May 2008
Issue No. 411
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City of whispers
Among Rangoon’s six million souls, a few have secret conversations with Dinyar Godrej.
Stale news is best
Burmese editor Aye Chan Myate invites us into her office for a day.
The price of defiance
Former political prisoners speak out.
'All history is propaganda'
If you are a student in Burma.
A shrunken world
Refugees in Shan state, on the run from the military.
Eye candy
The delights of national television.
Burma - the facts
Burma is a country with very poor reporting on most basic indicators. International agencies have limited access.
Caucus of terrorists
Dinyar Godrej concludes his report: meeting enemies of the State – and looking to the future.
Corporate hogwash
Investors in Burma have blood on their hands, according to Maung Maung.
Action on Burma
Give your active support to organizations that lobby on behalf of the issues that matter to Burma’s people.
News, views, and & voices
SPECIAL FEATURE
Was Jesus Christ a revolutionary?
Jesus kept some shady political company. And his lifestyle has obvious radical resonance. But was he out to overthrow the state? Terry Eagleton examines the Gospels for evidence.
Currents
Saving the Sacred Sea
Russian nuclear plant threatens sacred sea
Journey to Justice
A long way travelled but still far to go on debt relief
Mothers' misery
A contraceptive ban imposed in Manila eight years ago has badly affected the city’s poor.
Dow cowed
Protesters have had a dramatic victory at the site of Dow Chemical’s proposed new chemical plant at Pune, 150 kilometres southeast of Mumbai in India.
Hands off our oil
Unions lead fight against Western oil theft
Word Power
The language of gun culture...
by Mitchell & Richardson
Speechmarks
"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die."
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), French writer and philosopher
Seriously
Recreating the Big Bang is 'perfectly safe', honest!
True tales of a mixed-up world
Big Bad World
Big Bad World 411
Polyp’s take on one of Joni Mitchell’s most famous lines.
Worldbeaters
Mixed Media - Film & DVDs
XXY
An Argentinean film about a hermaphrodite
Why We Fight
It is nowhere written that the American empire goes on forever.
Mixed Media - Music
The Bairns
Out of Britain’s blustery Northumbria comes Rachel Unthank and her Winterset trio.
African Scream Contest
A cornucopia of Afro-trance music, taking its influences from indigenous sounds as much as American funk and psychedelia.
Mixed Media - Books
Plan B 3.0 - Mobilizing to Save Civilization
'We are in a race between tipping points in the earth’s natural systems and those in the world’s political systems. Which will tip first?'
Final Silence
Final Silence is a finely modulated meditation on guilt and forgiveness.
Transition Handbook
This beautifully designed Handbook brings together the insights and experience of Hopkins and his fellow pioneers
Southern Exposure
Carlos Litulo
Guns as art, as seen by Mozambican photographer Carlos Litulo.
View from Montevideo
Errant paradox
by Eduardo Galeano
Essay
Homeless in Delhi
Jeremy Seabrook ventures inside a night shelter in India’s capital city.
Country Profile
Uruguay
It was the meddling British who used their cartographic skills to delineate the country that would become Uruguay in the early 19th century, as a buffer zone between the two regional giants, Argentina and Brazil. The result was a country stuck in the shado
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from
THIS MONTH'S EDITOR
An elderly Burmese man suffering from chronic toothache makes his way across the border to Thailand to consult a dentist. A bit surprised, the Thai dentist asks him: ‘Don’t you have dentists in your own country?’
‘Oh sure we do,’ comes the answer, ‘but we’re not allowed to open our mouths.’
This old Burmese joke has rung true for far too long. When we first committed ourselves to this theme, in July 2007, Burma had fallen out of the news. Everyone knew it was still ruled by a military dictatorship which had seized power nearly half a century ago, but because Burma’s people had been powerless to resist, journalists had lost interest. I felt it was high time for the people’s case to be restated.
Then, in September of that year, the people did it themselves. Over 100,000 protestors, led by Buddhist monks, flooded into the streets of Rangoon. The world’s media were awash with stirring images from this neglected country. It was reminiscent of the democracy protests that first brought Aung San Suu Kyi (Burma’s most famous political prisoner) to our attention in 1988. Then, over 3,000 people lost their lives. This time there were far fewer people killed, but the crackdown continues.
So had events overtaken us? Was there anything left to learn, now that other newshounds had picked clean the bones? I remained convinced that the NI could look deeper than news values. And so I sought out people who were willing to speak, both within the country and the exiled Burmese community on the Thai-Burma border.
The hunger for change rages within them. We owe it to them to listen.
Dinyar Godrej for the
New Internationalist Co-operative
dinyar@antenna.nl
