New Internationalist magazine

AI: the people behind the machine

Sun, 1 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Lethal technology

You can ask an AI chatbot anything from the best gift for a relative who has everything to the ‘perfect’ chocolate brownie recipe. A response is available 24/7. But there are darker sides to this technology. In September 2025, Adam Raine, a 16-year-old from California, ended his life after several months of intense ChatGPT use. His parents later sued OpenAI, the company behind the platform, alleging it encouraged Raine’s suicidal thoughts. The same week that Raine’s parents filed suit, writer Stephen Marche mused in the pages of the New York Times that chatbots had ‘an extraordinary new power’ that made them distinct from technological advances of the past. ‘No merely mechanical object has ever talked somebody into suicide before,’ he wrote. But AI’s ability to induce psychosis in some users does not make it more impressive. Despite its documented dangers, algorithmic biases and dire environmental consequences, Big Tech companies and complicit governments have succeeded in pushing AI into every corner of our lives. It is presented to us by the companies marketing it as an inevitable, society-altering force that cannot be resisted and is coming to change our jobs, lives and relationships for good. This Big Story asks who benefits from framing it this way? Whether it’s actually useful? And at what cost? Also in this edition, Fabio Lovati reports on the push for a new Indigenous majority state in India, while Kojo Koram and Colin Bogle explore the regional ramifications of Donald Trump’s imperialist ambition in Venezuela.

The new nuclear arms race

Thu, 1 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It’s an arms race

What would happen if a nuclear bomb went off above the New Internationalist office? To get an idea I used the online tool Nukemap. If just one W-87, 300kt yield warhead (one of the bombs currently part of the US’s nuclear arsenal), was detonated above our office in Oxford, England, Nukemap predicts that nearly 87,400 people would be killed and a further 99,430 injured. All the surrounding houses, shops, cafes, university buildings – and the life in and around them – would be vapourized in the fireball. Even at the far edges of the city, people would get third degree burns. No part of Oxford, or the surrounding towns and villages, would be left unscathed. The radioactive dust and debris would travel for hundreds of miles in the wind, taking lives for weeks, months and years to come. Why consider this horrific hypothetical? Because, despite being aware of the risks, our leaders are bringing us closer to nuclear war. Nuclear-armed states are ploughing money into revamping their arsenals as governments abandon control agreements. In this edition’s Big Story we’re reminded why people have never given up on the achievable goal of nuclear disarmament. It’s vital that we continue to challenge the narrative that nuclear weapons are protecting us, and organize internationally to demand a permanent end to this deadly industry. Also in this edition, Graeme Green looks at the cash transfer schemes that promise to protect the planet and Salman Abu Sitta explores what the right of return could look like for Palestinian refugees.

Gaza

Sat, 1 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Resisting erasure

Palestinian resistance has entered its eighth decade since the Nakba of 1948. Despite successive wars, sieges, the ongoing expansion of settlements and now genocide, it continues to shape the political and moral landscape of the Middle East. Resistance in Palestine is a broad, popular movement rooted in the daily lives of ordinary people. It is the rebuilding of destroyed homes in Gaza, the tending of olive groves under fire in the West Bank, and the preservation of culture and identity in exile. Israel’s occupation is sustained through Western political and financial backing, yet Palestinians persist with strategies that range from grassroots organizing and international advocacy to cultural resistance and, at times, armed struggle. At the core of these efforts lies the principle of sumud – steadfastness – that has defined the Palestinian experience for generations. The international community remains divided. Some governments offer impunity and weapons to Israel; others, particularly in the Global South, increasingly invoke international law and push for accountability. In this Big Story, we give space to voices that are too often sidelined, allowing Palestinians to define their own struggle. Their comrades in the cause also join in, working to define a future without racism, war, or genocide. Elsewhere in this issue, Obiora Ikoku reports on Senegal’s fight against imperialism, and NI editors give their view on the political leaders cozying up to dictators.

The global far right

Mon, 1 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Global far right

Among a sea of smiling faces I can just make out my 11-year-old grandmother, peering from the yellowing black-and-white photo. In the corner are the words ‘8 May 1945, VE Day’. Eighty years on, she remembers little about the street parties that erupted across Britain at the news of Nazi defeat – just the overwhelming relief that World War Two was over. But was the ideology ever truly beaten? Today we’re seeing a global far right resurgence. Making historical comparisons can be unhelpful, but there are undeniable similarities to my grandmother’s childhood. In Nafeez Ahmed’s Alt Reich, the investigative journalist traces today’s reactionary politics to the fascist ideas cemented around 1930s nazism. This rise has been long in the making. When K Biswas guest-edited our 2011 edition on the far right, he warned of a growing global movement – but few at that time were taking it seriously. Now the far right sits in governments across Europe, in the US, and in the Global South. As Biz told me recently: ‘When we first wrote about this it was theory, now it’s practice.’ So we’re shining a light on the subject again, with this edition funded by over 900 readers through our Rewire the World campaign. We explore the roots of this global phenomenon, and look to pockets of resistance around the world for answers. This topic is vast and fast-evolving, so there’s more to come online and via our podcast, The World Unspun. I’ll sign off with a heartfelt thank you to our supporters who made this edition possible. Protecting people-powered independent media is a vital part of the fightback.

United Nations at 80

Tue, 1 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dis-United Nations

26 June marks the 80th anniversary of the UN Charter. Yet given devastating wars in Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere, celebrations are likely to be muted. The group of countries that formed the UN – a smaller group than today, for much of the world was still colonized – did so from the ashes of World War Two, and the League of Nations that failed to prevent it. At the 1945 founding conference in San Francisco, while world leaders expressed their sombre and heartfelt reflections and aspirations for the UN, a military intelligence team just a few miles down the road was decoding cables between delegates and their home countries to feed back to the US State Department. The UN, according to historian Stephen C. Schlesinger, was ‘from the beginning a project of the United States’. While it undoubtedly reinforces the hegemony of the US and its allies, the UN not only remains an arena of struggle, but also offers an opportunity to build a roadmap for global justice. The formation of the Hague Group earlier this year was not for nothing. It’s made up of nine Global South countries campaigning for the enforcement of international law – and court adjudications – against Israel, ‘guided by the purposes and principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations’. Many of these principles are the right ones, so how can we direct them with the purpose they were always denied? Elsewhere in this issue, Kasturi Chakraborty reports from the West Bank and Richard Swift offers highlights from Toronto’s Hot Docs festival.

Critical minerals

Thu, 1 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dig, baby, dig! Can critical minerals save the world?

We have Donald Trump to ‘thank’ for putting critical minerals so vividly on the world map of naked greed and ruthless opportunism. Anyone who had not heard of them before – and rare earth elements, a sub-section of said minerals – may well associate them forever more with the mafia-style ambush of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky by Trump and his sidekick JD Vance in the oval office earlier this year. These minerals have been identified as essential for energy security. ‘Rare earths’ especially seem to have caught the imagination, and provoked popular science ‘explainers’ that they aren’t actually that rare. It’s getting cheap access to them, without bother from pesky local residents or environmental watchdogs, that’s hard to obtain close to home. So Trump has his eye on the deposits of 22 critical minerals which lie beneath the surface of Ukraine – including lithium, graphite, manganese, titanium. When I began researching this Big Story, as a guest editor, it appeared to be a mainly environmental topic about how to strike the balance between the needs of the global green energy transition and the human and environmental rights of communities affected by mining. But the geopolitical realities have shifted dramatically in recent months and the rush for critical minerals seems to have accelerated in a world that feels increasingly insecure and unpredictable. In other news, I’m thrilled to say that NI’s Rewire the World campaign successfully hit the £50,000 target, with more than 850 people chipping in to bolster our journalism to resist the far right! A huge thank you to everyone for the support.

Indigenous sovereignty in Australia

Sat, 1 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Always Was, Always Will Be

In her poem, ‘Ngurambang yali - Country Speaks’, Wiradjuri writer Jeanine Leane gives a voice to the land:

‘Balandha—dhuraay Bumal-ayi-nya Wumbay abuny (yaboing)’
— History does not have the first claim. Nor the last word.

