Australia

Pathways to peace (part 1)

Submitted by ni-radio on May 8, 2008 - 12:10pm.

How the effects of violence are inherited...

There’s no escaping it. It seems like violence is everywhere! Turn on the radio and hear about the latest war – mass rapes, murder and destruction. Closer to home it’s a body found in a trunk; a grandmother bashed for her bag; or a child that’s been sexually assaulted. How to respond? Give comfort and support to the victims? Time, they say, is a wonderful healer. But is it?

What if trauma is inherited – a violent legacy that’s passed down from one generation to another. Suddenly the wars that are happening far away – wars we didn’t think were even relevant to us – can come back years, decades, even centuries later to haunt our communities just because someone’s grandfather or aunt was there.

This is the first of four programs that will be broadcast over the coming months in search of sustainable pathways to peace. Independent Australian broadcaster Colm McNaughton kicks off this series with his excellent documentary, Awakening from History, which was commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Commission. In it, Colm returns to Ireland – the home of his parents and for a short time the cradle of his own childhood – to confront the profound effects that the war between the British and the Irish had on himself and his family, decades and generations later.

Unfortunately, while this part of the program has been broadcast by the 50 community radio programs across the world now scheduling Radio New Internationalist, for copyright reasons we are unable to make this documentary available to the general public through our website. However, here is the interview that followed the documentary, with indigenous member of the New South Wales Parliament, Linda Burney. Linda takes our understanding another step further as she considers whether the violence that deprived Australian Aboriginal people of their land up to two centuries ago can explain why their communities are full of violence today.

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Filed under:

• Aboriginal People
• Australia
• Ireland
• ni-radio
• peace
• violence
• war

Temperatures Rising

Submitted by ni-radio on March 19, 2008 - 5:52pm.

The privatization of public health systems

Radio New Internationalist has just landed in Dublin to join one of the leading lights in Irish community radio – Jack Byrne from NEAR FM – as he reports on a pressing public interest issue: plans to privatize his country's public health system. Ireland – like so many other countries around the world – is preparing to follow the health system operating in the United States. Yet the health outcomes of the US-system are horrendous. Forty seven million Americans – completely uninsured – are destined for patched-up healthcare. Others with insurance face high out-of-pocket costs that bankrupt more than a million people annually. Mortality statistics are lagging behind those of most other wealthy countries. And – according to two North American doctors writing in the British Medical Journal at the end of last year – clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction are mediocre even when you are insured. So as country after country lines up to privatize its health services, we had to ask: 'Why?'

• When Dr Tim Woodruff, President of the Australian Doctors' Reform Society, links up with Louise O'Reilly, the National Nursing Official of the Irish union SIPTU (the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union) half a world away, they find striking similarities in both the ways that health privatization is sold to the public and the government neglect that drives it.

• Water is essential to good health, and the African nation, Tanzania, has just been awarded compensation after privatized water services in the capital delivered worse water. Tamsyn East – the Water Campaigns Officer with the World Development Movement – reports.

• Big private pharmaceutical companies are neglecting some killer diseases in countries without cashed-up consumers. Ann-Marie Sevcsik describes the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative that is developing life saving drugs and – in the process – is challenging private companies to cough up with the cures that they've so far neglected.

Today's CD is called Yellela (This is it) sung by the band Eyuphuro with lead vocalist Zena Bacar – the golden voice of Mozambique. She's back after years of silence, singing new songs full of melancholy and powerful rhythms with her reformed band.

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Filed under:

• Australia
• Big Pharma
• corporate power
• health
• Ireland
• ni-radio
• privatization
• public health
• public services
• US
• water

Musical unions

Submitted by ni-radio on February 13, 2008 - 4:22pm.

In just minutes, one song can deliver a powerful message that would take a book-load of words to explain. Unquestionably, some songs move our hearts and sympathies in a way that straight facts could never achieve. But while we have experienced how sound can enrich our lives, it can also move those who create it through a healing journey to a better place. This program's co-host - Brian Procopis from Sweet Freedom, an Australian social justice program that works through sound and song - brings music to our ears from asylum seekers who sing about their life journeys, as today's guests talk of the realities facing refugees from the Middle East and Asia:

• Thousands of Timorese have fled from internal violence and are yet to return to their homes and families. Timor Lèste's First Lady, Kirsty Sword Gusmão - who fought for that country's independence and is now wife to the Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão - gives us a glimpse of the political challenges facing leaders of a new nation as she talks about one of the country's hottest political issues.

