We, Myself and I

RUTH LA FERLA

Published: April 5, 2007

FOR Aysha Hussain, getting dressed each day is a fraught negotiation. Ms. Hussain, a 24-year-old magazine writer in New York, is devoted to her pipe-stem Levi’s and determined to incorporate their brash modernity into her wardrobe while adhering to the tenets of her Muslim faith. “It’s still a struggle,” Ms. Hussain, a Pakistani-American, confided. “But I don’t think it’s impossible.”

Stephanie Keith for The New York Times

CULTURAL CROSSROAD Aysha Hussain, left, who tries to maintain a modern flavor in her daily attire, goes shopping for clothing in Astoria, Queens.

William Mebane for The New York Times

STYLE GUIDES Fatima Fazal, left, and Tam Naveed offer different takes on layering.

Ms. Hussain has worked out an artful compromise, concealing her curves under a mustard-tone cropped jacket and a tank top that is long enough to cover her hips.

Some of her Muslim sisters follow a more conservative path. Leena al-Arian, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, joined a women’s worship group last Saturday night. Her companions, who sat cross-legged on prayer mats in a cramped apartment in the Hyde Park neighborhood, were variously garbed in beaded tunics, harem-style trousers, gauzy veils and colorful pashminas. Ms. Arian herself wore a loose-fitting turquoise tunic over fluid jeans. She covered her hair, neck and shoulders with a brightly patterned hijab, the head scarf that is emblematic of the Islamic call to modesty.

Like many of her contemporaries who come from diverse social and cultural backgrounds and nations, Ms. Arian has devised a strategy to reconcile her faith with the dictates of fashion — a challenge by turns stimulating and frustrating and, for some of her peers, a constant point of tension. continue...

The Rich Are More Oblivious Than You and Me

By RICHARD CONNIFF

Published: April 4, 2007

Old Lyme, Conn.

Marcellus Hall

THE other day at a Los Angeles race track, a comedian named Eddie Griffin took a meeting with a concrete barrier and left a borrowed bright-red $1.5 million Ferrari Enzo looking like bad origami. Just to be clear, this was a different bright-red $1.5 million Ferrari Enzo from the one a Swedish businessman crumpled up and threw away last year on the Pacific Coast Highway. I mention this only because it’s easy to get confused by the vast and highly repetitious category “Rich and Famous People Acting Like Total Idiots.” Mr. Griffin walked away uninjured, and everybody offered wise counsel about how this wasn’t really such a bad day after all. continue...

Exercisers Slow It Down With Qigong

Kevin P. Casey/Getty Images, for The New York Times

RELAX-ERCISE Robert Meserve participates in the Hands of the 18 Luohan class at Embrace the Moon, a qigong school in Seattle.

By NORA ISAACS

Published: April 5, 2007

CHUNYI LIN remembers the first qigong class he ever taught in the United States. In 1993, he traveled from China as part of a cultural exchange between schools, and was asked to teach at a community center in Inver Grove Heights, Minn. continue...

The Pope and Islam

Is there anything that Benedict XVI would like to discuss?
by Jane Kramer April 2, 2007
 

Benedict wants to purify the Church, to make it more observant, obedient, and disciplined-more like the way he sees Islam

These are fierce theological times. It should come as no surprise that the Vatican and Islam are not getting along, or that their problems began long before Pope Benedict XVI made his unfortunate reference to the Prophet Muhammad, in a speech in Regensburg last September, and even before the children of Europe’s Muslim immigrants discovered beards, burkas, and jihad. There are more than a billion Catholics in the world, and more than a billion Muslims. And what divides the most vocal and rigidly orthodox interpreters of their two faiths, from the imams of Riyadh and the ayatollahs of Qom to the Pope himself, is precisely the things that Catholicism and Islam have always had in common: a purchase on truth; a contempt for the moral accommodations of liberal, secular states; a strong imperative to censure, convert, and multiply; and a belief that Heaven, and possibly earth, belongs exclusively to them. continue...

The Next Crusade

Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank.
by John Cassidy April 9, 2007

Most bank staff opposed Wolfowitz’s presidency. An observer says that there’s a perception that “his real agenda remains hidden.”