Nghindhi yarra dhalanbul ngiyanhi gin.gu
- ‘You can speak us now!’

Since colonization, the spurious voice of the white man has attempted to define the history of Australia. In politics, education, the sciences and almost all realms of public discourse, stories have been told about the land and its First Peoples – claims that have often been as violent as the genocide that enabled the founding of the Australian nation. It is well beyond time for other voices to speak and be heard. There is no single story of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who are the original occupants of the continent and who never ceded sovereignty. They form one of the oldest civilizations on earth, of some 250 nations and 800 dialects. The countless stories there are are not for the colonizer to tell. The articles in this Big Story are instead an incomplete attempt to let some of them tell themselves. Most of all, they are an invitation to readers: a fleeting glimpse into ideas, realities and histories, many of which may be unfamiliar, and a call to continue listening. In this magazine, we are launching a new campaign to support a special edition of New Internationalist dedicated to resisting the far right. Visit newint.org/give to find out more.

Guns and power

Wed, 1 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Arms of power

A young boy, Zein Yousef, sleeps on the grave of his mother who died in an Israeli air strike in Gaza. A mother cries as she speaks to journalists, cradling her listless and starving daughter in Sudan. Two-year old Ali Khalifeh, found alive after 14 hours under the rubble in Lebanon, lies on a hospital ward – his parents, sister and grandmothers were all killed. The human cost of war and genocide is rarely far from the headlines at present. But what about the business behind it? While war means devastation for most, for the arms industry it means big profits. The trade in weaponry, military equipment and private security can seem like a vast, secretive, faceless foe. And in many ways it is. But a powerful resistance is growing. This Big Story explores the power of the arms trade, how it fuels violence, displacement and inequality, and the threats it poses to our planet, democracies and safety. We need an internationalist movement to confront the global network of arms manufacturers, dealers, and political actors who profit from bloodshed. And the handy thing is there are so many ways we can take action on our doorsteps: on our high streets, in our workplaces and in our court rooms; with our pens, and with our bodies. Also in this edition, Ben Jacobs explores Guyana’s oil boom, Charlie Milner keeps the spotlight on migrants in Greece, and Tauseef Ahmad and Sajid Raina report on the hardships experienced by Kashmir’s ‘half widows’.

Disinformation

Fri, 1 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Age of Doubt

Information is the raw material for society. It is information that turns us from individuals operating in isolation into communities. Information is the substrate on which our ideas grow. The space in which this raw material exists is the information ecosystem. Authoritarians know this. That’s why they spend so much time and energy trying to control the media and our ability to connect with each other. The more we know the less likely we are to tolerate tyranny. Yet it’s only now that the world seems to have woken up to the damage being done to democracy by the way our information ecosystems are increasingly shaped by a desire to make money instead of the desire to connect. Think about it – where do you get most of your news? Instead of investing in quality news we are being shuffled towards social media and platforms where our view of the world is shaped by proprietary algorithms. It’s true that the language to describe what we are witnessing is not in itself new. But today, concepts like misinformation are no longer niche words used by experts. Ordinary people are well aware of these threats, and counteracting them has become an imperative for any engaged citizen. Even so, our responses are stilted by limited understandings of just how important information is to democracy, and how information exists within an ecosystem rather than in isolation. In this edition, we explore what we mean by the information ecosystem and, what can be done to protect its integrity. Elsewhere, Sophie Neiman reports from the war-torn DRC, and Huw Paige examines the rising geopolitical tensions putting Antarctica at risk.

Election year

Sun, 1 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Party animals

By December, half of the world’s population will have had the opportunity to cast a vote this year. Some, of course, in more preferable circumstances than others. But even in the most free and fair elections, many voters despair at the choice they are offered. Political parties have formed the basis of our democracies – and many other forms of government – since the 18th century. They allow social movements to put forward a programme for change, although their stifling bureaucracies can all too often let established power run rampant and preserve the status quo. The fate of Britain’s Labour party is a case in point. The defeat of the Conservatives after 14 years at the July general election will come as a great relief to most on the Left. But Labour wasted no time in suspending MPs who voted in favour of scrapping the cruel two-child benefit cap, and then announcing it was means-testing the winter fuel allowance for pensioners. It’s thanks to the party system that it can take both these moves, in spite of their unpopularity. In the US election in November, we’ll see rallying cries of popular unity alongside the visceral bickering that disguises the small differences of Establishment parties. Meanwhile, independent candidates and minor parties – both Left and Right – are making inroads across the world. The might of the party is here to stay, but it could be facing its toughest challenge yet. Elsewhere in this edition, read ILYA’s graphic account of the anti-imperialist Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, and Matt Kennard explores Britain’s continuing role in US imperialism.

Abortion

Mon, 1 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The abortion myth

Abortion is ancient. Some of the first references to the practice can be found in an Egyptian papyrus which dates back around 3,500 years. The text recommends herbs, vaginal douches and suppositories to ‘empty out the conceived’. Anti-abortion activists today paint legal abortion as a historical aberration. However, for long stretches of history, terminating an unwanted pregnancy was a relatively uncontroversial fact of life. In fact the Catholic Church did not proclaim all abortion as a sin until 1869. Before then, moral arguments were focused more on women’s behaviour rather than the ‘right to life’ of the foetus which dominate debates today. These modern ideas of foetal personhood disrupted the long-held understanding that pregnancy does not begin with the presence of a child, and only sometimes ends with one. Today, while nearly one in three pregnancies worldwide end in an abortion, we’re far from reestablishing that understanding. As abortion bans sweep the US, emboldening a global anti-rights movement, this Big Story looks at how and why abortion has become so politicized. In these pages we explore the ripple effect of the US’s domestic policy in sub-Saharan Africa, and threats to roll back abortion rights in Argentina, the home of the mighty Green Wave movement. For answers we look to feminists who are charting a course towards achieving abortion care that’s safe, legal, and free from stigma and fear – for everyone. Also in this edition, Yusra Khan reports on how India’s far-right are exploiting alternative medicine and Decca Muldowney explores the central role Palestine’s writers have played in the liberation struggle.

Debt: which way out?

Wed, 1 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The sum of our debts

It’s 1.00am in Britain and I’ve snuck onto a Zoom call bringing together members of the Debt Collective, a union of debtors in the US. And they’ve been busy. One member tells the story of a successful meeting with her political representative. There’s a report of over 500 phone-banked calls, made across six different districts, and we hear from members in New York City about a Congress representative who has boosted the push for student debt relief. The mood is upbeat. Over 40 people are here, each introducing themselves in the chat box with their name and where they are from, the amount of debt they have had cleared, and the amount still in their name. For some this is many thousands of dollars, but there is palpable excitement about what they can achieve together. As the world faces what one campaigner described as a ‘slow-burning crisis’ of unsustainable debt burdens, this magazine’s Big Story traces the connections between struggling households in the US and communities in Sri Lanka, angry at the lack of transparency in how their government has managed the country’s national debt crisis. We also explore how people power might turn those burdens into political might. Also in this edition, Cyril Zenda explores why many Black Zimbabweans are still landless more than two decades on from Mugabe’s land reforms. Meanwhile, Kamran Yousuf and Durdana Bhat report from India on the economic impacts of the far-right campaign against Muslims.

South Africa 30 years later

Fri, 1 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

AMANDLA!

Since our first issue in 1973, South Africa has never been far from the pages of this magazine. In our March 1995 edition, which had the same theme as this one, editor David Ransom used this very column to describe a chance encounter with a watch repairer in Johannesburg. Des ‘reckoned it would be another 10 years, perhaps 20, before things started to improve’. He was ‘prepared to wait, though he’d rather not – he and his family had already been waiting 15 years for a house’. It’s now 30 years since the end of apartheid, and many South Africans are still waiting. Interviewed in that issue, National Union of Mineworkers leader and future South African president Kgalema Motlanthe concluded: ‘Big business will shower those comrades who are now in government with all sorts of gifts. That’s the first line of attack. The trick is whether they will have the ability to deal with it.’ A prescient warning, not only of the corporate capture of government under Jacob Zuma, but also that of Motlanthe’s own union, brought to the fore by the Marikana massacre of 2012. This Big Story, produced in collaboration with the Alameda Institute, features voices seeking to build a future for South Africa which meets not only the principles of the Freedom Charter but the challenges of the present day. South Africa’s seismic prosecution of Israel at the Hague offers a glimpse of how oppression need not always beget oppression. Elsewhere in this issue, we examine how Italy’s far-right PM Giorgia Meloni gets a free pass from international leaders, and our Agony Uncle ponders how to advise the next generation of activists.

