New Internationalist articles from September 2002

New Internationalist archives from September 2002

From this month's editor.(Editorial)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... THE nutraceutical guy leaned forward conspiratorially. 'It's the same old loonies, you know -- the ones that go around digging up fields, protesting against genetic modification. They don't know a thing about science.' He was...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2002... The New Internationalist welcomes your Letters. But please keep them short. They may be edited for purposes of space or clarity. Letters should be sent to letters@newint.org or to your Local NI office. Please remember to include a town and...

Letter from Lebanon.(Brief Article)(Column)
September 1, 2002... I HAD envisaged laying down flowers on their graves, saying a small prayer or even introducing myself. But nothing had prepared me for this scene. Instead of the gravestones with loving inscriptions of my grandparents' names, I stared at skulls...

Southern exposure: highlighting the work of photographers from the majority world.(Brief Article)(Column)
September 1, 2002... I was born in 1949 in Hanoi, Vietnam. Both my elder brothers were students at film school and I also studied at this school from 1972 to 1976. After graduation, I worked as a cinematographer in one of the largest movie centres in Vietnam...

Windows 9: history. (View From the South).(Brief Article)(Column)
September 1, 2002... People of wood The Mayan gods were bored and wanted company, and they decided to create us. It wasn't a bad idea. So we were born from the multi-coloured flesh of corn, and here we are. But before that happened, other attempts at creation...

Desperate escape: the backbreaking work of North Korean women. (Refugees).(Brief Article)(Column)
September 1, 2002... SOUTH KOREA's Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported in July this year that 'tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands' of refugees are now attempting to flee from North Korea and are hiding along the Yalu river near the Chinese border. The risks for border...

Property and terror. (Currents).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... The war an terror is just as much directed to protecting property as people. This is the salutary reminder in a May 2002 US State Department report from the Office of the Co-ordinotor for Counter-Terrorism. In its review of terrorism for 2001,...

Dragging the debt chain. (Currents).(G8 financing of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... The June announcement from Canada by G8 leaders of an additional billion dollars for the failing Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Trust Fund barely made a ripple in the sea of debt that impoverishes the South. Certainly the HIPC Fund...

GATS goes to school: leaked documents provide insight into world trade in services. (Education).(General Agreement on Trade in Services)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Government negotiations to open up trade in educational services are scheduled to begin next month, during a two-year renegotiation of the 1995 World Trade Organization's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). GATS binds all WTO member...

Divan. (Word Corner).(Arabic word)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... The original divan was not a bed but an Arabic word for an account book. The first known use of divan dates from the reign of 'Umar I (586-644) and lists the pensions due to Arab soldiers. Later divan came to mean an accounts office, court or...

Lula versus Wall Street: workers' candidate leads presidential elections. (Currents: Brazil).(Luiz Inacio da Silva)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... THE presidential election campaign in Brazil is heating up, perhaps almost as much on Wall Street as in Brazil itself. With the first round of elections set for 6 October, polls show Luiz Inacio 'Lula' da Silva of the Workers Party (PT) holds a...

Seriously: you couldn't make this stuff up. (Currents).(anti-capitalism)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... McJihad It's not easy being the primary symbol of rampant US capitalism abroad. McDonalds is the first point of attack for angry locals. When French farmer Jose Bove dismantled a McDonalds to protest against industrial food culture...

8 things you should know about patents on life: Dinyar Godrej gives the lowdown on some underhand activities. (Keynote).(Column)
September 1, 2002... 1 What's it alt about, Alfie? In 1980 a paradigm shifted. Or rather it collapsed altogether. Ananda Chakrabarty won a US Supreme Court case allowing him to patent a bacterium he had genetically engineered to digest oil. Suddenly a...

The gene hunters: when an Australian biotech firm went bioprospecting in Tonga, Lopeti Senituli was part of the welcoming committee. (Genetic Information).(Column)
September 1, 2002... THE first the Tongan people heard of the agreement regarding genetic research on their blood was through media reports from Australia on 18 November 2000. Concerned fellow activists from as far afield as Melbourne, London, Geneva and Suva...

Rice is life: corporations are moving in to control Asia's most vital food crop. But, as Devlin Kuyek reports, their assault is not going unnoticed--or unresisted. (Rice).(Column)
September 1, 2002... A COUPLE of years ago I spent time with two farming communities on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. Although both were poor, one was much better off than the other. The first, in the province of Laguna, has successfully fought for...

Patents on life: the facts; patents have made collective resources--plants, animal varieties, our very genes--the property of private companies.(Column)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... * Industrial countries own 97% of the world's patents -- but it's the developing countries that account for 90% of the world's biological resources on which many of the patents depend. (1) Going for broke Applications for patents have...