The Selimiye Mosque, in Edirne, a city in northwest Turkey, is a magnificent stone edifice, with four minarets and an austere, octagonal-shaped body supporting a large dome. Built for Sultan Selim II in the sixteenth century, it has withstood numerous earthquakes and can accommodate more than five thousand kneeling worshippers. One evening at the end of January, I visited the mosque with Paul Wolfowitz, the president of the World Bank, and a half dozen of his aides and colleagues. Two years have passed since President Bush nominated Wolfowitz, the former Deputy Secretary of Defense and one of the architects of the war in Iraq, to head the sprawling multinational lending institution that has as its official goal “a world without poverty.”

The World Bank employs thirteen thousand people in more than a hundred countries, and lends about twenty-five billion dollars a year to poor and middle-income nations. When Wolfowitz inspects bank programs, he often visits religious sites and other monuments. At the Selimiye Mosque, a stern-looking young man with a black beard who identified himself as the imam met us at the entrance and invited us inside. After putting on slippers, Wolfowitz entered the mosque and listened as the imam, demonstrating its acoustics, raised the call to Allah.

Wolfowitz has an abiding interest in the Islamic world. His father, Jacob, an eminent mathematician who taught at Columbia and Cornell, was a fervent Zionist, and Wolfowitz’s elder sister, Laura, lives in Israel. Wolfowitz’s critics sometimes portray him as an unquestioning defender of the Israeli government, and yet he has publicly expressed sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians, and some Arab reformers regard him as a friend. Since separating from his wife of more than thirty years, Clare Selgin Wolfowitz, in 2001, he has dated a secular Muslim woman in her fifties, Shaha Ali Riza. A British national from a Libyan family who grew up in Saudi Arabia, Riza is a longtime advocate of democracy in Arab countries. continue....

Realistic Growth Policy for our times

In remembering David Gordon, the late founder of SCEPA (then CEPA) and New School Professor of Economics, this conference will explore an issue that was important to him, and remains relevant today--the relationship between income distribution and economic growth. The aim is to promote a lively dialogue between scholars focused on labor market regulation, industrial relations and corporate governance, and political and cultural institutions, with scholars of economic growth who see institutions and income distribution as central to their analysis. The hope is to further our understanding of progressive and growth-promoting policies in today's economic climate.

Reservations are required. Please RSVP to cepa@newschool.edu or call 212-229-5901 x4911. continue...

Leontief 2007 Announcement

Tufts Institute Awards Annual Economics Prize
to Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Steven DeCanio

Fall lectures to focus on climate change, global inequality
March 21, 2007

Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute announced today that it will award its annual Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought to development economist Jomo Kwame Sundaram of the United Nations and economist Steven DeCanio, known recently for his groundbreaking work on climate change. The award ceremony will take place in the fall of 2007 at Tufts University and will feature lectures by the prize winners on the topic, “Climate Change, Economic Development, and Global Equity.” continue....

Whatever It Takes

The politics of the man behind “24.”

by Jane Mayer February 19, 2007

Joel Surnow calls the show he helped create “patriotic.” Photograph by Martin Schoeller.

The office desk of Joel Surnow—the co-creator and executive producer of “24,” the popular counterterrorism drama on Fox—faces a wall dominated by an American flag in a glass case. A small label reveals that the flag once flew over Baghdad, after the American invasion of Iraq, in 2003. A few years ago, Surnow received it as a gift from an Army regiment stationed in Iraq; the soldiers had shared a collection of “24” DVDs, he told me, until it was destroyed by an enemy bomb. “The military loves our show,” he said recently. Surnow is fifty-two, and has the gangly, coiled energy of an athlete; his hair is close-cropped, and he has a “soul patch”—a smidgen of beard beneath his lower lip. When he was young, he worked as a carpet salesman with his father. The trick to selling anything, he learned, is to carry yourself with confidence and get the customer to like you within the first five minutes. He’s got it down. “People in the Administration love the series, too,” he said. “It’s a patriotic show. They should love it.” continue...

Arctic sea ice is shrinking in 'downward spiral'

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 05 April 2007

Winter sea ice in the Arctic has failed to reform fully for the third year in a row. Scientists said yesterday that the area of ocean covered by Arctic ice at the end of the winter months was lower only in March 2006.

Researchers fear that the floating sea ice is now on a downward spiral of shrinkage that cannot recover fully even during winter because of warmer temperatures. continue...

A country-western Muslim

from the April 4, 2007 edition

Muslim cowboy: Kareem Salama grew up in Oklahoma and Texas, where his Egyptian parents settled. He says thethemes he sings about - unadulterated love, family, and religion - areas key to Islam as they are to country music. photo courtesy of kareem salama

With Egyptian roots and a southern drawl, Kareem Salama sings at a very American crossroad.