Climate capitalism

Mon, 1 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Exploitation in the green transition

Just days after Hamas’s 7 October attacks, as Israel’s devastation of Gaza was getting into full swing, I received an odd email. It pitched a potential article from the CEO of the Israeli government’s Innovation Authority arguing that the COP28 climate conference could help rescue the process of strengthening political ties between Arab nations and Israel, which had been dealt a serious blow by the conflict. The proposed piece argued that the summit would provide ‘an unprecedented opportunity’ to build ‘mutual economic gains’ from joint renewable energy ventures between Israel and Saudi Arabia, as well as other Arab countries. The gall of trying to use the climate crisis to justify money-making ventures between authoritarian regimes, when the government you work for is publicly undertaking ethnic cleansing, turned my stomach. We urgently need to transition away from fossil fuels to prevent the worst harms of climate change, but the process is turning into a massive, and often damaging, bonanza for companies looking to profit from a slice of the climate action – and from a range of false solutions. The Big Story has been a collaboration with the Transnational Institute whose research and advocacy has produced vital work in this area. We examine the way transition is taking place across the Middle East and North Africa, including Israel’s eco-normalization policies, and look at the mining and offshore wind energy required for a new green economy. Elsewhere we have reports from Palestine, and Tilda Kämmlein explains how the illegal timber trade is fuelling conflict in Senegal.

Spying on dissent

Wed, 1 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Who’s watching you?

As I hopped onto the metro at Barcelona’s Diagonal station last week, I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling of being followed. While I’m sure my fears were unfounded, listening to the stories of campaigners targeted with surveillance had obviously gotten to me. But that, in some ways, is the point. Surveillance is as much a tool of intimidation as it is about intelligence gathering, and its effects ripple out beyond those directly targeted. The impact is especially acute in the digital age. States can monitor internet search histories, and tap into Big Tech’s surveillance economy, capturing our personal data from apps and smart devices. Using mercenary spyware, governments can turn dissenters’ phones against them, switching on the camera and mic to secretly listen into their lives. This Big Story starts in my new home of Catalonia, as I explore the impact of two intrusive surveillance operations – police spies and spyware abuse – on Catalan civil society. Has a chilling effect taken hold, or are campaigners fighting back? In these pages we look beyond privacy rights, instead thinking of surveillance as a tool of social control – one used to stifle dissent by autocracies and democracies alike. But there are also practical tips and stories of resistance: from activists living under the junta’s oppressive gaze in Myanmar, to campaigners in LA fighting to abolish racist police surveillance. Elsewhere, Natasha Ion reports from Tunisia on how people are taking on the polluting phosphate industry, and Pranay Somayajula explores how the Indian government is weaponizing tourism in Kashmir.

Decolonize now

Fri, 1 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Tales of empire

There’s a popular proverb displayed on a sign in the Barbados Museum: ‘Unless you know the road you’ve come down, you cannot know where you are going.’ As Barbados continues on its path as a young republic, it’s a reminder that the past is always present in the future. The sign stands at the opening to the museum’s exhibit on Africa, where most of the island’s population have their heritage but which is half way across the world. As the museum reminds us, over a period of 500 years many Caribbean societies ‘were created by the forces of capitalism’ and these forces of capitalism had empire at their heart. As an internationalist magazine, with a focus on the Global South, how Empire shaped our world is an essential part of any story we tell. So, as voted for by our readers, it’s a topic we’ve been tackling head on for the past year. This Big Story rounds off our Decolonize How? series, which has been using the methods of ‘solutions journalism’ to do just that. Keep an eye on our website for more stories until the end of September, plus ways in which you can join the discussion: online and in person. Catch up on the rest of the series at: newint.org/special/decolonize-how This edition also includes two new sections: an extended commentary slot, in which Nanjala Nyambola takes on racist border policies, and a longer book review. Let us know what you think, and what we could tackle in these pieces in the future.

Palestine

Sat, 1 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

From occupation to uprising

A friend from Gaza – now living in Europe after three attempts to leave the Strip – tells me how he only entered the territory of Israel, where his ancestral home lies, once in his life. He was a child, on a bus going to visit his uncle in indefinite political incarceration in an Israeli prison. All the windows of the vehicle were blacked out so that its Palestinian passengers could see nothing of their journey; just the prison facility at their destination, and the open-air prison of Gaza they had travelled from. The anecdote seems to capture all the mechanisms of erasure, displacement, coercion and collective punishment that have come to characterize the system of apartheid now enacted against Palestinians by Israel. But Palestine has many other faces. Palestinian culture endured for centuries before Israel’s foundation and under occupation, and has evolved in diverse forms of daily life, resistance and political consciousness. Alongside the violent tools of Israeli domination, it is these myriad Palestinian experiences that this issue aims to reflect. Through voices from Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and the Palestinian diaspora, we consider how land, culture, geopolitics and the rising tide of Israeli extremism are shaping Palestinian lives and their continued struggle for justice. Also in this edition, Richard Matoušek writes on how housing activists in São Paulo are taking back empty buildings, Amy Hall reports from Kenya on a landmark reparations case for Indigenous people and Subi Shah reflects with much-loved author Michael Rosen.

Loneliness

Mon, 1 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The crisis of loneliness - craving connection

Joyce Carol Vincent. A woman whose name I’ll never forget. In 2006, the body of Joyce – a vivacious, young, talented aspiring singer from West London – was discovered in her flat three years after her death. The TV and heating were still running, Christmas presents laid unwrapped from 2003. Joyce’s story left me with lingering questions. How – as a society – have we become so atomized that Joyce’s death could go unnoticed for so long? What do we need to stop this from happening? Can we be honest about the difficulties of community-building, while still welcoming it in to our lives? This edition of New Internationalist explores loneliness and social isolation – phenomena that go well beyond anomalous tragic cases, taking in the disappearance of public space and how algorithms are leading us further down consumerist, chauvinist rabbit-holes, and away from intimate human connection. But there is also hope. As labour reporter Eve Livingston argues, loneliness can also be a catalyst for thinking through how we might once again reach each other. From writings about cinema’s social impact to coaxing men out of patriarchal isolation, we hear about the myriad ways people are are restoring social connections. Hana Pera Aoake reports on how New Zealand/Aotearoa has become a ‘world-leader’ in returning Indigenous ancestors home and Lorraine Mallinder charts how rap has become the language of protest in Iran.

A world to win

Wed, 1 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Futures of our making

At the heart of most struggles for justice is the desire for a better world – immediately, and for future generations. That second part is the most challenging. As prison abolitionists Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes have written, we often need a ‘jailbreak of the imagination’ to be able to see our transformation and escape from the ‘false sense of inevitability’ that can stop us achieving it. As New Internationalist turns 50, we’ve set our sights on 2073 – what kind of world do we hope to see when we hit our centenary? And what are the pathways to get there? This edition offers some glimpses of that future, with one foot firmly in the present. We’ve also been mining the archive for some of New Internationalist’s best bits, of which we will bring you a selection throughout the rest of 2023. This time it’s a prescient piece from the Global Warming magazine, published in 1990 – a time when much of the conversation around climate change was focused on whether it was real, and whether humans had anything to do with it. Also in this edition, Tarushi Aswani on the Indian Right’s attempt to erase the country’s Islamic history, and Rahila Gupta explores Jineolojî – the precepts of gender equality that inform the Kurdish women’s freedom struggle. We’ll leave you with the much-quoted, but ever-hopeful words of writer Arundhati Roy: ‘Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.’

