Back Issues

June 2008 - Issue 412

Do we need to worry about nuclear weapons any more? After the end of the Cold War, the world stepped back from the brink of mutually-assured annihilation and nuclear stockpiles were halved. But nukes haven't gone away. In fact, they are undergoing something of a renaissance. India, Pakistan and North Korea have all recently joined the nuclear club. The US, Russia, Britain, China and France are spending billions on 'modernizing' their nuclear arsenals. So why are disarmament campaigners so upbeat? The NI discovers a window of opportunity for banning the bomb – but can we seize the moment before the shutters slam down, perhaps for good?

May 2008 - Issue 411

Burma should be celebrating 60 years of independence, but instead the country is colonized from within. The military dictatorship that’s got its jackboot on the nation’s neck now goes by the name of the State Peace and Development Council. But peace and development are just two things among many it has not managed to deliver – large sections of the country are riven by civil war as armed groups fight military rule and, often, each other. The NI speaks with Burmese people, both inside and outside the country. With great fear and courage they are trying to keep the flame of freedom alight.

April 2008 - Issue 410

Something is happening. In different parts of the world indigenous people are organizing, demanding justice and fighting back. The election of indigenous president Evo Morales in Bolivia has been having ripple effects in other Latin American countries. In Africa, the so-called ‘Pygmy’ people of the Congo basin are taking on the World Bank. In India tribal adivasi people are doing battle with big business. While in Australia aboriginal activists are urging their new government to rethink the disastrous racist policies of the Howard era.

March 2008 - Issue 409

This month's theme of Ethical Travel deals with two separate subjects: the first half devoted to the thorny issue of flying and the second to the impact of tourism.

Human Rights

This year the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is 60 years old – and the Olympics will take place in China, a country that flagrantly abuses it. Meanwhile, countries that flaunt their human rights credentials on the world stage have decided that the War on Terror trumps everything else. Fundamental human rights that took years of suffering to establish are being casually swept aside. Social and economic rights that were always belittled are now being ignored altogether. There may be more international human rights ‘machinery’ than ever before – but it’s being put very firmly into reverse gear.

So the NI starts the New Year by going backstage, behind all the razzmatazz, to celebrate the work of some remarkable groups of human rights defenders who carry on regardless – and we award them ‘medals’ of our own.

Corporate Responsibility Unmasked

‘Corporate Responsibility’ is one of the hot business strategies of our time. All the multinationals are at it. Over the last decade an extremely profitable industry has sprung up with the sole aim of helping callous companies mend their ways, spruce up their image, and get those pesky campaigners off their backs. The NI exposes this not-so-subtle strategy to avoid regulation, silence critics, and in many cases continue with the activities that tarnished their image in the first place.

Depleted Uranium

When a depleted uranium (DU) munition hits a tank, it punctures its armour with ease and vapourizes into a fireball, causing total destruction. Lethal and effective, it’s no wonder that DU weapons have been used by US, British and NATO forces in recent conflicts. But has anyone measured the human cost? This month's NI explores a terrain of denial and neglect.

Big Babies

Psychoanalysts believe that people can be ‘infantilized’ – stopped from growing up. Powerful politicians now seem to think that’s a neat idea. Dog-whistles and diversions of all kinds are designed to turn us away from active political engagement towards passive consumption. In the process, democracy gets hollowed out. Politics becomes another branch of management, left to a political class and an entire industry of spin-doctors, pollsters, ad agencies, lobbyists and dirty-tricksters.

But infantilizing all the people all the time is not so easily done. In this issue of the NI we wonder why, and take a sideways look into the empty space where grown-up political debate should be.

Trafficked

The trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation has reached epidemic proportions in the past decade. An estimated one million people – mainly girls and women – are currently trafficked into the sex industry by people ranging from violent gangsters to trusted family members. This issue of New Internationalist tackles this most cruel manifestation of globalization.

Permaculture

Amidst all the fashionable frenzy about global warming and the end of the world as we know it, we take a calm look at one of the more positive options for a durable, sustainable future. No, not a deep-green gardening cult, the lifestle of Siberia or an extreme haircut; permaculture proposes that we make our peace with naure, abandon misplaced faith in the technological fix and connect through ‘intelligent design’ to a freshly Edible Earth. NI co-editor David Ransom avoids the airmiles and becomes and innocent at home in Britain. He steps onto unfamiliar territory in his own backyard and explores what some remarkable people are doing to reshape the ugly patterns of unjust, unsustainable consumption.

Darfur

The UN calls it ‘the world’s worst humanitarian crisis’. But what is causing the violence in Darfur, and why hasn’t the world acted to stop it?

May 2007 – Issue 400

Visionary voices: the people, the ideas, the action.

For our 400th edition, the NI unfurls a tapestry of ideas and activism from the Majority World. Engaged with the here and now in order to build for a better future, burnishing hope amid downturns and defeats, these are voices we feel you will want to hear.

what's new
ON THE NI SITE

A Short History of Burma
A short history of Burma.

From a scorched land

Divorcing the US
Shane Bauer went to Pine Ridge to find out why some Native Americans have ripped up the treaties and declared an independent country – Lakotah.

Garden furniture for Europeans

Venturing Into The Impossible

China Panic
It’s official – according to new NI columnist Anna Chen– 2008 isn’t just the Year of the Rat and the Beijing Olympics. It’s also China Panic Year.