By Tom A. Peter | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Cambridge, Mass. - Kareem Salama – the main act on this evening's Muslim Student Association program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – nervously sips a bottle of water backstage as his guitarist/producer tunes a 12-string guitar.

The crowd buzz softens to a deferential hush as a bearded student takes the stage to start the evening with readings from the Koran in an Arabic melody that sounds like a medieval hymn.

It's Koranic recitations like these that inspired Mr. Salama, the son of Eygptian immigrants, to become a musician. But it's the peculiarly American circumstances of his life that drove this devout Muslim with a Southern drawl to his musical passion – country.

And so on this evening Koranic verse dissolves into the main act: the upbeat twang of what is perhaps the first Muslim country singer. In a down-home sound that seems at total odds with his look – an elegantly built man with a goatee style popular with young Arabs in his parents' Middle Eastern homeland – Salama croons to the enthusiastic audience. "Baby, I'm a soldier and I hear those trumpets calling again ... It's time for this simple man to be one of the few good men," go his original lyrics to a war ballad about the shared humanity of two soldiers on opposing sides. continue...

Subtracting a 'gifted' gap in math education

from the April 5, 2007 edition
Math whizzes: Fifth-graders at the Charter Oak School in West Hartford, Conn., participate in a class designed to nurture math talent in a diverse group of children.|Joanne ciccarello – staff
Project M3 steers often-overlooked students from low income and minority backgrounds into advanced math classes.

By Stacy A. Teicher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WEST HARTFORD, CONN. - When Katherine Gavin taught algebra to seventh-graders with advanced math skills, she found it was almost too late to tap into their potential. Accustomed to math coming easily, they sometimes resented the work. The key, she decided, is to grab kids when they still believe "the fun part of math is the challenge ... and persisting [until] you get that 'aha!' moment."
Now she's witnessing those treasured discoveries among third- to fifth-graders as director of Project M3: Mentoring Mathematical Minds. Based at the University of Connecticut's Neag Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development, it's designed to nurture math talent in a diverse group of students. About half come from low-income families, and many are not native English speakers.

Ms. Gavin recalls a girl whose family spoke Spanish at home. When she was chosen for Project M3, her teacher was surprised, having planned to hold the girl back because she wasn't doing well at reading. "We said, 'We see a lot of good creative and critical thinking skills in her' ... and she ended up being one of the top students when she left fifth grade."

An independent evaluation shows students have significantly outperformed control groups in the 10 Connecticut and Kentucky schools where Project M3 has been piloted. continue...

Step cautiously into an online bank

Interest rates and convenience are high, but so are security concerns. And customers have to be especially vigilant.

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald | Correspondent

For savers looking to get the highest possible interest rates on their cash holdings, the call of the Internet keeps getting louder.

In March, ING Direct launched nationwide the first completely electronic checking account. Depositors receive 4 percent interest on balances up to $50,000 and have no minimum requirements. This month, HSBC plans to roll out its own high-yield electronic checking account with an interest rate that's soon to be announced.

High-yield checking accounts mark the latest enticing offer from a universe of about 60 domestically registered virtual banks, which conduct business online rather than in brick-and-mortar operations. Virtual savings accounts now routinely pay 5 percent or more. Deal hunters are also finding mortgages with reduced fees and higher than average rates on certificates of deposit. conitnue...

What Would Jack Bauer Do?

March 12, 2007 Issue Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative
Fox’s hit drama normalizes torture, magnifies terror, and leaves conservatives asking why George W. Bush can’t be more like 24’s hero. by Michael Brendan Dougherty
Agent Jack Bauer has tortured his own brother, used household appliances to electrocute a terror suspect, staged the execution of a child, and even shot a man’s wife to get information from him. On any given day, he will disarm suitcase nukes and presidential assassins. The orders of superior officers at the Counter Terrorist Unit don’t deter him, the rule of law and even the threat of death do not diminish Bauer’s iron will to defend America.
But this hero isn’t real. He lives for one suspense-filled hour each week on Fox’s cult series 24. continue...