The cost of living crisis

Sun, 1 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Sharing the treasure

A recent headline about an Italian design studio’s plans for a gigantic superyacht caught my eye. Shaped like a turtle and the size of a small city, it would be the largest floating structure ever built, with a cool $8 billion price tag. Maybe more pipedream than billionaire bunker, but there is a crowd-funder running where you can buy non-fungible tokens (NFTs) giving you virtual ‘unreal estate’ aboard (please don’t!). Perhaps that is a logical outgrowth of a world where markets have gone mad. Back in reality, the cost of living crisis is biting almost everywhere. But did that stop the Monaco Yacht Show, the annual conclave of luxury tubs? Of course not. Carpe diem is the mood of the moment among prospective floaters (what else to call owners of superyachts?), an organizer told CNN. And there was me thinking seizing the day meant a beer too many on a Friday night, or not putting off tackling that pile of dirty dishes. In this edition we dive into the damage wage-busting inflation is doing around the world, fish out its causes and, since the rich aren’t throwing us a life rope, swim in search of our own solutions. The jarring co-existence of extreme riches and severe deprivation is not incidental but central to this unfolding tragedy. So – to stretch the analogy a bit further – let’s climb the rigging together, scan the horizons and set sail for more equal shores. Elsewhere, we have Sophie Neiman reporting on the trial of a former child soldier in the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army, Husna Ara imagining a decolonized mental health service and Danny Chivers on some of 2022’s climate wins.

Land rights

Tue, 1 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Turn the page

In his first speech to Britain and the Commonwealth as the new monarch, King Charles III thanked his mother for her devotion to the ‘family of nations’. But what makes a family? One of the key things that unites the 53 countries that make up the Commonwealth of Nations is that nearly all of them had their land colonized by Britain. I thought of the lyrics to ‘Birthright’, the Sarathy Korwar track I have been listening to on repeat while putting together this magazine:

Mi casa es su casa, says the man who stole your land.

When Queen Elizabeth II took the throne, more than a quarter of the world’s population was under British imperial rule. She heard the news of her father’s death while she was in Kenya in 1952. Shortly afterwards her government violently quashed the Mau Mau uprising in the country. Decolonization movements across the world were met with similar violence from the British security forces, who often also tried to cover up the evidence. Resistance to colonialism is as old as the process itself, and people around the world continue to agitate and organize for loosening its grip. As we delve into the issue of land rights in this edition, we also launch a new series called ‘Decolonize how?’. Over the next year we will explore what people living with the legacies and current realities of colonialism are doing to challenge power. Elsewhere, Busani Bafana reports on the Zimbabwean government’s crackdown on press freedom, and Severia Bel explores how asylum-seekers in Lithuania are caught in a political crossfire.

Railways

Thu, 1 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

All aboard

At Ivangorod on Russia’s border with Estonia, several years ago, I was unceremoniously booted off a train and frogmarched down the tracks. It was my own fault – my visa had expired during the journey from Moscow. My nerves only relaxed when a Russian border guard’s phone began to ring, and his ringtone was the Benny Hill Show theme. At a road border crossing, passing from one jurisdiction to the next is marked by a definitive line on the ground. But trains instead become liminal spaces – in neither one country nor the other. Conductors, border guards and sniffer dogs take part in an erratic dance through the carriages – collecting and returning passports, checking bags and cross-examining passengers. It doesn’t make borders any less hostile or racist, but it shows – like the separate language and laws of national networks – that the railways can be a world unto themselves. And when properly managed, this can mean it’s easier to get things done on the railways than in other parts of an economy. That should be a huge opportunity for reducing climate emissions by getting passengers off the roads and out of the skies. But unless we re-purpose rail networks to serve the interests of people – and not those of the empires and corporations which built them and run them to this day – we can’t succeed. This magazine aims to show how we can make a start on this task. Elsewhere in this issue, you’ll find Polyp’s graphic re-telling of the life of Thomas Paine, and Samia Qaiyum on skateboarding as resistance in Palestine.

Rivers of life

Fri, 1 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

One river, many stories

A river brims with tales. Take our cover star, barefoot and beaming, as she rows her boat on the Mekong in Vietnam’s delta region. Is her life still in sync with the river or is she now among the masses of people leaving the area? The delta marks the end of the Mekong’s journey to the sea, and there is a worrying new normal here, with flow levels reaching all-time lows. Eleven dams in China, at the top of the river, have all but eliminated the wet season flood pulse – and there’s the impact of climate change as well. Rice yields have plummeted, as have fish catches. There is saltwater intrusion as the land dries up. Things are increasingly difficult. More hydropower dams are being planned upstream in China, Laos and Cambodia. But what of the pesky matter of life within the river? Just one location in Cambodia is estimated to spawn 200 billion baby fish a year. Worth meddling with all that? Not according to this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize winner, retired schoolteacher Niwat Roykaew, who organized a tireless campaign against plans to blast a 400-kilometre stretch in Thailand, just to deepen the Mekong for ships to come from China. With the support of multitudes of villagers, he got the Thai government to see sense. Today, almost every river needs such champions and our Big Story hears from a few of them. We also report on the renewed arms race in Europe in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, how Haiti has driven out cholera, and the protest value of underwear.

How we stop big oil

Sun, 1 May 2022 00:34:00 +0000

Something’s got to give

A massive ice shelf on the edge of Antarctica is starting to crack. Fissures began appearing in the ice holding back the Thwaites glacier – a sheet the size of Florida which could raise sea levels around the world by more than half a metre, should it slip into the Southern Ocean. Geophysicists estimated this collapse could come within five years – a warning surely made sharper by the news that ‘heatwaves’ this year have seen both poles more than 30°C higher than normal. It’s just one illustration of the urgency to act on climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, at current rates of emissions we have only nine years before there is no longer a good chance to keep the world under 1.5°C degrees of warming. Something’s got to give but the oil and gas industry, the driving force behind the climate crisis, has a different idea of what is practical. For this Big Story we dive into how these corporations have kept on turning a profit even as the evidence of hydrocarbons’ destructiveness piles up – like the mess the companies leave behind. We look for ways out of that mess, envisaging a better world. Also in this edition, we report from Tajikistan where there’s a chill wind of change afoot as mighty powers jostle to exert influence. And more strong-arm tactics are exposed in Tina Burrett’s piece on how lawsuits are being used by the uber-rich to silence critical journalists.

Abolition

Tue, 1 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Reimagining justice

Who keeps us safe? I was doomscrolling through social media when an ad caught my eye. ‘The LGBTQ+ community aren’t just part of our community, they’re part of us,’ said the British Home Office tweet. The short police recruitment video featured an officer in Cardiff saying how much he enjoyed representing the force at the Welsh capital’s Pride event. ‘Be the difference,’ it proclaimed. I’m happy in my current role but this bit of ‘copaganda’ got me thinking. More LGBTQI+ officers, awareness training and rainbow squad cars hadn’t made a difference to Sam (not their real name), a Black, trans, disabled person who spent months on remand in prison. They were arrested while undergoing a mental health crisis in a hospital emergency room. A more ‘welcoming’ police force in South Wales hadn’t made a difference to Mohamud Mohamed Hassan and Mouayed Bashir who died within weeks of each other after contact with the police in early 2021. Mouayed, who was experiencing an acute mental episode, was restrained with ‘brutal force’ at his Newport home after his parents called 999 for help. They expected an ambulance but got the police. This Big Story explores the call for abolition of prisons, police and the apparatus that support them. Starting from a place that does not see harm, violence and abuse as inevitable, abolition is a hopeful vision focused on being preventative and not reactive. Things could have been so different for Sam, Mohamud and Mouayed. Elsewhere, Roxana Olivera gets embroiled in a legal tussle to try and get an abusive image of a child removed from the internet and Kieron Monks reports on Nigeria’s long quest to bring back the looted Benin bronzes.

