Burma and democracy
Your article ‘Democracy – the facts’ (NI 324) makes no mention of the ongoing slaughter in Burma. It should have included this section on the ‘Democracy Meter’:

DESPOTIC GENOCIDE 
Examples: Unelected coup governments, like Ne Win’s SLORC party, in Burma.  

Notion of Democracy: People are cheaper labour than machines, less maintenance, running costs, easily disposable. Stop education. An uneducated people accepts dictatorship more unquestioningly. Mandatory mutilation, rape and torture promotes obedience through terror.

Record on Rights: Every human rights violation committed on earth is equalled or exceeded by the Military Junta oppression of Burma. Human life is cheaper than dirt, forced labour in leg irons is commonplace. Burma produces a massive amount of opium and supplies around 60 per cent of the world’s heroin.

To speak of democracy and omit any mention of Burma/Myanmar, a country so divided it has two names, is inexcusable. Tragically, Burma is one of the bloodiest examples of serial human-rights violations committed in opposition to freedom of any kind.

Ruth Franklin
Manchester, England

Corporate profit
New Internationalist is absolutely right to expose The Economist’s view that the world’s poor will lose if the so-called free trade is not allowed to proceed Fair Trade (NI 322). Instead of improving the lot of the poor in poor countries, this unfair trade is actually impoverishing the poor even in the US, the world’s richest country with a booming economy.

‘Over 30 million people live in households that experience hunger and food insecurity,’ said Larry Brown, director of the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Tufts University. Some 20 per cent of workers earn so little that ‘they’re making choices between rent and medical bills and adequate diet.’

These facts speak for themselves.

Makmood Elahi
Ottawa, Canada

Organic Bill
Your issue on pesticides (NI 323) could have benefited from a reference to a campaign in Britain which aims to persuade the Government to adopt the Organic Food and Farming Targets Bill. This Bill aims to ensure that 30 per cent of agricultural land and 20 per cent of food in England and Wales is organic by 2010.

I also feel that why organic food costs more requires further explanation. Chemical farming has many hidden costs which we pay for through our taxes and utility bills. For example, removing pesticides from drinking water costs UK water companies around £120 million per year. A new study, by Professor Jules Pretty from Essex University, shows that food actually costs about three times more than the price you see on the supermarket shelf. Organic food appears to cost more in the shops, but as the farming method significantly reduces some of these hidden costs, we will pay less for our food overall. At the moment, the market for organic food is just getting off the ground, but as it grows, prices are expected to fall. The Bill aims to make organic food more affordable for more people.

Our campaign also believes that organic farming can feed the world. As you rightly point out, the main problem is that food is not distributed fairly. In the West, the problem is overproduction and to combat this about ten per cent of farmland has to be set-aside each year to reduce production. When land is turned over to organic production there is a decrease in the amount of food it produces. But over time (about four years), as the soil becomes more fertile, output increases. If readers would like to get involved in the campaign for organic food they can visit Sustain’s website at www.sustainweb.org

Catherine Fookes, Sustain,
London, England

Accurate century
Isn’t NI fussy about accuracy? Ama Ata Aidoo in ‘Millennium Hangovers’ (NI 324) says ‘the contentious twentieth century has gone’.

No, Ama. Not till the end of this year.

Bruce Hanna,
Heathcote, Australia

Selfish nations?
Tony Colman MP (‘Letters’ NI 324) claims the WTO is dominated by developing countries. Why then has the Group of 77 poorest nations, backed by 1,500 non-governmental organizations, called for ‘review, repair and reform’ of the WTO structures? Are they just being selfish?

The WTO primarily serves the needs of a small number of rich countries. One in five member countries are so poor they can’t afford to staff a permanent office in the WTO home town of Geneva. The annual cost of staffing the UK office in Geneva is equal to about three day’s exports for Sierra Leone.

In Seattle the inequality of access to the WTO between rich and poor nations was obvious for all (apart from Mr Colman) to see. The EU arrived with a delegation of 594 people, while the Seychelles entered the negotiations with a delegation of one. The former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth described the negotiations as the most unequal he had experienced in his 40-year career.

If he won’t listen to the voices of developing nations and campaigners, perhaps Tony Colman will heed the words of his own trade minister, Steven Byers, who admitted that there has to be ‘fundamental and radical change in order [for the WTO] to meet the needs and aspirations of all 134 members’.

Dave Timms
World Development Movement,
London, England

No vote, no veto
MP Tony Colman ‘found it weird’ that protesting non-governmental organizations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle did not realize that developing countries ‘have over 75 per cent of the votes (in the WTO) and can veto anything they do not like’.

I find it even weirder that Mr Colman does not realize that the WTO has never voted on any issue. The WTO operates by ‘consensus’, which normally translates into the Quad (US, EU, Japan and Canada) ignoring, bribing or bullying the rest of the world to their way of thinking. As long as there is no vote, there can be no veto.

Alec Bamford
Bangkok, Thailand

Nigerian fallacies
Your article on the current ‘re-democratization’ of Nigeria (NI 320 in ‘Chronicle of 1999’) is grossly wrong in two respects. Firstly, while some harassment of civil society has certainly slowed, the human-rights violations in the southern oil-rich Niger Delta continue unabated. In November 1999, just before the NI was printed, government troops attacked a town of over 70,000 inhabitants, killing hundreds of civilians, creating tens of thousands of refugees and destroying all but three buildings. The area is a hotbed of resistance against the State and the oil companies’ theft of resources, and this attack was to make an example of people to force them not to aspire to self-determination and resource control.

Secondly, to assume that the Western model of government and liberal democracy is the way forward is a shallow and in effect racist approach. Western ‘democracy’ is not participatory, and is all but run by the multinationals. Seeing the Nigerian elections as ‘democracy’, and the ‘good’ behaviour of President Obasanjo as a shaft of light, is clearly a fallacy. Moreover, the pro-democracy movement in Nigeria, whilst positive in many respects, is élitist and urban and often linked to Western political thought that is based on (male) power.

The real aspirations for democracy in Nigeria are coming from the many parallel Bills of Rights being issued by diverse ethnic groups from amongst the oppressed in the south of the country. Interestingly, your article ignored these and the evidence of how they have been met with violence by corporate security agents and by President Obasanjo’s oil-company backed ‘civilian’, ‘democratic’ government.

Nick Jukes
Leicester, England

Revolting habits
I’m slowly finding my way around your new format. New names like ‘Mixed Media’ are helpful and new features like the Essay are good. I’m not sure about ‘Worldbeaters’ though. Do we need to read about such people? We can guess their revolting habits! What about a feature on the many ordinary community-minded individuals who can inspire us?

Don Gobbett
Cennednyss, South Australia