Bloggers vs. the Lobby

Israel’s propaganda fortress faces a surprising new challenge. by Scott McConnell

March 12, 2007 Issue - Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative

Despite the failure in Iraq, the repudiation of the president’s foreign policy in opinion polls and the 2006 elections, and the collapse of respect for the U.S. in most other countries, support for the Bush Doctrine of preventive war remains surprisingly intact among one important slice of Americans: the presidential candidates of both major parties. New York Times columnist David Brooks recently lamented that Democratic contenders were sounding soft, crafting their foreign-policy positions to generate “applause lines in Iowa.” He needn’t have worried. The parade of White House aspirants to appear before a hawkish Israeli audience in Herzliya, and an equally hawkish AIPAC crowd in New York, is a truer gauge of where leading candidates stand.

On New Year’s Day, Israeli superhawk Benjamin Netanyahu called for an “intense international public relations front” to persuade Americans of the need for military confrontation with Iran. The sight of John Edwards addressing a conference in Israel by satellite feed, along with John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney—the latter two actually flew in to speak in person—indicated that the front already exists. All the candidates spoke as if preemptive war in the Middle East was a tried and true success. As a correspondent from Jewish Week summed it up, the U.S. presidential hopefuls were “competing to see who can be most strident in defense of the Jewish state.” The consensus choice for the competition’s winner was Romney, but the putatively liberal Edwards, who described preventing Iran from securing nuclear weapons as “the greatest challenge of our generation,” made a surprisingly strong showing. No leading presidential contender suggested that attacking Iran might be a bad idea. continue...

Saving Feith

March 12, 2007 Issue
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative

A new report gives the Pentagon intelligence peddler a pass.

by Philip Giraldi

Pentagon Inspector General Thomas Gimble’s narrow report on the activities of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans was not quite a whitewash, but neither was it an indictment. The report, presented to Congress on Feb. 9, rightly condemned Feith’s attempt to create what it charitably called “an alternative intelligence assessment process,” lacking the checks and balances observed by the CIA, DIA, and INR. But no punishment was recommended for anyone involved in the relentless advocacy that enabled the slide to war. Nor did the investigation seek to determine possible involvement of the Office of Special Plans in the Niger uranium forgeries and cover-up, or in the generation and dissemination of false intelligence derived from foreign sources. continue...

Viewpoint: Ad:tech 2006

By Richard Cacciato - Partner, Blue-Iceberg LLC
Online marketing checklist for 2007 For the second year in a row, I was asked to blog the major insights at Ad:tech New York, the internet marketing conference, which took place on November 6-8. Ad:tech was packed and the speakers were exuberant.
Here's my take:
1. Is your digital marketing budget adequate? These days, digital marketing includes email, interactive ads, mobile marketing, websites, social networks and more. Speakers noted that many marketers underbudget digital marketing because they don't understand it and are still wedded to “traditional media”. But the smarter ones are catching on. Online spending is up 30% vs. year ago. Television's role is being reevaluated and a lot of money is being redirected from TV to online. If you're not “in the online game,” you risk looking dated and out of touch. continue...

MIT Media Lab & $100 Laptop

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit association dedicated to research to develop a $100 laptop—a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children. This initiative was launched by faculty members at the MIT Media Lab. It was first announced by Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte, now chairman of OLPC, at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2005.Visit the $100 Laptop Website for the latest information.  http://laptop.media.mit.edu/

Dynapod

It is illegal to point a laser pointer at an aircraft, so please be careful where you point !

Careful with these wmds!

American union targets Blackstone to expose private equity ills

By Stephen Foley in New York
Published: 02 April 2007

One of America's fastest-growing unions is promising to bring a European-style campaign against private equity to the US for the first time - and the organisation has chosen as its first target the flotation of Blackstone, the world's premier buy-out firm.

The Service Employees International Union says that the US has lagged behind Europe in launching a debate about the effects of private equity's takeover of large parts of the economy. And it says that as increasing numbers of its members in the healthcare, property services and the public services are transferred to private equity-owned companies, it wants to ensure they get fair treatment at the same time as industry executives reap huge personal fortunes from the deals. continue...

British oil worker taken hostage in Nigeria

By Matt Dickinson
Published: 02 April 2007
Diplomats were trying yesterday to secure the release of a British oil worker kidnapped from a rig in Nigeria. continue.....

The end of a 'nightmare' for Briton detained in Guantanamo

By Kim Sengupta
Published: 02 April 2007

A British resident released from Guantanamo Bay after five years has spoken of the "horrific experience" he endured and his relief at the end of a "nightmare".
Bisher al-Rawi said freedom for him was "bittersweet" with the knowledge that others remained incarcerated. He urged people in this country not to forget the "hopelessness" and "extreme isolation" being suffered by those he left behind. continue......