• From and to where are today's refugees fleeing? Cécile Pouilly from the UNHCR - the United Nations Refugee Agency - takes us to the hotspots.

• Blues musician Dr Steve Dillon - author of 'Music, Meaning & Transformation' - shares stories with Brian Procopis about music that's made people and their communities more resilient; and explains how songs and sound helped transform a failing school into a centre of excellence.

Today we feature three CDs from the emerging record label Sweet Freedom - Scattered People, Normal Days, and Alafiah. Profits from the sales go to those asylum seekers who've participated. Find out more at www.sweetfreedom.org

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Filed under:

• Australia
• East Timor
• education
• music
• ni-radio
• refugees
• Timor Leste

Big Issues - the hands on the rudder

Submitted by ni-radio on January 16, 2008 - 4:07pm.

The first in a two-part special...

They say that media have short memories. So in the next two programs, Radio New Internationalist looks back over some of the big issues of 2007 that are set to get bigger in the next few years. This week: a selection of trends that are steering the world towards new horizons:

• World superpowers rise and fall. As the US enters its 11th hour as a world superpower, China, India and Europe are stepping in to scoop up economic, military and political allegiances. To cement its strength in foreign policy, the Chinese Government is substituting development aid for diplomacy. Nicola Bullard, a senior associate with Focus on the Global South, and Daniel Bibiero from the Mozambique NGO Justiça Ambiental investigate the results.

• Nature is being broken away by scientists and corporations. Governments say that nanotechnology is getting in the driver's seat to steer the next industrial revolution - fundamentally transforming every aspect of our lives. Business leaders predict that nano-industry may be worth one trillion US dollars in the next five years. Georgia Miller from Friends of the Earth Australia reveals the what, where and how nano works - from odour-eating socks to frightening new weapons for armies.

• Capitalism and its inequities intensify. Intellectual property is overtaking labour as a means of production, and the Majority World is striking back. Jon Ungphakorn, a former Thai Senator, and now a prominent social activist on public health and HIV/AIDs, explains why the Thai government is putting its people before profitable patents, and Abbott pharmaceutical company's vicious response.

• Truth is becoming hard to find as an army of professionals are being hired to steer society away from the facts. John Stauber, from the Center for Media and Democracy, whose organization publishes PR Watch in the United States, talks about the experts and scientists who are prepared to mortgage their professional souls to companies... and sell short the public interest in the process.

Big issues deserve big musical sounds - and today's are from a broad range of countries and performers selected from the World Music Network's Riverboat Records series.

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Filed under:

• aid
• Australia
• Big Pharma
• china
• corporate power
• development
• ethics
• Europe
• health
• HIV/AIDS
• India
• intellectual property
• Mozambique
• nanotechnology
• ni-radio
• PR
• science
• Thailand

Dreaming of a Fair Trade Christmas

Submitted by ni-radio on November 28, 2007 - 5:25pm.

This week, as the holiday shopping season gets into full swing, we examine some of the impacts our consumption patterns have on people and planet. We take a look at some of the food we eat, the clothes we wear and what gadgets we use and ask whether 'ethical shopping' is a way out of the quagmire. Today's co-host is New Internationalist co-editor Jess Worth who's done some research into the ethical shopping sector and has found that all is not as simple as it seems at first glance. We also hear from a number of guests from all over the world:

• Albert Tucker, Fair Trade consultant from Sierra Leonne and Barbara Crowther from the UK's Fair Trade Foundation, discuss the pros and cons of big business involvement in the Fair Trade sector.

• NI co-editor David Ransom speaks with Greenpeace's Sarah Holden about the fishy business of pirate fishing and its impacts on our oceans and the workers who get caught in the nets of the global seafood industry.

• The vast majority of electronic goods end up as waste in Asia - mostly China - where they may have been manufactured in the first place. Greenpeace China's toxics campaigner, Jamie Choi, describes the impacts this enormous e-waste burden is having on human health and the environment in China.

• Australian author/activist Sharon Beder diagnoses the CSD (Compulsive Selling Disorder) epidemic afflicting the politicians and governments around the world, as read by Radio New Internationalist producer Rachel Maher.