Romani lives matter

Sat, 1 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Te Aven Bachtale

I, like so many others, have Zoom fatigue. But every Tuesday evening since September, I’ve been genuinely excited to log on to a beginners’ class in Romanes. Te aven bachtale conveys a profoundly respectful ‘good day’. I’ve also just learned the colours of the rainbow. The lesson offered an extraordinary glimpse into how Romanes has interacted with the tongues around it. Take rupano, the word for silver. It has the same root as rupee, the currency (and originally, silver coin) of India, from where the ancestors of Europe’s Roma departed in the 10th century. Or loli pabai, meaning ‘red apple’, which is where the word ‘lollipop’ comes from. Despite our centuries of shared history, Europe continues to marginalize and oppress its Romani citizens with very little pushback. This edition explores why, taking as its starting point the death of a Romani man in police custody in the Czech Republic earlier this year. But you will also read compelling stories of resilience – and resistance. In Glasgow, where I live, for example, the organization Roma Lav is building cross-community solidarity. My Romanes class is just one small part of that. So, be incensed, be enraged – but be inspired too. Elsewhere in this edition, Kasturi Chakraborty shines a spotlight on the brutal treatment of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, while author Isabel Allende speaks of the power of fiction to teach us about our history.

Jea Deulesa (good bye, or literally, go with God).

The future of work

Mon, 1 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Value-added work

Like it or not, we place a value on the work we do. Depending on our perception, this might be the notion of finding fulfilment through the work one does (extolled alike by managers and those of a more creative bent), the search for work that ‘makes a difference’, or the more mundane but essential: working for a wage. Ironically, some of the most important work is, if not entirely unrecognized, grossly undervalued. This is the care work still done mainly by women, without which society would cease to function and the wheels of business would hit the buffers. But it’s monetized work that is seen as sink or swim. Not being able to access it is a source of great desperation, especially when social provision is weak or non-existent. This edition’s Big Story inspects how workers the world over are being squeezed. There is no shortage of ideas that envisage a future where we reorganize society in such a way that work becomes at most a part-time adjunct in a world of shared plenty. We look at a some of those. But in the short-term, the challenges are age-old – struggles for greater autonomy, dignity and fairness. In other sections of the magazine, we meet Ghana’s 13-year-old DJ Switch, an incredible campaigner for children’s rights. And in Temperature Check we offer some handy suggestions for what you can do to get the right messages to world leaders attending the COP26 climate talks.

Food justice: who gets to eat?

Wed, 1 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

How not to feed the world

Imagine you live by the Atlantic Ocean, close enough to hear the waves breaking. In those waters swim small fish. They are a superfood: rich in the nutrients needed by your bodies – and those of your children. But these fish are destined for the diets of others. They will be turned into food for farmed fish – like salmon – and livestock, which will in turn nourish wealthy people inland or abroad, perhaps even their pets. This stark reality is experienced by coastal communities across the Global South. It was mapped and brought to the world’s attention by environmental social scientist Christina Hicks, who is a contributing editor for this edition. Her research sparked the Food Justice files, a year-long New Internationalist focus on the stories of people in sub-Saharan Africa who too often go unheard: from the forest gardeners of Ethiopia to herders in drought-stricken Somaliland. To close the project, this Big Story takes us to the beaches of Senegal where we hear from women fish workers whose jobs are threatened by a deeply inequitable exchange. As social movements build a critical grassroots response to a UN food summit this September, this magazine reflects back on who gets to eat, why – and the urgent actions needed to rebalance food systems in the interests of the hungry. You can find the whole Food Justice files series online at newint.org/special/food-justice-files Elsewhere in this edition, Leonardo Sakamoto brings us an exclusive interview with Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Wayne Ellwood explores whether, with the Castros gone, Cuba is turning a new page.

Courage and terror in Myanmar

Thu, 1 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Rise up for Myanmar

There’s no going back. That unflinching commitment to months, if not years, of resistance has poured out of every person I’ve spoken to from Myanmar since the coup of 1 February 2021. Friends and colleagues lost their liberty overnight. Only six years ago we were celebrating hopes for a new future after the first free elections in decades. The people of Myanmar know dictatorship. They’ve seen more starkly than most how the few profit from the many. How their schools and hospitals crumbled as the generals and their cronies hoarded wealth. The muzzling of debate. To stop a return to those days they’ve made extraordinary sacrifices. Striking workers are giving up their wages. Neighbourhoods are pooling funds to build clinics. Thousands are in hiding as activism and newsrooms are forced underground. More than 800 civilians have lost their lives to junta forces. This Big Story set out to record the terror but also the tremendous courage. In the following pages you’ll hear from people leading the resistance in Myanmar. They spoke from safe houses and jungles in the hours internet was freed from state-imposed blackouts. Some of our contributors have been anonymized for their safety. We also chart a heartening shift, as new solidarities emerge between the Buddhist majority and persecuted minorities, including the Rohingya. There is hope in the push for a new federal democracy. The world must decisively stand with Myanmar’s people. Thank you so much to everyone who invested in our community share offer and helped to save our stories!

Vaccine equality

Sat, 1 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It’s the only Way

A feat of global collaboration. As Covid-19 vaccines emerged, the future seemed to open up again. But amid the celebration lay a parallel story of inequality and corporate power. Here on ‘Plague Island’, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has revelled in the success of the vaccine rollout. In March he apparently thanked ‘greed’ and ‘capitalism’ for this, during a call with Conservative MPs. Yet the hoarding of vaccines – as demonstrated by the UK and other wealthy nations – can only have a negative impact on the world’s ability to stop the spread of the virus. This is not good news for people in Britain either. This may be an island, but we’re not a different planet. If there were ever a time to be an internationalist, it’s now. It’s an urgent lesson to learn as the world faces multiple crises – from climate change and biodiversity collapse to a spike in hunger. It’s been New Internationalist’s message for nearly half a century and our in-depth, solutions-focused stories feel more important than ever. In this edition, we are launching a new community share offer – a bid to stay in the fight for the next 50 years and fund our Covid rescue plan. Get the back story in our departing co-editor Chris Brazier’s account of his 37-year career – from revolutionary Nicaragua to apartheid South Africa. It’s as true now as it was in the early 1970s when we were founded: it’s internationalism or bust.

Democracy on the edge

Mon, 1 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Democracy’s edge

Sometimes, no, often, it’s the thing that’s staring you in the face that you do not see; the dramatic scene being played out far away is what defines the subject – in this case, democracy. As I finish this magazine, democracy’s recent big story has been the tumult around the US elections. I was trying to think more broadly, and literally, about the meaning of democracy – power ‘held’ (kratos, in Greek) by the ‘people’ (demos) – and how we might practise it in our daily lives. Yet, here it is. Staring me in the face. The place where I have spent most of my working life. At the time I joined New Internationalist it was a flat-structure workers’ co-operative. That structure remains but the co-op is now owned by its readers (over 3,600 of them) and its workers. We have no boss. There’s no ‘editor-in-chief’, no ‘managing director’ or any of that nonsense. It’s collective self-rule and decision-making. No-one tells us what to write and there’s no conscious or unconscious pressure to conform to a proprietor’s political or business interests. But, like so many sectors, independent media has been hit hard by Covid-19 and we are no exception. That’s why, in a couple of months’ time, we will be asking our supporters to join us in a plan to strengthen and protect New Internationalist in the years to come.

Find out more from Laura.

The biodiversity emergency

Fri, 1 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Nature’s restoration

Probably by mistake, a tiny bird flies up to my balcony in the busy, restless city and looks me in the eye. Is it sheer sentimentality that floods me with joy? Why does it feel like a visitation? I haven’t taken the train anywhere in months due to the Covid-19 pandemic and I find myself filled with irrational longings for the inquisitive, iridescently speckled starlings that used to dart about my feet at the station, threading the cavernous space with their silvery song. Many of us who live in urban areas feel a periodic yearning, an ache sometimes, for the wild. Even a cultivated green space becomes a refuge from daily stresses. And the scientific knowledge is piling up about all the ways simply being in nature helps our mental health, our immune systems, our wellbeing. Nature restores, but is itself in need of restoration. Due to our constant commodification of the natural world we are erasing huge chunks of its awe-inspiring variety and damaging ourselves in the process. This edition’s Big Story amplifies some of the concerns of those who live closest to nature, while attempting to get to grips with the complex challenges involved if we want to stop biodiversity’s catastrophic decline. In the words of author Lucy Jones, we can no longer view nature as ‘a luxury, an extra, a garnish’. Our continuing Food Justice series dovetails into the biodiversity theme with articles on the virulent consequences of Big Agriculture and forest farming in Ethiopia, a country in the news for reasons of conflict. Elsewhere we report on relatives’ agonizing search for Syria’s missing and what Finland has done to make its citizens so content.