Robert Fisk: The war of humiliation

Published: 02 April 2007.
Our Marines are hostages. Two more were shown on Iranian TV. Petrol bombs burst behind the walls of the British embassy in Tehran. But it's definitely not the war on terror. It's the war of humiliation. The humiliation of Britain, the humiliation of Tony Blair, of the British military, of George Bush and the whole Iraqi shooting match. And the master of humiliation - even if Tony Blair doesn't realise it - is Iran, a nation which feels itself forever humiliated by the West.

Oh how pleased the Iranians must have been to hear Messers Blair and Bush shout for the "immediate" release of the luckless 15 - this Blair-Bush insistence has assuredly locked them up for weeks - because it is a demand that can be so easily ignored. And will be.

"Inexcusable behaviour," roared Bush on Saturday - and the Iranians loved it. The Iranian Minister meanwhile waited for a change in Britain's "behaviour". continue

Ask Bill Miller

Good Morning:  I will be interviewing Bill Miller, manager of Legg Mason Value Trust, this week. He's famous for beating the S&P 500 for 15 years straight from 1990 to 2005. I'm including him as a new master investor in the third edition of "The Neatest Little Guide  to Stock Market Investing," chapter two, "How The Masters Tell  Us To Invest."   I would like to invite you to submit one burning question for Mr. Miller to me prior to my interview with him. Please, just one question and only after you've put in some time to understand his approach. Please don't waste this chance by asking basic questions such as, "What's a P/E ratio?" or "Do you think Dell is a good buy now?" Let's try to get something of lasting value from him.  To better understand his style, please read the following:  His Fourth Quarter 2006 commentary  A November 15 article about him in Fortune  His Third Quarter commentary  After you've read those, consider whether there's anything you'd like to ask him, and send your question to me.  I'll provide his responses later.  Warm regards, Jason Kelly  Jason Kelly & Co. Plaza Kei 101 Wakamatsu-cho 615-6 Sano, Tochigi 327-0846 Japan 

Life Without Microsoft

April 01, 2007 | archives

On March 12, I wrote an article called Life Without Microsoft that made these points:

• Vista is not selling well
• PCs and traditional software are a hassle to upgrade and maintain
• Tech support is so unhelpful that it's non-existent
• Open source, free software such as Firefox, Thunderbird, Linux, and Open Office are better alternatives to traditional software
• Online-only software such as Google Apps is a better way to get work done with less hassle

At the end of that weekend's letter, I asked for feedback from my subscribers. I received a great deal of thoughtful, detailed, informative responses which I've sifted and edited down to a real-world follow-up worthy of your time.

Each subject presents my commentary followed by thoughts sent by Kelly Letter subscribers.

Use An Apple Macintosh
This is a great suggestion, and one that I'm considering for my next round of office upgrades in a few years. Macs are elegant, and they may finally have a chance to grab more market share now that the internet is erasing the compatibility issue. Anything you can do online with a PC, you can do with a Mac. Same site addresses, same applications, same scripts getting work done.   more

eVoice - What's your number?

Get more privacy, more control with your voice messages.
With eVoice Plus™ you'll have a number that delivers all your voicemails straight to your email inbox so messages can be received without interruption.

• Pick a local eVoice number
• Retreive messages by email or phone
• Get new message notification via cell phone
• more
  

Sun Innovation Blog

Tuesday Mar 27, 2007

Sun SPOT on Project Blackbox - The Eyes and Ears on Your Mobile Datacenter

Imagine you've set up your Project Blackbox datacenter to perform mission-critical tasks in a remote location. Wouldn't you want to know if it was opened, jarred unexpectedly, or if the temperature or humidity went too high? A myriad of things can happen when the systems are powered down that wouldn't be known to remote managers. more

Ex-Aide Says He’s Lost Faith in Bush

April 1, 2007 By JIM RUTENBERG

AUSTIN, Tex., March 29 — In 1999, Matthew Dowd became a symbol of George W. Bush's early success at positioning himself as a Republican with Democratic appeal.

A top strategist for the Texas Democrats who was disappointed by the Bill Clinton years, Mr. Dowd was impressed by the pledge of Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, to bring a spirit of cooperation to Washington. He switched parties, joined Mr. Bush's political brain trust and dedicated the next six years to getting him to the Oval Office and keeping him there. In 2004, he was appointed the president's chief campaign strategist.