Today's music comes from two CD's from the World Music Network - Riverboat Records series. Granada-born vocalist and lyricist Benjamín Escoriza's Carambola delves into Spain's Moorish roots blending Flamenco and North African traditions. Meanwhile, take two volcanic island nations of Hawaii and Reunion and what do you have? The explosive combination of master accordionist and guitarist Rene Lacaille with the eclectic genre-defying talent of Bob Brozman erupting hot musical magma in the form of their album Digdig.

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Filed under:

• Australia
• china
• consumerism
• environment
• ethical business
• fair trade
• labour
• ni-radio
• oceans
• Sierra Leonne
• UK

Celebrating the Dead

Submitted by ni-radio on October 31, 2007 - 1:11pm.

Inspired by the millions of people around the world who are celebrating All Souls Day this year, the Radio New Internationalist team dips into different cultures to hear the many ways in which the world's populations honour their dead and respect the dying. From the fear of the spirit-world underpinning Halloween to the burning of money at the tomb-sweeping festivals of Taiwan, the ways we celebrate death shape our own hopes and fears about dying.

• What better place to start than Mexico's Day of the Dead - a two day national celebration where bands, feasting and sugar-coated skulls go hand-in-hand to the cemetery. Author Mary Andrade takes us there.

• Just what human rights should we have as we die? It's an issue that literally gets buried with the body. Prominent Australian human rights lawyer, Julian Gardner, has had the rare experience of making decisions on behalf of people who are in the process of dying, and then living to tell the tale.

• On the cusp of celebrating Halloween - the night that the Irish believe the spirits can break back through to the world of the living - Jack Byrne from NEAR FM in Dublin shares some scary recollections.

• The three day mourning ceremony undertaken by Koreans can be gruelling on their families. After explaining the process before burial, a young Korean - Anna Alcon - weighs up the pros and cons of their mourning traditions in a story read by Vymala Yim.

• One of the benefits of religion is that it sets out a belief structure when someone dies. But ritual is not the sole province of the religious, as Dick Gross - the author of a modern guide to meaning and morality called Godless Gospel - explains.

The feature CD is by Benjamin Escoriza performing his first solo album Alevanta! or in English Rise Up! - an eerily appropriate title for today's program. It's a magical mix through which Moroccan influences jump across the Mediterranean to dance with flamenco.

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Filed under:

• Australia
• culture
• death
• Ireland
• Korea
• Mexico
• ni-radio
• religion
• Taiwan
• tradition

Pulp Friction

Submitted by ni-radio on September 7, 2007 - 9:19am.

Whether you're living in the Rich World or Poor World, pulp is probably producing problems for people not too far from you. We're continuing to destroy trees that eat carbon dioxide – one of the main greenhouse gases. There’s also a litany of other problems that follow the plantations that are grown to replace old growth – the loss of food-supplies for the surrounding communities; the pollution of local water supplies; the promise of jobs at paper mills that only a few will ever get; and the community conflict that mounts as a result. And it's not just pulp. Palm oil production presents parallel problems, yet some European countries are marketing it as a sustainable replacement for petroleum.

• Co-host Cam Walker, a seasoned international campaigner from Friends of the Earth, starts this week's Radio New Internationalist program by setting out these scenes, opening the door to today’s main forum – how countries can bring down greenhouse emissions at the same time as bringing up the standard of living in many of the world’s poorest countries.

• Chris Lang – formerly an architect, now an environmental activist – has just completed a global audit of pulp problems: Banks, pulp and people. He invites us into a recent meeting in Germany when big bankers asked a team of non-governmental organizations to help them choose which pulp projects to finance.

• How can China and India continue to develop without taking the planet to fatal levels of greenhouse gas emissions? Why should Europe, Canada and the United States support them in this aim? Tom Athanasiou and his colleagues at the Californian-based organization EcoEquity, have a proposal that they are about to take into international negotiations on climate change. He shares it with us.

Today's CD is called Canta Bovea y Sus Vallenatos con Alberto Fernandez, celebrating that Colombian style of music called vallenato. It's usually accordian led, and suggests that not nearly enough credit is given to the accordian's sweet and saucy strains.

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Filed under:

• Australia
• climate change
• environment
• ni-radio
• palm oil
• plantations
• trees