New Internationalist articles from October 2007

New Internationalist archives from October 2007

Big babies.(From this month's editor)(politics)
October 1, 2007... Political life can sometimes give you flashes of democracy's real potential. I recently had the opportunity to witness one of these. A couple of years back, the Government of the Province of Ontario (Canada's most populated province), where I...

Workers last.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... China, the world's largest one-party State. India, the world's largest democracy. Jayati Ghosh gives a brief insight--pointing out the 'large social and economic' costs to populations--into the economics of Special Economic Zones in these two...

More exposure.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... It was a pity that Shahidul Alam decided not to use his opportunity as Guest Editor to publish a more insightful and investigative feature about why too few 'Majority World' photographers are being used by mainstream Western magazines and...

Supporting Uganda.(Letters)('Childcare Kitgum Servants')(Letter to the editor)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Thank you for the excellent Special Feature on Northern Uganda (NI 403). In your list of NGOs you did not mention 'Childcare Kitgum Servants' which works exclusively in the Kitgum district close to the Sudanese border, the favoured refuge...

Gross atrocities.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... A brave attempt by Shane Leavy ('Enemy of the state', Essay, NI 403) to decipher a deceptively simple spiritual practice, but slightly too critical of Falun Gong. It perhaps needed more on how China is combating this benevolent practice,...

Fair shares.(Letters)(FairShare International)(Letter to the editor)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... In Edible Earth (NI 402), David Ransom suggests that Permaculture opens up the way for a more pleasurable, just and sustainable society. Readers may be interested to know of an organization based in Australia, called FairShare International...

Defending Dawkins.(Letters)(Richard Dawkins)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... There has been a storm of letters over Glynn Ketteridge's complaint printed in NI 403. Here is a selection. 1 Glynn Ketteridge rather missed the key point Richard Dawkins makes in his excellent book The God Delusion. If religion does bring...

'We can take it'.(Letter from Cairo)(Ramadan in Egypt)
October 1, 2007... When I arrived in Cairo in 1981, it was summer and I'd never known such heat: glaring white and suffocating, the kind that makes your calves sweat. I blamed the weather for people's daytime irritability, and it seemed reasonable they spent the...

Dumbing down democracy: Richard Swift fears for a political culture where we are being treated like small children.(KEYNOTE)
October 1, 2007... 'Grow up!' We have all said it. We've all had it said to us. Sometimes it's just gratuitous, but all too often it's an accurate description of real behaviour. The psychological tendency to revert to childish impulses and reactions exists in us...

Signs of infantilization.(United States politics)
October 1, 2007... SIMPLE OVER COMPLEX The issues are reduced to sound bites. It is a question of stark choices between right and wrong, good and evil. The world presented is one of dualistic oppositions: either we do X (cut taxes, drop bombs, curtail civil...

Pushing your buttons: welcome to your second childhood.(United States politics)
October 1, 2007... This time it's called 'politics'. Did you ever get to stop being a child--at least in the eyes of the authorities? All of us have the buttons to be pushed: our insecurity; our desire to be looked after; our fear of the unknown; our desire to...

Paternal deceits: Ashis Nandy sketches the historical landscape where the seeds of today's infantilization were first planted.(ROOTS OF INFANTILIZATION)
October 1, 2007... Infantilization dates from the 19th century, a response to two developments: the consolidation of the Atlantic slave trade and modern colonialism. These were, arguably, the first serious attempts at globalization. If a cross-continental trade...

Siren song--conspiracy! Chip Berlet explores how resistance to infantilization can itself fall victim.(PARANOIA IN ACTION)
October 1, 2007... 'A good conspiracy is unprovable. I mean, if you can prove it, it means they screwed up somewhere along the line.' [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Jerry Fletcher (played by Mel Gibson) in the 1997 movie Conspiracy Theory. High profile...

A guide to grown-up thinking.(infantilization)
October 1, 2007... A simple antidote to the infantile habit of 'believing whatever we want to believe' can be found in philosopher Karl Popper's theory of scientific logic. This states that scientific theories don't become set-in-stone facts that are no longer...

Magical thinkers: Trevor Turner sorts through the kind of infantilized thought so dear to the hearts of our political class.(DELUSIONS OF POWER)
October 1, 2007... Psychoanalysis went on many strange trips--but provides an imaginative understanding of how some people function. It may not necessarily be 'true', but for now it helps explain a lot. In fact, it's been so good at explaining things that it has...

Eleven ways to leave your mummy and Daddy.(infantilization)
October 1, 2007... ONE Never vote for, patronize, do business with or be pleasant to anyone who uses the words 'ordinary people'. The invariable assumptions are a) that they, my dear, are far from ordinary and b) the ordinary people are infants, fools, gulls and...

Because I am a girl ... how young women's rights are being ignored.
October 1, 2007... In the age of girl power, it is easy to think that girls are now equal to boys. But a recent report has revealed that this is not the case. Nikki van der Gaag, who wrote the report, reveals how, in many countries around the world, girls are...

After the bombs: residents of atoll bombed 'for the good of mankind' are still getting a raw deal.(NUCLEAR TESTING)(Bikini Island)
October 1, 2007... Bikini Atoll is as close to the middle of nowhere as you can get. This is why the US tested its nuclear weapons there. Bikini Island, the largest in the atoll, is an eerie place. On'a fragrant evening, beneath palms hurling coconuts to the...