Looking back, Mr. Dowd now says his faith in Mr. Bush was misplaced.

In a wide-ranging interview here, Mr. Dowd called for a withdrawal from Iraq and expressed his disappointment in Mr. Bush's leadership. more

The Government must stop its war against small farmers and the land

PEOPLE’S AGENDA FOR REJUVENATION OF INDIAN AGRICULTURE
The Government has declared a war against India's small farmers. In Nandigram, in Vidharbha, in Punjab, peasants and small farmers are being killed by Government policy.
In Nandigram, the peasants were killed because their land was earmarked for an SEZ and they resisted the land grab. The Chief Minister of Bengal stated "that 63% of the population continues to depend on agriculture for its livelihood is a sign of backwardness". In other words there are too many small farmers, and their number must be reduced by taking away their land for car factories and chemical factories, even though automobile and chemical factories will not be able to provide livelihoods for all the displaced peasants.
In Vidharbha farmers are being killed for Monsanto's profits and because of falling prices of cotton due to U.S subsidies. The Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture has reported the total failure of the P.M's Vidharbha package. The package failed because it was more of a Monsanto aid package than a farmer relief package. ..more

The Green Century

Vandana Shiva
Seeds of Self-Reliance

Vandana Shiva will never forget a lesson she learned at the age of 13. Her parents, who like many educated Indians had supported Mohandas Gandhi's struggle against colonialism, insisted on wearing clothing made only of homespun cotton. One day Vandana, having returned from a boarding school to her home in the Himalayan foothill town of Dehra Dun, demanded a nylon dress, the fashion adopted by her rich friends. Her mother, a teacher turned farmer, agreed. "If that is what you want, of course you shall have it," she said. "But remember, your nylon frock will help a rich man buy a bigger car. And the cotton that you wear will buy a poor family at least one meal."

Now 50, Shiva still chuckles when she tells the story. "Of course, I did not get that frock," she says. "I kept thinking of some poor family starving because of my dress." True to her upbringing, Shiva has made it her mission to fight for social justice in many arenas. With a doctorate in physics from the University of Western Ontario, she has been a teacher, an ecologist, an activist, a feminist and an organic farmer.

Her pet issue these days is preservation of agricultural diversity. It is under assault, she says, from global companies that encourage farmers to grow so-called high-yielding crops that result in a dangerous dependence on bioengineered seeds, chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides. As a result, hundreds of traditional crops are disappearing. Too many farmers, she contends, purchase expensive seeds that cannot adapt to local conditions and require more investment in chemicals and irrigation. Hundreds of debt-ridden Indian farmers, Shiva points out, have committed suicide during the past five years because of failed harvests.

But there is hope. Many farmers are returning to traditional methods promoted by Navdanya (Nine Seeds), an organization based in New Delhi that Shiva helped found 11 years ago. Navdanya encourages farmers to produce hardy native varieties of crops that can be grown organically with natural fertilizer and no artificial chemicals. The group works in an area for three years, helping local farmers form their own self-supporting organization and seed bank. Navdanya has spread to some 80 districts in 12 states and has collected more than 2,000 seed varieties. It has set up a marketing network through which farmers sell their organic harvest. Farmer Darwan Singh Negi, with Navdanya's aid, switched to organic methods five years ago and grows six types of rice on his three-acre farm in the state of Uttaranchal. His farm's productivity is similar to that of his neighbors' nonorganic farms, but he spends almost 70 percent less for fertilizers, pesticides and seeds.

Shiva's many detractors call her naive, pointing out that chemical fertilizers, pesticides and genetic engineering rescued India from its eternal cycles of famine and huge debts from importing food. She responds that high-tech agriculture is a short-term solution that will ultimately destroy the land. Shiva has by no means proved that organic agriculture alone can feed a burgeoning world population. But Navdanya has shown that in some areas, organic farmers with a knowledge of local conditions and traditional methods can achieve high yields at little cost to the environment. In India at least, Navdanya sets an eco-friendly standard that agribusiness must show it can outperform. The challenge for genetic engineers is to create seeds adapted to particular locales that enable farmers to reduce, not increase, the use of chemicals.

If nothing else, Navdanya provides an alternative approach to modern farming. Shiva wants to preserve nature's bountiful variety in a world too vulnerable to humanity's penchant for standardization. She counsels us to be more humble in the care of our environment. "You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder," she says. "It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you."

— By Meenakshi Ganguly/New Delhi ... more