Home-grown healing: a plant that helps people with AIDS is causing a stir in South Africa--but can patents be kept at bay? (Medicinal Plants).(Column)
September 1, 2002... THE rolling ranges of the Magaliesburg mountains are where I get my first sighting of Sutherlandia: a plant from the pea family with a bright red flower that's got alternative medical circles excited. Its adherents say it has properties...

Conquest by patents: once famous for flagrantly breaking patents, the US is now the world's fiercest protector of them. Beth Burrows examines the conversion from rebel to pitbull--and assesses the cost for us all.(Column)
September 1, 2002... WHERE the business of government has indeed become Business, it is difficult to hear the voices that still question the 'need' to be globally competitive, the wisdom of unrelenting market penetration, or the true cost of a revolving employment...

Pirates ahoy! Micro-organisms, plants, animals, human genes--anything goes on the patenting free-for-all. Here are a few case studies.
September 1, 2002... Soybeans THE CLAIMS A share of the multi-billion-dollar soybeans crop could make a patent-holder very happy indeed. A biotechnology company called Agracetus was awarded a patent in 1994 which covered all transgenic soybeans. Monsanto...

Barcoding life: are geneticists really getting closer to understanding life itself--or are they seeking to subdue it and make a mint? Jordi Pigem inspects a flawed enterprise. (Ethics).(Column)
September 1, 2002... THE businessman was busy counting and owning the stars: 'Five-hundred-and-one million, six-hundred-twenty-two thousand, seven-hundred-thirty-one... I own them.., they belong to me, because I was the first person to think of it.' This was the...

Action.(activist web sites)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Entry points The most current reading on patents on life is on the web. Tracking the progress of the enormous quantity of applications and shifting industry alliances and making sense of it all is no mean feat. Two groups do it...

Worldbeaters: taking aim at the rich and powerful; Abdul Rashid Dostum.(Column)
September 1, 2002... 'Even by the rather loose standards of Afghan politics, Rashid Dostum has displayed a combination of tactical brutality and pragmatic treachery that is truly remarkable.' THE Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid tells the story of going to...

Live at Town Hall. (Music).
September 1, 2002... New York City, September 19-20, 2001 by Laurie Anderson (Nonesuch 79681-2 2CD) Rarely has a record risen to meet the challenge of world history. The event in question is, of course, the destruction of the World Trade Center, a...

London is the Place for Me. (Music).
September 1, 2002... by Various Artists (Honest Jon's Records HJRCD2 CD) A quavering piano replicates the chimes of Big Ben and then, as if by some sleight of hand, the London fog parts and a small calypso band -far closer to the feel of Buena Vista Social...

Full Circle. (Books).
September 1, 2002... by Edie Wright (Fremantle Arts Centre Press ISBN 186368329-1) There is no hint of defeatism in this title, no sense of merely ending up where you began. The full circle instead represents the unity and comprehensiveness of the rich,...

Heaven. (Books).
September 1, 2002... directed by Turn Twyker A woman plants a bomb in a Turin office. But instead of killing the company boss, the bomb kills three visitors and a cleaner. Police investigators accuse her of belonging to a terrorist organization but, she...

Palaver Finish. (Books).
September 1, 2002... Chenjerai Hove (Weaver Press ISBN 1 77922 001 4) This is a slender work, more of a pamphlet than a book, which nevertheless packs a hefty punch. Chenjerai Hove is a Zimbabwean writer whose output has included novels, poems and essays....

Red Poppies. (Books).
September 1, 2002... Alai translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin (Methuen ISBN 0413 77182 2) Red Poppies, the first novel of Alai, an ethnic Tibetan, comes garlanded with China's premier literary award, the Mao Dun prize. The book...

Making waves.
September 1, 2002... IN times of war, television cameras take sides. In May of this year independent filmmaker Jacquie Soohen, along with nine members of the International Solidarity Movement, entered the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem bringing food to the 160...

The democracy killers: Pakistan's elites have perverted the country's politics, argues Aasim Sajjad Akhtar. It's time to look for home-grown solutions. (Essay).(Column)
September 1, 2002... The presidential referendum in Pakistan has come and gone. As quickly as the drama enveloped the country it has been forgotten. The Pakistani nation is disappointed and fed up with the antics of the ruling classes and the referendum served only...

Angola.(Column)
September 1, 2002... IT is a chilling thought that all children -- and most adults -- in Angola have never known peace. But political events in Angola since February have been unravelling rapidly; not since independence from Portugal in 1975 have the prospects for...