September 2009
Issue No. 425
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Why are they dying?
Wayne Ellwood investigates the case of the missing bees.
The Bees' Knees - The Facts
Facts and figures on bees, honey & the food connection.
Honey is life
Gathering wild honey is an age-old tradition in South India. Mari Marcel Thekaekara and her husband Stan see how it’s done.
10 ways to help save the bees!
Illustrated by Scott Ritchie.
Backyard beehives
A walk on the wild side with Hadani Ditmars.
A stressed world
Extinction is forever. Can we stop the slide in bio-diversity?
Looting of a small planet
It won’t be easy but Philip Chandler argues that beekeepers themselves need to lead a revolution in sustainability.
News, views, and & voices
SPECIAL FEATURE
Boon or burden?
Some call it 'live aid'. Some call it 'dead aid'. The debate is raging. Vanessa Baird and Jonathan Glennie tell the story so far...
The case for real aid
Jonathan Glennie takes on both the aid optimists and the pessimists.
Summing up...
Vanessa Baird draws a few conclusions.
CRISIS PAKISTAN
Why Pakistan's Taliban win as they lose
Pakistan's army offensive has wrongfooted the Taliban. But the larger war of ideas has yet to be won. Pervez Hoodbhoy explains.
HMONG REFUGEES
Jungle orphans
Nick Harvey reports on the position of the Hmong – both inside Laos and the bleak refugee camps
of Thailand.
Letter from Cairo
Wealth in abundance
'Make do and mend' is a time-honoured Egyptian talent, discovers Maria Golia.
Currents
Making me crazy
The treatment of Afghans with mental illness is only adding to their trauma.
The canvas revolution
Climate camps around the world.
Out in the open
Landmark ruling in India delights activists
Goodbye to Guy
Guy Stringer, director of Oxfam, chair of Devopress who initially published New Internationalist magazine in 1974.
Carbon cowboys
No international agreement exists on reducing emissions from forests, but that hasn’t stopped companies attempting to profit from it
Best of the web - www.newint.org
The editor's picks from the NI website
Big Bad World
Big Bad World 425 - Mass suicide
Mass suicide the CO2 way in Polyp’s cartoon.
NI Interview
Interview with Mike Bonanno
Mike Bonanno is a cultural activist and one half of the Yes Men. Five years ago he and sidekick Andy Bichlbaum were invited on to BBC World News pretending to represent Dow Chemicals, whose environmental legacy included the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster.
Mixed Media - Film
Three Miles North of Molkom
At a new age festival in Sweden, a group of people who’ve never met before explore tree-hugging, sweat lodges, shamanism, tantric sex.
Sin Nombre
A road movie cum Western. Or, rather, it's a railroad movie and the 'West' - where innumerable migrants are headed on railroad wagons - is more accurately the 'North', the US.
Mixed Media - Books
Working
A graphic adaptation of the book by Studs Terkel by Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle.
2666
It takes a singular talent to make a book of 1,000 pages that is as hard to put down as it is to pick up. Despite its size, 2666 retains the agility of a thriller.
Mixed Media - Music
Siwan
For all its ancient antecedents, Siwan is a very modern album and a joyous meditation for that.
The Rough Guide to Afrobeat Revival
Starting where founding father of afrobeat Fela Kuti left off, this album features energetic tracks of sweaty inventiveness.
Also worth a mention...
CDs that didn't quite make a full review, but are still worthy of a mention.
Essay
Why children work
Jeremy Seabrook visits Bangladesh to better understand the roots of child labour.
Country Profile
Niger
The top tourist destination in Niger until the late 1980s, the city of Agadez – located in the dead centre of the country – is today no more than a shadow of its former self.
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from
THIS MONTH'S EDITOR
I had a lot of help and advice when I was preparing this issue from people who know much more about bees than I’ll ever dream of knowing. One was Charlie Parker, a beekeeper who lives near Beamsville, Ontario, not far from Niagara Falls. Charlie generously gave me a day of his time, drove me to see some of his hives and told me his life story. He started keeping bees when he was 13; he’s now 62. ‘It’s just like a disease, beekeeping,’ Charlie mused. ‘Once you’re stung, you’ve got the bug.’ No pun intended.
NI friend and frequent contributor Mari Marcel Thekaekara, and her partner Stan, also helped by contributing the article on honey gatherers in Tamil Nadu, India. Keeping it in the family, her two sons shot a wonderful sequence of photos to illustrate the article.
Unfortunately, you’re not going to be able to read about Charlie in the pages of this magazine. Nor see all the photos sent by Mari and Stan.
But take heart digital devotees. We will be featuring the full interview with Charlie and all the photos from Mari and Stan on our website when this issue is posted in a few weeks’ time. So do check it out (see links at the end of this letter)
Instead, we’ve added some timely features – including an analysis of the foreign aid debate sparked by the contentious Nigerian academic, Dambisa Moyo. And a pressing piece from journalist Nick Harvey on the situation of Hmong refugees in Thailand.
We’re still not sure if the exploding world of digital media will be our demise or our salvation here at NI. But at least it gives you a chance to read the stuff we couldn’t squeeze into print.
Wayne Ellwood for the
New Internationalist Co-operative
click here for the interview with Charlie Parker.
click here and scroll down to the end of the article to see all of the photos from Stan and Mari.
