NI 414 - August, 2008

We need to think about toilets

A note from the editor

The problem with toilets is that no-one wants to talk about them. Even less do they want to talk about what goes into them (the ‘s’ word) or the act of human waste expulsion (the ‘d’ word) – except with smirks and giggles.

That kind of verbal crap has been swilling remorselessly around the NI editorial offices in Oxford this month. Why do Brits (maybe it’s only the male of the species) take such delight in lavatorial double entendres? Swedes can talk about excremental effluvia and pee-H content without the least hilarity issuing from their lips.

Ballcocks aside, this is a serious subject. Imagine what it is like not to have a decent place to ‘go’. It is not surprising that people don’t want to talk about the indignity they suffer – although some women do so in these pages.

The hidden scandal is that this is a situation endured by literally millions of people. Addressing the scandal demands as a first requirement that we learn to talk about it without embarrassment.

So it’s back to language and staying within the bounds of what you, the readers, daily defecators as we all are, regard as good taste. I hope to succeed in opening the door – or should it be the lid? – and inviting you in.

Maggie Black for the New Internationalist co-operative.
www.newint.org

The big story

New facilities, new jobs. A toilet production centre in West Bengal.

Photo: UNICEF WEST BENGAL

NI 414 - August, 2008

We need to think about toilets

A note from the editor

The big story

2008 is the International Year of Sanitation. Or, asks Maggie Black, is it the International Year of Silence and Embarrassment?

Features

Toilet champions are not so rare a breed as you’d think. Here are some distinguished exemplars.

David Satterthwaite speaks out in praise of sewers, and Mayling Simpson-Hébert retaliates on behalf of pits.

Everything you ever wanted to know about toilets.

Toilets have been around since the days of Elizabeth I. Systems old and new.

Unbelievably, people still exist whose task in life is shovelling shit, as Mari Marcel Thekaekara explains.

Women desperately want toilets – but not as a health aid. Libby Plumb reports.

Science is coming up with ever more extraordinary proposals for combating climate change, from laying white plastic over deserts to locking up carbon dioxide in the oceans or shooting it into space. Should we take any of this seriously?

Blogs

My relationship with Peshawar.

Opinion

Lies, food & the poor by Eduardo Galeano

Currents

Children imprisoned with their mothers worldwide

Tanzanian authorities launch a crackdown on anti-albino witch doctors

Brazil’s AIDS fight against Big Pharma continues

A conscientious objector from Istanbul was beaten with sticks until he passed out

Why young rural Indians end up addicted to pills

Water privatization heads back to public management around the world

Regulars

Maria Golia explains why the pen is messier than the sword in her Letter from Cairo.

Dominica is a small island both in population and size. Yet the island feels a lot bigger than this, with dozens of mountain peaks, waterfalls and some say a river for every day of the year.

by Mitchell & Richardson

Colombian activist Teófilo Acuña on the danger of confronting paramilitaries.

Powerful words from South Africa’s first black President

Nelson Mandela gets a birthday present from the US, being repealed from the Terror Watch List!

Polyp's take on happiness

Bangladeshi photographer Shehzad Noorani exposes the damage done to the Buriganga River.

President of South Africa (though not for much longer).

Film, Book & Music Reviews

Sound advice for action, inspiration and organization.

The story of one journalist who tirelessly exposed its horrors and manipulation by the Moscow political class.

The horrors of the attitudes towards money of Los Angeles 12-16-year-olds

An explosive mix of politics, religion and sexuality explored through the life of a gay couple in Fiji

A masterful piece of film-making that leaves the audience gasping at the injustice of a 99 year sentence for a Mexican 'illegal' migrant following the death of the child she was minding

Donna Dickensen’s fascinating overview of the complex world of medical ethics

Karen King-Aribisala's debut novel, a dark and brooding meditation on the stories we tell and the effect they have on everyday life

The début album from the Israeli-born, London-based performance artist Anat Ben-David, is based on a grim paradox, leisure doesn’t exist – it’s virtual

This collection of prowling, _lunfardo_ slang-inflected songs concentrates on an imagined lowlife of Buenos Aires.

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