AFRICA FRESH! New Voices from the First Continent An anthology of African writing only featured on the Internet until now, this book features the collected works of writers for the G21 AFRICA section of G21.net. The eight writers represented here are from around the continent and present an exciting look at cutting-edge fiction and reporting from the first continent today.Buy the book or get a downloadable PDF copy now! 
A small, independent and outspoken magazine like this one can't reach you every week without the support and patronage of its readership. As our way of thanking those who have committed to keep your World's Magazine here on your desktop through their generous donations, we feature their names and cities here in our Roll of Honor.
SUSTAINING PATRONS
RON DIENER,
DARHL STULTZ,
MATT STOWELL,
TIMOTHY MEADOWS,
TERRY TERRIAN,
CHERYL HILL NATION,
DRAGAN & DRAGANA VICANOVIC,
LESZEK MICHAELWICZ,
MARIE SINSABAUGH,
BECKY ALTEMUS,
BARBARA ATWELL,
We encourage you to add your name to this Roll of Honor. GENERATOR 21 cannot continue and thrive without your support. Thanks in advance.
To support G21, please send checks or money orders to:
G21: The World's Magazine
To donate by credit or debit card, please go to the Western Union website by following the highlighted link. Should you donate via Western Union, please notify us via e-mail.
Please make all remittances payable to Rod Amis. Again, thanks. |
Next Scheduled Update: Monday, 3 April, 2006
To Live & Die for Water by SIMIYU BARASA Nairobi, KENYA - When Waangari Maathai made Kenya proud by winning the Nobel peace prize, many the world over were aghast. What has an environmentalist have to do with peace? If only they knew that natural resources like water mean violent, very unpeaceful death in Kenya they would ensure that the many lives lost due to fighting for water in arid and semi-arid areas of most African countries are not a recurring tragedy. But no, water has never meant a big issue to many, especially since it can be bought in tiny bottles in supermarkets. Unless when it means international war, like when former UN secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali gave a BBC Radio 4 interview expressing fears that military confrontation between countries of the Nile basin was "almost inevitable". This was news; suddenly water was cause for international attention, and no wonder NGOs got together from as early as 1999 to form the Nile Basin Initiative that spans across t en African states. Forget the interstate conflicts that draw international attention, there is much more confrontation going on among the various ethnic communities in Kenya that is not getting adequate attention. The attention here is not even about international gasps and oh my Gods, but even from local Kenyans themselves sitting back and taking stock of what is happening. The recent drought that hit Kenya since mid-2005 has made the search for water a vicious undertaking with fatal results. Herders from neighboring Ethiopia recently clashed with Kenya's Turkana tribesmen over water points, leading to the death of 40 people. In Isiolo 9 people died in inter-clan clashes over water and pasture. The Turkana and Uganda's Karamajong have torched huts and grazing lands of each other and Marsabit and Mandera districts have seen deadly confrontations spring up now and then. In March last year, at least 30 people were reported killed in inter-clan war over water in Mandera, with 16 of the fatalities being children. In January 2005, more than twenty people were killed in two weeks of violence that rocked Kenya's Rift Valley province after the Maasai pastrolists vandalized water pipes belonging to Kikuyu farmers, claiming they were diverting water from the Ewaso Kedong River to irrigate their farms and hence leaving none for the herders and their cattle. ... READ MORE
10 to You, 16 to Me by ROD AMIS
16 March, 2006: Sadly, there will never be another I.F. Stone in American journalism, as far as I can see. We have all become too small and too frightened of the bullies and dictators of government and commerce to risk as much and rail as much as Izzy did. I think of this, as G21 celebrates its tenth year because, in a better world, and as a better person, I would have worked harder over these last ten years to use Stone as my model rather than simply compete with the Mouthpiece Media (MM) that I have castigated for doing such a piss-poor job of reporting the truth as it exists on the ground for the people of this world. Looking back at this ten years on the Web, your World's Magazine has plenty to celebrate, as I noted in my last editorial but it also has plenty of examples where we fell short of the high bar that I.F. Stone's Weekly set so many decades ago.
In our defense, I can say that we have taken the unpopular and c
ontrarian stance under both Democratic and Republican administrations. We have lost subscribers in that pursuit but it should now be clear that we were more often on the right side of History than not. We have been right about every major military conflict engaged in by the United States since our first day on this medium. We have reported on the ground more consistently than organizations whose money and resources dwarf our own. We had the temerity to refer to 9/11 as the equivalent of the Reichstag Fire for the United States when everyone else simply wanted to wave the flag and kill a bunch of Muslims.
We were on the right side of History then and we continue to be on the right side of History now, as the debacle (once so celebrated by the MM) in Iraq is exposed for the criminal mistake we argued it was at the time.
When most on the Left were celebrating the rise of the Clintons to the White House, we gave that President the nickname "Dollar Bill" and predicted that he would be more concerned with the support of Wall Street than Main Street. We called it right and watched as he betrayed every single constituency that brought him to Washington, gays ("Don't ask, don't tell",) Labor (NAFTA,) the poor (Welfare Reform,) and the uninsured (you know, Hilary.) ... READ MORE |
KEVIN CAREY ON THE LOSS OF SENSIBILITIES:
Sussex, UK - In spite of a penetratingly elegant demolition by Kurt Gödel, elegant theories generally stand the test of time; whether we think of Platonic ideas of mind and matter, the Christian doctrine of Hypostasis, Newton's laws, the proposition that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, or even the long held belief that the Red Sox are incapable of winning the World Series, elegance is the best defence against corrosion and is only vulnerable to the paradigm shift which generates another more comprehensive elegance.
If we were to hold a competition for the shortest lived elegant paradigm it would have to be James Lovelock's Gaya hypothesis that planet Earth is a self regulating organism. It has lasted for less than two decades, for less time than a variety of astronomical elegances since the invention of radio telescopes. What killed it was not a new paradigm but an old piece of physics, the concept of the irreversible ti pping point. In spite of the ever less definite denials of the White House, most people now accept that there are too many human beings on the planet, too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and too much pollution in the lakes, rivers and seas.
If I were a betting man I would put my money on the first problem being resolved relatively simply by war, epidemic, famine and the toxicity of the other two factors. I would also wager that there will be enough flexibility in the world economy for the rich to survive catastrophe (as they always do) but the power of the rich to dig ever deeper wells in their own private estates will not be enough to - forgive the pun - stem the rising tides of water crises.
... READ MORE
  |
| Battle Against Bird Flu |
Current TV correspondent Laura Ling looks at the battle against bird flu in Vietnam and the secondary crisis facing poor poultry farmers being forced to kill their entire avian livestock . . . in most cases their only source of income. |
OTHER EDITIONS
| WRITERS | TALKBACK | SUBSCRIBE | YOUR LETTERS |
THE PREVIOUS ISSUE: NEW CLASSIC
BRAD BALFOUR talks with Presley Chweneyagae of "Tstotsi" in NEW YORK STATE; ROD AMIS reports on the Online Journalism Review Indy Web Publishers Conference in SMOKE & MIRRORS; and much more!
G21 TODAY!
FEED THE HUNGRY. You can help someone else in this world and IT WON'T COST YOU A DIME. If you simply remember to drop by The Hunger Site every day that you surf and click a simple button ONE LESS PERSON WILL GO HUNGRY. The food is distributed by the United Nations World Food Programme and paid for through the sponsorship of companies that care. Do your part.
T
his magazine is an on-going production of the Ghost Who Walks.