A caring economy

Sun, 1 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Home truths

An innocent question: ‘How are you feeling about the care magazine?’ my housemate asked me over coffee. ‘Angry’ was my answer. In fact, I’ve spent a large part of the Covid-19 pandemic feeling this way, with the issue of care a major focal point of my rage. I’m vexed about the glaring inequality in who does care work and domestic labour – in the ‘wider world’ and in my personal life. I’m enraged about the lack of recognition and the disrespect often displayed for the (mostly) women and/or racialized people doing this work and how they, along with people who may need their care, are treated as expendable. But there is hope; 2020 has demonstrated our interdependence and plenty of people have shown up to make sure people are cared for – friend or stranger. There has also been an outpouring of public appreciation. Over the peak of the pandemic here in Britain, Thursday evening’s ‘clap for carers’ was a highlight for my nurse housemate and her three year old, who would bang on everyone’s bedroom doors to remind us. Although many key workers loved it, for others the applause was hollow without concrete changes to their pay and working conditions. This issue’s Big Story explores care in its widest sense and its, often conveniently ignored, relationship with the wider economy. In the magazine we hear from people who are navigating this in a system which too often treats them with contempt. Elsewhere in this edition, Stephanie Boyd reports from the Peruvian Amazon on how indigenous people, especially hard hit by the pandemic, are fighting for survival, Rahila Gupta makes the case for ‘political blackness’ and our food justice series questions the rise of food banks as a solution to world hunger.

Covid-19 lessons from the pandemic

Tue, 1 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Out of the turmoil

When, back in March, we first discussed doing this issue on ‘the world after Covid-19’, there was some concern that the pandemic might have passed by the time we published. If only! Today, as some countries see the infection rate rising in their populations for the first time, others are bracing themselves for a renewed surge. Or not. Social-media platforms like Facebook and Twitter remain abuzz with conspiracy theories – born in the US but gaining traction from Peru to Pakistan – that this is all an elaborate hoax. Misinformation could rarely be so lethal, which makes the work of serious news media more essential than ever. Hope is also vital. In this edition’s Big Story we not only analyse what we have learned from the pandemic, but also share positive ideas of how to create a better, fairer future out of this world in turmoil. Elsewhere in the issue, we interview Flavia Mutamutega, Rwanda’s only agony aunt for teenage girls. Meanwhile, our cartoon historian ILYA turns his attention to a history that is often ignored, that of indigenous people, in his poignant retelling of the story of the Inuit Minik Wallace’s fight to have the bones of his father returned from a showcase in a New York museum. We are excited to announce that this edition also sees the launch of Food Justice, our year-long reporting series – funded by the European Journalism Centre – which will explore how to up-end our food systems in favour of the least-nourished people worldwide. Cover photo: Mikkel Ostergaard/Panos

The Kurds - betrayed again

Wed, 1 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Kurds and Covid-19

Usually there’s no discussion about it. The Big Story, the main theme of the magazine, is what goes on the cover. But, in the midst of the current global pandemic, it seemed strange not to give greater prominence to our coverage of Covid-19. Should that not be the cover story? The special report on the plight of the Kurds and their ongoing quest for freedom could still feature large inside the magazine. But, as one colleague pointed out, isn’t that what always happens to the Kurds? Always bumped down the agenda, or off it entirely, by some other, greater concern? It’s true too of many other issues today. So, while in this edition we are certainly giving the global pandemic special attention, including a thoughtful Long Read by Richard Swift and reports from Africa, Latin America and Asia, we are also featuring stories that are not being heard over the din of the crisis. It’s a delicate balance – and we may not have got it right, but trust that you will let us know if so. And, of course, the Kurds too are profoundly affected by the reality and politics of coronavirus, but without the comparative privileges and safety nets of nation-state structure and status. Elsewhere in this edition, we interview South Sudanese artist James Aguer Garang about how he has turned his own personal trauma of war into art therapy classes across East Africa and chart the sad fall from grace of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

The fight for clean air

Fri, 1 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A world of change

As I’m sure is the case for everyone reading this, a lot has changed at New Internationalist over a very short span of time. We are all now working at home, some of us with young children also at home full time or trying to support those around us on the frontline of the Covid-19 pandemic. Like so many businesses, the pandemic has hit New Internationalist hard financially. We are giving it all we’ve got to come out the other side of this and keep delivering socially responsible journalism. In February we started a new project as part of the Nesta Future News Fund. Working with On Our Radar, who major on surfacing unheard stories, we held two community journalism workshops with clean air campaigners in Newcastle. The second had to be held remotely and tips on doing interviews with people on the street became tips for doing community journalism in a time of social distancing. The participants have been collecting stories on experiences of air pollution in their community, some of which can be read in ‘I don’t want to live like this’. Nearly every article in this magazine was written before Covid-19 became a global pandemic. As one global health emergency unfolded, I had become obsessed with another one – air pollution. The more I read, the more the threat loomed large. How much impact has living near main roads had on my health? How much did it have to do with my father’s stroke or his siblings’ dementia? Elsewhere in the magazine, Jelena Prtorić writes about the troubling permissiveness towards the hard right in Croatia, Maaza Mengiste talks to Subi Shah about the women who fought Mussolini in Ethiopia and Neil Vallelly analyses why the state keeps passing the buck to the individual.

How we make poverty

Sun, 1 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Levelling up

Poverty is a downer, no two ways about it. It refuses to be made history, though, mercy knows, it should have been consigned to it long ago. And it resists jollying up – narratives of the ‘we were poor, but we were happy’ type notwithstanding. Sure, one can talk about ‘breaks’. How the woman running ragged doing four different jobs on the periphery of an Indonesian city got hers via a small loan and now runs her own successful business doing x. In reality, such stories of ‘making it’ are not commonplace (we have an example in our report from Brazil). It defies logic that inside every hardworking poor person is an entrepreneur waiting to emerge. Or that the deprived communities in which they operate have the cash to support a streetful of small shopkeepers. The hillside the marginalized face is steep and it’s a heavy stone they must push up it. Far more useful and effective would be creating a more level surface where efforts and fruits could be better shared. This requires a system change against the undervaluing of everything that poor people do only to expand the fortunes of the already wealthy – a form of thievery that this edition lays bare. This argument for change is not new, but it acquires urgency because today there is no material reason whatsoever why poverty should still exist and why inequality should be spiralling out of control. Elsewhere, we share stories of people fighting the power: doughty indigenous human-rights defender Virginia Pinares from Peru, Canadian youth taking a stand for the planet, and Sarawak islanders in Malaysia holding out for sustainable renewable power over destructive mega-dams.

Borders - Freedom to move, for everyone

Wed, 1 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Border reality check

The Trump administration first started to tear children from their parents at the Mexican border in April 2018. As photographs spread of distraught toddlers in wire-mesh cages, outraged activists and the general public mounted protests and legal challenges. After three months, President Trump seemed to admit defeat: the child separation policy was officially reversed. But Jacinta Gonzalez had noticed a problem. ‘If you say “families belong together”, they lock up entire families,’ the immigrant-rights advocate wrote on the website Truth Out. ‘Want to stop child separation? Stop sending their parents to prison.’ Gonzalez was right – it proved to be a hollow victory. The executive order that called a halt to separation sought to imprison families together instead. And since August 2019, a new law allows the US to detain migrant children indefinitely. Meanwhile, Central American children have started to cross the border alone. The gratuitous cruelty of family separation is a natural consequence of a shameful, worldwide phenomenon: treating people who move – without permission – as less human than everybody else. We urgently have to start questioning the fundamentals. So, in this edition, we take a deeper look at borders, how they are policed and how they are crossed, regardless. We ask, how did we get here? And think about what it would mean to abolish this system entirely and build something new. Elsewhere in this issue, Wolfgang Sachs consigns the concept of development to history, while our Cartoon History celebrates the life of pioneering Sudanese political activist Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim.

