May 2007 – Issue 400

May 2007
Issue No. 400
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Daring to dream
Dinyar Godrej on what truly inspires.

Revenge
Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy’s song of reconciliation.

Cultural invaders
Afroreggae beat the violence

Power surge
Rural women claim their rights in South Africa.

Sand in the wheels
Walden Bello’s thoughts on turning back globalization

Deep green
Brazil’s small farmers stave off the giants.

Trial by fire
Victor Juliet Mukasa sues the Ugandan Government.

Acts of conscience
AIDS activist Zackie Achmat’s acts of conscience

The indivisible I
Gautam Bhan on the spectrum of queer lives.

Secret service
Afghanistan’s RAWA takes on the fundamentalists.

Learning for life
Burma’s Charm Tong takes on the generals.

Watchful eyes
Corruption busters in India

Screen lives
Activist filmmakers in India

Pump up the volume
Radio revolution in Zambia, Malawi and Namibia.

Continental shift
Carlos M Vilas gauges the gains of people’s politics in Latin America.

The diverse, the multiple, the different
A message of resistance from Oaxaca, Mexico.

News, views, and & voices

SPECIAL FEATURE

Palestine: 40 years is enough
Gaza and the West Bank have been occupied since 1967.

Occupation and the mind
Samah Jabr counts the cost to Palestinians’ mental health.

Boycott Israel
Omar Barghouti calls for a boycott of Israel.

Action on Palestine
Get involved

LETTER FROM MAURITIUS

The Dhal Puri Queue
Lindsey Collen drops in to a street summit while waiting for a tasty snack.

CURRENTS

Porter’s plight
Bearing the backpacking burden in the Nepali Himalayas.

Narcos and Bushes
A bad beginning to 2007 in Guatemala.

Be careful who you sleep with
Billionaire insurance mogul Maurice ‘Hank’ Greenberg was charged with fraud and insurance and securities violations

Hands off our water!
World Water Day

Mauritania votes
In March this year the West African country of Mauritania held its first open and fair election in decades

Special status for Srebrenica
Several hundred returnees claim Srebrenica should be excluded from the jurisdiction of Republika Srpska.

MIXED MEDIA

FILM: Fast Food Nation
The business stinks.

MUSIC: Folk Songs for the Five Points
History of a city shaped by immigrant memory and musical culture

MUSIC: Segu Blue
West African Bassekou Kouyate and Mali’s first traditional lute quartet

SERIOUSLY

Life in the Faslane
True tales of a mixed-up world

WORLDBEATERS

Karl Rove
The Darth Vader of US elections

ESSAY

The making of an Islamic Jack the Ripper
View from Gujranwala – Abbas Zaidi tells the chilling story of an Islamic Jack the Ripper.


 

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from
THIS MONTH'S EDITOR

There’s been quite a lot of struggle in this edition. I don’t mean editorial toil and gnashing of teeth. Rather that the word ‘struggle’ kept cropping up in articles, wagging like a persistent tail. There don’t seem to be synonyms that match its particular flavour.

Perhaps one can’t expect anything different. This 400th edition of the NI is devoted to inspirational ideas and activism from the Majority World. It seems that the sapling of hope is quite partial to the soil of struggle.

This edition was conceived as an antidote to the ‘heroes’ editions of more mainstream magazines, which tend to be dominated by Western go-getters. It offers no spurious ‘best of’ lists. There’s no blueprint for a new Left, either. Instead we’ve gone for an eclectic mix of big- and small-scale visions. We hope they will continue to flower, but are aware that some may not.audulent elections that led to the current Government. Pan Mi General’s bread is organic and made from ingredients produced by local farmers.

Today the various paths that lead to global justice seem to be bypassing ideology. Rather there is an embrace of diversity and a belief that the right direction matters more than a detailed, hypothetical road map. As a result there’s a broader base of opposition to the enormity of the problems.

As I write this, a reader from Mexico, Francisco Ramos Stierle, has emailed to tell us about a bit of tasty resistance – the launch of Pan Mi General. A group of angry citizens has started a new bakery and a campaign against Grupo Bimbo, the largest breadmaker in the country and a key financier of the fraudulent elections that led to the current Government. Pan Mi General’s bread is organic and made from ingredients produced by local farmers.

Hey, but why stop there? As Francisco Stierle continues: ‘We have the need and the means to create a true Earth community. The choice is ours. The time is now. We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for.’ That last sentence could be the motto of the visionary people in this edition.






Voices from the margins:

Multimedia: video, podcasts, and more.

House of Hunger Poetry Slam in Zimbabwe
Poetry Slam in Zimbabwe
The House of Hunger poetry slam held in Zimbabwe in 2006, and organised by the Pamberi Trust, showcased young artists performing inspirational work on issues from corporate power to child soldiers. The video features four of the poets.
Published by Pambazuka News.
Raised Voices video:
Atossa Soltani from Brazil on the Climate Change
Desmond Desai from South Africa on Corporate Power
Iranian Women Speak Out
Iranian women speak out
3 March 2007, London. Women's rights activists marched through the English capital last week to celebrate International Women's Day with a protest against the misogyny of the Islamic regime in Iran and the threat of invasion by the US. Hear the voices of Iranian feminists Azar and Leila Parnian and the sounds of the demonstration as it passed through the heart of the city. Click here to learn more about the campaign.
Produced by Heidi Bachram.
Raised Voices audio:
Benny from West Papua on Corporate Power
Vinayan from India on agriculture