Up in arms

A note from the editor

David Ransom

Who’s in the economic driving seat now?

A few months ago, when I started work on ‘The Great Rebellion’, an uprising by the Arab people was equally difficult to forecast as its outcome is now, as we go to press.

Media coverage in the West immediately suggested that the fate of the Egyptian people must rest in the hands of the US Government, which has funded the Egyptian apparatus of repression for so long. But despotism has been justified once too often by the ignorant and deceitful fantasy that the people of the region are wedded to Islamic extremism.

The truth is that the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings were just the most recent in a sequence that began in Latin America, continues through much of Asia and is a response to the despotism of free- market fundamentalism and corporate globalization. Because of this response, the ‘Third’ or Majority World has largely avoided The Great Recession and is now in the economic driving seat. And because of this – if for no other reason – the Western physician would be well advised to heal itself. It could do worse than begin by abandoning the prescriptions of the corporate media, which failed just as miserably to diagnose both the Great Recession and the Great Rebellion.

Elsewhere in the magazine we peep inside the paranoid minds of conspiracy theorists, give the humble honeybee a much-needed helping hand, and applaud the global mobilizations of Avaaz.

David Ransom for the New Internationalist co-operative.
www.newint.org

The big story

'Non a la réforme' means no to the age of austerity in France, as a student protests against a rise in the pension age in October 2010. Thibault Camus / AP / Press Association Images

'Non a la réforme' means no to the age of austerity in France, as a student protests against a rise in the pension age in October 2010.

Thibault Camus / AP / Press Association Images

The Great Rebellion

The Great Recession may have stunned the Minority World, but the Majority World has survived more or less unscathed. David Ransom investigates why, and traces the outlines of a future that might just be worth having.

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Features

Ratnamala Tekam, a widow with her two children in Mangi village, in the cotton producing belt of Vidarbha. Her husband killed himself in March 2009 amid mounting debts, hunger and crop losses.Jaideep Hardikar

Bomb drops on Indian countryside

India may be one of the world’s current economic ‘winners’ but inequality is its fastest-growing sector, reveals Jaideep Hardikar.

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Illustration by David Dees

Challenging the politics of paranoia

Cartoonist Polyp explores conspiracy theories and finds them not just dotty but dangerous.

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Alternatives

Honeybees get a helping hand Photo by James Diedrick under a CC Licence

Honeybees get a helping hand

‘Barefoot beekeepers’ adopt an alternative approach to safeguarding the threatened bee population.

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Opinion

The US military budget

The US military budget

Overcoming empire is not a spectator sport.

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Is it OK for protesters to damage property?

Is it OK for protesters to damage property?

Two activists debate whether property destruction is a valid tactic for bringing about social and political change - plus your chance to join the conversation.

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Agenda

Stop the tar sands trade talks

Stop the tar sands trade talks

A protest against opening the EU's doors to Canada's polluting tar sands

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The next step: Western Saharawi fisherfolk are demanding the right to fish in their own waters.Photo by Maria Fonfara / www.wsrw.org

The EU-Morocco Fisheries Partnership

Morocco’s exploitation of Western Sahara’s fish stocks in choppy waters.

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Regulars

Interview with Parvin Ardalan Jenny Cleveson

Interview with Parvin Ardalan

Interview with Parvin Ardalan who is at the heart of the struggle for women's rights in Iran.

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Samoa

Samoa

A profile of the Pacific island state.

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