No sex education please, we're Indian.(HEALTH)
October 1, 2007... Though adolescents are at the centre of the AIDS epidemic and India has 2.5 million people living with HIV--the largest number of infections in Asia--11 of India's 29 state governments have either banned or are in the process of dropping sex...

The language of supermarkets ...(Currents)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Word power 32 closing-time n. (archaic) time at which supermarket shuts; (modern) Christmas Day. honey-trap n. sweet displayed at the check-out. schoolyard n. supermarket development site temporarily used to store children. ...

'Save our slum!' Residents unite as incoming mayor threatens to demolish homes.(ARGENTINA)(Mauricio Macri)
October 1, 2007... Buenos Aires considers itself the Paris of Latin America. Its skyline glistens: 30-storey glass skyscrapers tower over ornate early 20th century mansions. Yet a glance at the foreground reveals a labyrinth of muddy foot-tracks winding through...

Hawks become doves.(INDIGENOUS RIGHTS)(falconry)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... The ancient sport of falconry is today seeing quite a revival, but amongst the fun and pageantry, political issues are simmering away. A number of falconers are currently petitioning Sheikh Hamdan Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, head of the United Arab...

Cybercriminals, beware!(From radio New Internationalist)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Next time you're downloading a film or music through the internet, spare a thought for Australian resident Hew Griffiths, 44 years old, unemployed and now languishing in a jail half a world away from his home. Unlike most of the other inmates,...

Plane speaking: direct action camp attracts global attention.(CLIMATE CHANGE)
October 1, 2007... This summer revolution was in the air in Britain as a new direct action movement was born. As evidence stacked up that climate change is already upon us, and the UN predicted that 150,000 people will die this year as a result, 1,500 activists...

Speechmarks.(Currents)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... "If we throw mother nature out of the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork." Masanobu Fukuoka (b. 1913-), Japanese natural farming pioneer

Trademark travesty.(Seriously)
October 1, 2007... In a brilliant PR move, US health-product giant Johnson & Johnson (J & J) is suing the American Red Cross for, wait for it... using the red cross symbol on some commercial products the charity sells to raise funds for its disaster relief...

NI prize crossword.(New Internationalist)
October 1, 2007... 124 by AXE Win a copy of the latest World Guide reference book... All correct solutions received by the 25th of the cover month will be put into a draw--though only the winner will be notified. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Post your...

Big bad world.(Cartoon)
October 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Christopher and Peter Hitchens.(Worldbeaters)
October 1, 2007... Job: Columnists Reputation: Iconoclasts 'Classic Peter,' said Christopher of his younger brother Peter. 'Mad--but with a logic to the madness.' 'Classic Christopher,' retorted Peter. 'Spiteful--but with a logic to the spite.' ...

A Mighty Heart.(Movie review)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... A Mighty Heart directed by Michael Winterbottom This is the story of the 2002 abduction in Karachi of the Wall Street Journal writer, Daniel Pearl, and the efforts of his pregnant wife Marianne, his colleagues, the Pakistani police,...

Maskarada.(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Maskarada by Taraf de Haidouks (Crammed Discs CRAW 40 CD) Ever since Taraf de Haidouks burst out of Romania in the early 1990s, the 12-strong band of Gypsy lautari and their exuberant brand of traditional music has been a fixture on...

The Yacoubian Building.(Movie review)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... The Yacoubian Building scripted and directed by Marwan Hamed It's the most costly film ever made in Arabic. It has the audacity to say in public what most people only dare say in private. It looks frankly at corruption, exploitation,...

Bole2Harlem Volume I.(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Bole2Harlem Volume I by Bole2Harlem (World Connection WC 64002 CD) For many of the musicians who make up the Bole2Harlem collective, Bole--the name of Ethiopia's international airport--is the last glimpse they had of their homeland...

Bahia Blues.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Bahia Blues by Yasmina Traboulsi (Arcadia, ISBN 1905147287) Bahia Blues is a remarkable debut novel by an author of Lebanese and Brazilian parentage. It was originally published in 2003 in French, under the title Les Enfants de la...

Softcore.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Softcore by Tirdad Zolghadr (Telegram ISBN 9781846590207) In Tehran, a cocktail bar, The Promessa, closed during the Islamic Revolution in 1978, is about to reopen as a fashionable venue for corporate hospitality and a setting where...

Southern exposure: highlighting the work of artists and photographers from the Majority World.(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... When I was young I wanted to be an engineer, but the Taliban period was a bad time, especially for women, with restrictions in every part of our lives. After the Taliban, I felt that taste of freedom for the first time. I chose photojournalism...

We are football.(View from Montevideo)(Essay)
October 1, 2007... More than 50 years have passed since Uruguay won the World Cup in the immense stadium in Maracana, Brazil. Ever since, betrayed by reality, we have sought solace in memory. If we could learn from this, all would be well. But that isn't the...

Israel, Palestine and the hypocrisy of power: if the US-Israel project prevails, argues Noam Chomsky, we may be about to witness a rare and sombre event--the death of a nation.(Essay)
October 1, 2007... In January 2006 Palestinians voted in a carefully monitored election, pronounced free and fair by international observers. But Palestinians committed a grave crime, by Western standards. They voted the wrong way--for Hamas. The US instantly...

Sri Lanka.(Country Profile)(Country overview)
October 1, 2007... When Australia issued a travel warning for Britain following three failed car bombings in London and Glasgow, a Sri Lankan minister at a Colombo press conference dryly quipped that perhaps Sri Lanka should do the same. The bombs were found in...