New internationalist May edition is out now.
The cover story is Land Grabs: big investors buying up land in Africa (and Asia, central and southern Americas), for large scale agribusiness. “Villagers were displaced after their chief gifted community farmland for a motorbike’, however there is a growing groundswell of people saying ‘we’d rather have our land’.
The Scratchy Lines cartoon for May is sort of ‘meanwhile, back in Europe’….
For the inspiration for the cartoon in this month’s issue of New Internationalist see Brian Loffler’s post Hypocrisy, Terrorism and Algeria on the New Internationalist’s Australian blog. Follow his link to Jeremy Keenan’s article How the US has been sponsoring terrorism in the Sahara.
While you are on the New Internationalist’s Australian blog have a read of The city can save the planet – much more encouraging!
GERM is the global education reform movement, as described in the latest Australian Education Union Journal (South Australian branch), is pushing radical proposals for the privatisation of government schooling.
These ideas are becoming mainstream in countries like Britain and Sweden, and are being promoted by independent schools lobby groups in Australia. ‘Sweden has led the way with for-profit schooling…. which media mogul Rupert Murdoch praised as an example of “IKEA schools” ‘.
Mike Willis, the author of the article, uses the example of the miner’s canary, warning that these developments are a threat to public education.
Here is the cartoon I drew to illustrate the article.
This is the Scratchy Lines cartoon in this month’s issue of the New Internationalist.
Visit the New Internationalist website for highlights from the magazine and the latest postings on their blog – including this post reporting the detaining of Palestinian cartoonist Mohammad Saba’aneh by Israeli Defence Forces. Mohamad’s cartoon ‘Dreaming of Freedom’ appeared in the May 2011 issue of the magazine. Fellow Palestinian Fadi Abou’s cartoon response, also shown in the post, makes clear the power of the pencil.
There are more cartoons on the detaining of Mohamad Saba’aneh, and many other world issues at Cartoon Movement.
Australia is heading for an election … in seven months time.
Mission Australia’s chief executive says the ‘welfare system is broken and is limping along in a dire state’, on the Pro Bono website.
Don’t hold your breath….
Frank Fisher, who died earlier this year, was an inspiration to many people, an environmental educator committed to ‘social transformation to a more sensitive self-aware world’. Among other things he was professor in the National Centre for Sustainability, Swinburn University of Technology, Melbourne.
Frank established The Understandascope in 2005, the name coming from cartoonist Michael Leunig’s cartoon. It was relaunched this year as a website www.understandascope.org – to continue Frank Fisher’s vision of ‘a more circumspect, humble and considerate society, increasingly sensitive and responsive to the consequences of our actions upon each other and the rest of nature’.
The Understandascope has launched an ebook Everyday Transcendence: the influence of Frank Fisher. Discover Frank Fisher and a link to download the ebook here.
Frank Fisher was a committed cyclist. Here is one cartoon from the ebook.
November’s New Internationalist is out. This issue tackles Medicine and ‘inequality’s toxic effect on health and healthcare’. However, with the US election only days away my Scratchy Lines cartoon took a look at how electing our representatives works …
The focus of the latest issue of New Internationalist is Youth. The cover states: ‘Youth rising – why apathy is not an option’, and to quote from one article “young people are carrying the can for capitalism’s structural failings’. Those who do read the magazine will know that it presents a global snapshot (and fact-shot) of complex issues.
This month the cartoon does relate to the theme – as well as using a bit too popular metaphor.
In a slightly deluded belief that providing a cloud for uploading files is cutting edge community development ‘Global cloud computing giant, Salesforce.com has defended its plans to trademark the term ‘social enterprise’ world wide’. Click here to read the story on the Pro Bono website.
Quoting from the article:
‘US author and social entrepreneur, Auren Kaplan responded … saying “the trademarking of “social enterprise” by Salesforce degrades the work of social entrepreneurs all over the world, and is unacceptable.”
‘Many responses … have described the Salesforce.com moves as absurd, ridiculous, foolish and brand suicide’.
Here is today’s NFP Kneebone cartoon for Pro Bono News:
Simon Kneebone - cartoonist and illustrator 