China in charge

Fri, 1 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Fear of a red planet

It’s 1860 and the ‘century of humiliation’ is underway: China is forced to open up to the opium trade and Hong Kong has been handed over to London. British troops slaughter thousands and burn the emperor’s Old Summer Palace to the ground. Today it’s Britain that goes to Beijing cap in hand. A Chinese firm is putting almost £2 billion ($2.4 bn) into redeveloping London’s Royal Albert Dock, from where imperial ships once set off, and partly financing the UK’s largest infrastructure project, a nuclear power plant in Somerset. George Osborne, former chancellor, put it bluntly: ‘China is what it is. And we have to either be [there] or be nowhere.’ The average Briton is likely unaware of this historical reversal. The average Chinese person is very much aware. As a factory worker in Guangdong told the journalist Alec Ash, who collected vox-pops for this issue: ‘I hope [China] will become even stronger, so that in the future no-one will bully us, like your country did a hundred years ago.’ But what is China really planning for the 21st century? We have sought to answer this judiciously. There are more than enough ‘red scare’ stories in the Western press that treat this nation of over one billion people as a monolith. But nor should the prospect of a nationalistic superpower with a powerful betrayal narrative fill internationalists with much hope. Elsewhere, there is a moving cartoon history of the final days of Sri Lanka’s civil war and, in the Long Read, gay women from Equatorial Guinea vividly and unflinchingly tell Trifonia Melibea Obono their experiences of forced motherhood and ‘family values’.

Who owns the sea?

Sun, 1 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Sea fever

‘I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,’ we would belt out, in ragged unison, aged 10. ‘And all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by.’ Our teacher’s idea of imparting English literature was to get the class to learn by heart her favourite poems. This was one of our favourites too, judging by the decibel level at which we would deliver it. John Masefield’s lines speak to the pull of the sea, that elemental compulsion that makes the time it takes between spotting that distant stretch of blue and getting into it or riding its waves far too long. My great-grandfather most likely felt it – running away to sea not once but twice during his teens, according to family lore. He carried on charting his own course through life, becoming a vegetarian and, when forced to be on land, wearing only suits of green tweed. His fiery temper gave him a fearsome reputation, but I remember him as a salty dog with an aura of the sea’s freedom about him, good to four-year-olds and no trouble at all. The romance of the freedom of the seas is so potent that a question like ‘Who owns the sea?’ might seem absurd. But as this edition’s Big Story shows, it is of profound relevance in times of accelerated resource grabbing, militarization of the seas, plastics pollution and climate destruction. And so is the follow-on question: ‘How can we save the sea?’ Elsewhere in this issue, Roshan De Stone and David Suber investigate the scandal of domestic slavery in Lebanon, and poet Blake Morrison searches for what it is to be English.

The right to the city

Mon, 1 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

City limits

Once the cold of winter has retreated, weekends in Rotterdam, where I live, are no longer safe for those who value peace and quiet. The city hosts free festivals and sporting events in quick succession, drawing huge crowds of both inhabitants and visitors to rejoice and be one. The most ethnically diverse city of the Netherlands, with over 170 different nationalities represented, there’s a justifiable pride in how people get along here. Citizen collectives are making active use of what the city has to offer. And yet, there’s a counteractive force in play. In the centre, chichi boutiques selling goods bearing tiny tags with enormous prices are steadily elbowing out more modest establishments. Many parts of the suburban tundra have undergone gentrification against the wishes of those who live in them, many of whom got priced out. Three years ago, the dominant political party in City Hall declared their intention to replace 20,000 cheaper housing units for more expensive ones in order to better serve career-oriented Rotterdammers rather than those on low incomes. Money draws its lines on the city map after all, perhaps somewhat more subtly here than in many other places in the world. With over half of the world’s population already living in urban areas our Big Story asks whether the vision of an inclusive city for all is any closer to coming true? Our Long Read offers another reality check. Stumped by the pundits who keep claiming we’ve never had it better, Jason Hickel goes behind the lies, damned lies, and statistics to reveal what the ups and downs of global poverty rates are actually telling us.

How to avoid climate breakdown

Wed, 1 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Exit apocalypse

My nine-year-old son, Laurie, looked up at me from the sofa the other day. ‘I know!’ he said, apropos of nothing. ‘What if we found something to put into cars that didn’t make the world too hot?’ I’d been talking to him about climate change while working on this magazine; he tends to absorb things quietly and it’s only later you realize that he’s been working them through. I felt slightly embarrassed or ashamed – it’s hard to place the emotion exactly – as I answered, crushing his light-bulb moment: ‘Well, the thing is, we already know how to make cars run on clean energy. In fact there’s a way to do almost everything we do now using clean energy. We are, um, just not doing it.’ It’s like the good news and the bad news, all rolled into one. So many of the solutions that can limit climate breakdown are staring us right in the face, but we will need to mobilize like never before to put them into action. In this issue we don’t linger on apocalyptic predictions but instead look closely at how to wean the industrialized world off dirty energy and meet the people and movements fighting to make that happen – farmers, scientists, striking schoolchildren and others. Elsewhere in this edition we feature a photo-essay that explores the expectations and challenges for young South African people, 25 years after Mandela’s ‘rainbow nation’ came into being. And we speak to Kurdish-Iranian author Behrouz Boochani, who wrote an award-winning book using WhatsApp while detained in Manus Island detention centre.

Building a new internationalism

Fri, 1 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Something bigger

An HSBC advert recently caught my eye on the London Underground. ‘We are not an island,’ the billboard read. ‘We are a Colombian coffee-drinking, American movie-watching, Swedish flat-pack assembling, Korean tablet-tapping… wonderful little lump of land in the middle of the sea. We are part of something far, far bigger.’ I groaned. Naturally, this insipid pitch by a transnational bank, trying – in the Brexit era – to position itself as enlightened, failed to mention its own border-crossing record of laundering money for Mexican drug cartels and helping Swiss clients evade tax. But it still begs the question: has internationalism been so drained of meaning that it refers to nothing more than a diverse credit card history? In this Big Story, we return to a different way of relating to ‘something far, far bigger’ than the nation-state: Third World solidarity, a radical tradition that sought to upend the order of things. It was a time when newly independent nations tried to prise open the rich world’s grip on power, deploying tactics from armed struggle to multilateral diplomacy at the United Nations. We hold up this emancipatory model of internationalism in the light of today – when there is no longer such a neat divide between colonizer and colonized, rich world and poor world – to see what can be salvaged to build an internationalism fit for the 21st century. Elsewhere, the Cartoon History tells the story of the incorruptible Macli-ing Dulag, a Filipino villager who resisted a World Bank-funded dam project, and Margaret Busby introduces a lambent collection of writing by African women.

Trade in Turmoil

Tue, 1 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Trade in the era of Trump and Brexit

There was a time when trade was a slow-moving tanker of a topic – what we, at New Internationalist, would call a ‘solid development issue’. Not in these times of Brexit turmoil and a Trumpian trade war with China. As we go to press, there is little certainty about how events will pan out over the next couple of hours – let alone months. The themes, and language, being used in relation to these trade-related crises are extreme and indicative. ‘Betrayal’, ‘rape’, ‘theft’, ‘cliff-edge’, ‘crash-out’, ‘blood on the streets’, ‘economic decline’, ‘disaster’, ‘a great unravelling’, ‘war’... For this month’s Big Story, I delve into the thicket of global trade – interviewing and consulting experts and campaigners from around the world. My aim is not just to make sense of what’s going on, but also to dig into what’s missing from the blow-by-blow reporting in the media; to examine the underlying causes of the current crises; the important impacts of the free-trade system that just aren’t being discussed; and the implications for citizens in countries that aren’t powerful players on the world stage. And, in true New Internationalist fashion, this issue does not stop at reporting what is – but goes the extra mile to envisage how things could be with a 14-point plan on what a better, fairer, more sustainable trading system might look like. Elsewhere in this edition, our Cartoon History takes us to Haiti and the story of liberation leader Toussaint Louverture, and to India, where our columnist reports on how the #MeToo movement is frightening Indian men.

