by Danielle Trussoni (Picador, ISBN 0 330 43537 6) After the international success of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, memoirs of dysfunctional childhoods have become as common as weeds. Danielle Trussoni's debut work sets her apart from...

Savane.(Sound recording review)
October 1, 2006... by Ali Farka Toure (World Circuit WCD 075 CD) No stranger to these pages, when Malian master musician Ali Farka Toure died earlier this year the tributes paid to him were truly global. A guitarist who was ensconced in his own Fulani and...

There You Go!(Book review)
October 1, 2006... 'Simply brilliant' is probably all that needs to be said about There you go! Oren Ginsburg's cartoon satire published by Survival International. Essential reading for development agencies and their supporters everywhere, it tells the story of...

Sisters in Law.(Movie review)
October 1, 2006... directed by Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi Surprising, engrossing, heartening... probably not qualities you'd expect of a documentary about a judge and prosecutor in a state court. But Vera Ngassa and Beatrice Ntuba wield serious...

Scarred: Experiments with Violence in Gujarat.(Book review)
October 1, 2006... by Dionne Bunsha (Penguin Books India, ISBN 0 14 400076 8) In February 2002, a train compartment went up in flames in Godhra, in the Indian state of Gujarat, burning alive 59 people. They were Hindu hardliners returning from performing...

Southern exposure: highlighting the work of photographers from the majority world.(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... In Bangladesh, bauls are devotees of a spiritual idea of simplicity. From my boyhood I have had a kind of fascination for their songs. It grew more intense when I began working as a photographer. When I took this man's picture, I was enthralled...

Caste and quotas.(View from Delhi)
October 1, 2006... Risha, a young woman from Kerala, is a systems analyst with a large company in Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh. Her mother was a teacher and her father a 'headload worker'--one of the thousands of labourers who load and unload goods on...

Coca and society in Chapare.(Essay)(President Evo Morales, Bolivia)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... Bolivia's new President, Evo Morales, learned his politics during his years as the leader of the coca growers from the tropical Chapare region of the country. The 1990s witnessed constant clashes as the Bolivian Government, pressured by the US,...

Big bad world.(Cartoon)
October 1, 2006... THANK YOU OH LORD FOR SENDING ME OSAMA BIN LADEN [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] BLESSINGS UPON YOU ALLAH FOR SENDING ME GEORGE W BUSH [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Interview with Hernando Hernandez Tapasco about surviving as an activist in war-torn Colombia.(Making Waves)(Interview)
October 1, 2006... We arranged to meet at a railway station, where Hernando Hernandez Tapasco was in transit between one meeting and another. 'The Government [of Colombia] is arrogant, authoritarian, in hock to the IMF and World Bank--and the only one in...

No safety in animal testing.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2006... Lee Jones' claim that more animal tests would have averted the thalidomide tragedy (Letters, Advertising overload, NI 393) is simply untrue. Thalidomide would be pronounced safe by animal tests even today. Dr JL Schardein, an authority on birth...

Necessary dreams.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2006... I enjoyed your edition on banking (Banks exposed, NI 392), partly because I teach economics but also because I live in Winkfield, 100 yards away from the headquarters of HSBC. One of the two pubs has closed, the bus shelter has been demolished,...

Criminal usury.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2006... Comparing credit card utilization in various countries NI comments that Mexicans are charged 77 per cent annually by HSBC and Bank of Nova. Scotia (Facts, NI 392). Both banks operate in Canada, which of course is home to Bank of Nova Scotia. If...

Silly money.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2006... Banks invent out of thin air much new money which they then provide as loans subject to interest. That is perhaps the most obscene aspect of modern banking. The fractional reserve banking system and the worldwide use of both credit cards and...

Debt creation.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2006... For the last couple of years I have been becoming more and more interested in the issues arising from banks creating money as debt, and the related proposals around monetary reform designed to alleviate the huge impact that this debt money...

Corporate conservation.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2006... Before you unreservedly condemn the activities of businessmen buying up swathes of the Patagonian steppes (Essay, NI 392), I would suggest that you witness the conservation work of the Patagonian Land Trust. They have an excellent website at...

Dubious schemes.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2006... Thank you for your excellent edition on carbon offsets (CO2nned, NI 391). While it is undoubtedly the Global South that feels the greatest impact from these dubious 'carbon neutral' plantation schemes, Tasmania, in the literal south, is...

Ways of asking.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2006... I feel Mtumiki Njira grossly underestimates the generosity of the human spirit (Letters, NI 391). I am neither English nor African, and so cannot comment on the given example of an African dropping in on Oxford, but I would assume that most...

Encourage reforestation.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2006... Congratulations on your brave issue (NI 391) that dared to say what has long been whispered among some environmentalists: that there is only one solution to the carbon problem, and that is reduced usage. However, to dismiss outright the...

Another world.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2006... 'The slide of sugar' (Letter from Mauritius, NI 388) is a painful but familiar story to all readers of the NI. It is what we have come to expect more and more around the world as the WTO's tentacles reach further and deeper, leaving no stone...

Fetching grass: the wheel of change can crush convention. In Mauritius, finds Lindsey Collen, it flattens even the grass.(Letter from Mauritius)
October 1, 2006... It's late afternoon and my neighbours, Prabha and Pulo, stop and, following convention, ask: 'Cooked your evening meal yet?' And while I reply, asking them the same question, the history hiding behind the conventional greeting suddenly strikes...

Uganda.(Country Profile)(Country overview)
October 1, 2006... Tourism of the more adventurous kind may be increasingly common--tracking mountain gorillas near the border with Rwanda and DR Congo, or rafting on the Nile, which starts its long journey to the Mediterranean here--but to many outsiders...