April 2006
Issue No. 388
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Trade Justice
What is it? Vanessa Baird embarks upon a journey of discovery.
Introducing.. The Great Tradomino!
A famous illusionist reveals tricks of the trade.
Made in China
A peek at who’s bankrolling the boom.
Junk the WTO!
They shouted it in Hong Kong. But why is the organization so hated?
Rice resistance
A growing ‘no’ to GMO.
Speak out... on trade justice
Vox pop of people from around the world.
Laboratory for change
Is Fair Trade a sideshow – or a blueprint for the future?
Keep buying!
To Dhaka, Bangladesh, to talk to the people who made your amazingly cheap T-shirt.
So, what's to be done?
At the journey’s end, some proposals for how to make trade more just.
Action
Contacts and resources.
News, views, and & voices
Currents
Governors of cyberspace
The international round-up continues with the debate now raging about control of the internet.
Worldbeaters
He released an album of Elvis songs. He wears Hawaiian-style shirts. He’s a rebel. But don’t be fooled – Japanese leader Koizumi Junichiro is playing the nationalist, neoliberal game as well as anyone at the moment.
Mixed Media
Music
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Brian Eno & David Byrne
Music
Fonotone Records, Frederick, Maryland by various
Book
A Month and a Day & Letters by Ken Saro-Wiwa
Book
The Next Gulf by Andy Rowell, James Marriott & Lorne Stockman
Film
Tsotsi directed by Gavin Hood
Film
L’Enfant by Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne
Southern Exposure
Blood of the Martyr is a photo taken early in the Iranian revolution of 1979 by Kaveh Golestan, who was killed in Iraq in 2003 while working for the BBC.
View from Montevideo
Indigenous leader Evo Morales’ election victory continues to cause shockwaves around the world. Eduardo Galeano sees it as symbolizing the second founding of Bolivia.
Essay: Troubled water
India is pressing ahead with the most ambitious dam-building programme ever conceived. Rainer Hoerig sees trouble ahead.
Big Bad World
Polyp announces the next creative strategy in the War on Terror.
Making Waves
Interview with Irene Fernandez – defender of Malaysia’s migrant workers and winner of an ‘alternative Nobel Prize’.
Letter from Mauritius
How globalization came into the life of sugar labourer Kawlowtee, by Lindsey Collen.
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from
THIS MONTH'S EDITOR
‘Mr Rockwell is adamant,’ said the PA to Keith Rockwell, Head of the World Trade Organization’s Information and Media Relations Division. What Mr Rockwell was adamant about was that the New Internationalist was ‘not a magazine but an NGO’. It was news to us. Since 1978 we have been an independent self-financing publication, which exists thanks to people like you who buy it. More seriously, Mr Rockwell was using his department’s error in order to deny the New Internationalist press entry to the trade summit in Hong Kong. By anyone’s standards, it does not look good: a leading development magazine denied access to a round of trade talks which are supposed to be about... em... ‘development’. I did the necessary to set the record straight, via numerous (mainly unanswered) emails and telephone calls to Mr Rockwell’s department. Prominent individuals and organizations, including the National Union of Journalists, wrote to him to vouch for NI’s bona fides.
But the response did not change: ‘Mr Rockwell is adamant,’ repeated his PA. NI had ‘liaisons with NGOs,’ she asserted. She made it sound quite unsavoury.
I was confused. So I did a little web search. I googled the name Keith Rockwell. And lo and behold, right at the top of the list was an interview with the man himself – in the New Internationalist (NI 334)! We have never received any complaint about the accuracy of the report, so I can only assume he was insufficiently flattered by it.
But I can’t be sure. For Mr Rockwell won’t speak to us directly. One thing we can be sure of, though: Mr Rockwell is adamant.
Vanessa Baird
for the New Internationalist Co-operative
vanessab@newint.org
Voices from the margins:
Multimedia: video, podcasts, and more.
- 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.
- 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
