New Internationalist

The dust has settled after the Battle in Seattle and the World Trade Organization is, for the time being, stopped in its tracks. So what’s the alternative? More and more fair-trade products - from coffee to chocolate, handicrafts to bananas - are appearing in Northern stores. But what’s ‘fair’, who benefits, and how do we know?

April 2000, Issue 322

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Other ways to explore New Internationalist: Sample our past issues • Browse by theme

Features

Small change, big difference
David Ransom goes for the jugular of consumer capitalism and looks at the benefits of fair trade.
The level playing field
Or how colonialism turned into globalization, in three easy stages.
Dream scheme
Tea for three. In southern India, tribal people have taken over the colonial tea plantation. Mari Marcel Thekaekara describes the twists of turning a bright idea into hard cash.
The percolator
Murray MacAdam follows Ten Thousand Villages into an upmarket retail location in Toronto.
Trading out of trouble
Reports from Kenya, Sri Lanka and Peru by Carol Wills and Emmeline Skinner.
Fair trade - the facts
Sleepless in Seattle
Anita Roddickls diary - how her search for ideas and inspiration almost ended in tear gas.
Camels and coyotes
The fair-trade game anyone can play.
Good busy-ness
Trading fairly in a world branded by big business is hard work, says Pauline Tiffen.
Action on fair trade
What you can do - the principles, the players and who to contact in the place where you live.

Regulars

Editor's letter
Readers' letters, plus Letter from Lebanon
View from the South
Urvashi Butalia on the loss of small things in India.
Currents
Thea arms-sales show goes on; coconuts kill mosquitoes; denouncing the dollar in Ecuador. Plus Polyp's Big Bad World.
Mixed Media
Books, films and music reviews this month.
Ether Street
Night in a deserted farmhouse. Trembling with anticipation, three truth-seekers transcribe a message from beyond the gravy. Plus the NI crossword.
Worldbeaters
Why Rupert Murdoch deserves a thrashing.
Essay - the man we called Juan Carlos
The unquiet times of a Guatemalan peasant turned Mayan activist and priest, recorded by filmmaker Heather MacAndrew.
Country Profile - Sierra Leone