The dirt on waste

Thu, 1 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Deep disconnect

I once had the misfortune to meet someone who claimed that he found buying a stack of t-shirts from the uber-cheap retail giant Primark to wear for a couple of days each and then discard easier than going through the bother of actually washing his clothes. I don’t know if it was one of those things said just for effect, but there is a deep disconnect between the image of affordable abundance that fast fashion relies upon and the damage done. From the environmental ravages of growing cheap cotton to the batteries of workers in exploitative conditions, there is a chain of misery behind the bargain. The costs remain mainly in the Global South, the ‘benefits’ mainly in the wealthy countries. A recent newspaper report says 100 billion such garments are made every year. A chunk of this obscene surplus, after its short life with the purchaser, will not be reused but dumped or sent to be recycled in a place like Panipat in India. There it will be shredded and turned into the coarse $2 blankets that get handed out by aid agencies after disasters – which fall apart after a year. Now even this dismal recycling is threatened by cheap fleece blankets (essentially plastic) from China. All this is a world away from the shop front. Where does responsibility for this mountain of waste lie – with the unknowing (uncaring?) purchaser, the industrial producer or an entire culture lulled into believing this is the order of things? Elsewhere in this issue, we welcome back John Schumaker, who takes The Big Story’s focus on waste one logical step further in a chilling exploration of what consumer culture is doing to the human personality.

Making peace in a world at war

Sat, 1 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

World in pieces, world at peace

The city centre felt safe, once you got used to the soldiers on patrol. But as we drove out to a former stronghold of Boko Haram on the edge of Maiduguri – where I travelled for this month’s Big Story – the houses and tents gave out to arid scrubland and the feeling of safety drained away. The land was flat as a pancake, but for a split second I felt dizzy, like I was looking out over a precipice. That fleeting sensation of insecurity was just a hint of the constant danger facing millions living in conflict zones. The world must get better at ending wars – if we don’t, the World Bank warns, 60 per cent of the world’s poorest people will be living in violent, ‘fragile’ countries by 2030. In search of answers, we tune in to the people who are most impacted by Nigeria’s complex crisis – those at the grassroots whose voices are drowned out by the roar of guns. A focus towards peacemakers rather than warmongers reveals new stories from all over the world – of courage, survival and recovery – that contain the keys to unlock peace. New Internationalist has always sought out diverse voices – and now, in this redesigned relaunch issue, we are proud to introduce new columnists from different regions of the world. As a longer, bimonthly publication, we have more space for in-depth features. These include a personal take on meritocracy by New Internationalist founding editor Peter Adamson; the out-of-the-box thinking of ‘What if’ envisaging a world without borders; and a ‘cartoon history’ that retells the little-known story of Congo’s post-colonial hero, Patrice Lumumba. We feel the new form fits New Internationalist’s goals better; we hope you agree. And finally, do look out for our new shop catalogue, enclosed.

The next financial crisis

Sun, 1 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Exotic monstrosities

Ten years ago I took an entry-level economics class at school. It was September 2008. Lehman Brothers had just filed for bankruptcy. ‘It’s certainly an interesting time to be studying economics!’ the teacher said. It was – but you wouldn’t have known from the syllabus. There was nothing about the financial system. There were, however, plenty of elegant abstractions, showing the intersection of supply and demand in a timeless, spaceless universe. This blind spot for finance, I discovered researching this issue, extends to the economics profession generally. More worryingly, the complexity of the financial system eclipses even its practitioners. Fabrice Tourre, the only Wall Street trader convicted of anything in relation to the global financial crisis, sent off an email to his girlfriend in 2007 when he knew something was wrong: ‘[I’m] standing in the middle of all these complex, highly levered, exotic trades [I’ve] created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstruosities [sic]!!!’ Fortunately, there is a growing constituency of progressive, unorthodox economists who do understand these exotic monstrosities. And when I reached out to them to speculate about possible candidates for the next financial crisis, they were all too ready to contribute: the Eurozone, trade wars, shadow banking, central banks… At least next time we won’t be surprised when it happens. A positive prospect on the horizon is the redesigned and relaunched New Internationalist. From September 2018 we will become a bimonthly publication, giving us more space to go in-depth, with long-form features, more visual treatments and, as always, a rigorous sense of inquiry into the political, economic and social issues of our day and our world.

A better media is possible

Fri, 1 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Something good?

Not so long ago, reporters ‘becoming the story’ was taboo, journalists writing about the media, a navel gaze too far. Leave that to the academics. But, like it or not, today’s chaotic and unpredictable media landscape is a news story in its own right. And one that contains several key elements of drama – including existential threat. If you include social media platforms – now the most common means by which people access news – hardly a day goes by without a novel twist or dire warning, thanks to their activities. So, for this month’s Big Story we set aside the old taboos and tackle the topic head on, taking an emphatically solutions-oriented approach. Which can also be said of Divyanshu Ganatra, a clinically blind outdoors enthusiast, who is featured in the Making Waves section. He has started an adventure-sports, not-for-profit organization for those experiencing disability-related stigma in India. While this edition’s Country Profile takes us to Costa Rica, where we catch up with the unexpected election victory of President Carlos Alvarado Quesada, who beat a socially conservative, evangelical Christian opponent, tipped to win after whipping up popular sentiment against gay marriage. All of which reminds us that even in these most gloomy of times, you never quite know what might happen next. It might even be something good.

Public ownership rises again

Tue, 1 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The common interest

Imagine if the air that we breathe were privatized. Companies would allocate it for payment and profit, and, one would hope, throw in a bit of quality control. A completely crazy idea, of course, but it puts into perspective just how much of what we consider public goods or the commons has already been carved up. In many parts of the world, even water – the next of life’s essentials – is already in private hands. No-one grows or makes it, yet corporations are allowed to control it. For over four decades the mantra of ‘private good, public bad’ repeated by global financial institutions and proponents of small (read ‘corporate’) government has fed the fiction that the private sector is better, more efficient at almost anything. The notion barely registers that private profits made from public goods and services deplete the commons even further. Despite flop after expensive flop requiring public bailout and tales of corporate corruption that match anything levelled at state bureaucracies, the drive to privatize is still in full vroom. Except, now counter currents are also flowing. Often at the city and citizen level, there is an upsurge of public ownership, showing that it can be done and done better in the common interest. This edition’s Big Story celebrates this highly significant shift, while not glossing over the difficulties posed by the hostile climate in which it is occurring. In our other features, we travel to the island of Bougainville for a classic tale of the resource curse. After a history of strife related to mining, followed by a hard-fought victory for eco-rebels, the possible exploitation of the island’s fabulous mineral wealth is stirring up old tensions.

Humanitarianism under attack

Sun, 1 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Who cares?

While I was researching this magazine, the offices of the international NGO Save the Children were bombed in Afghanistan. This was bookended by two suicide attacks in Kabul, one using an ambulance. Aid organizations were running out of superlative terms to reject the horror. Harrowing. Unacceptable. Unjustifiable. The International Committee for the Red Cross tweeted in response ‘Do not attack civilians’ over and over until its 240 characters were used up. As designers were laying out this edition, the Syrian government intensified attacks on Eastern Ghouta, home to 400,000 trapped residents. UNICEF gave up trying to use words altogether. Instead, they released a blank press release – a first for a UN communications office. There have been times, working on this magazine, that I’ve felt similarly lost for words. But I feel now, somehow, more hopeful than when I started – despite being fully cognisant of the horrors. Maybe because every person I have spoken to in the aid world refuses to accept the idea that some lives are worth more than others. Maybe it’s their catching admiration for the people they support and work alongside and the innate capacity of humans to survive and rebuild. As I have gained a better understanding of the current threats to the humanitarian endeavour, I have been able to appreciate what has been achieved – and how much worse it could be if we did not keep alight the belief that human suffering, however far away, demands an international response. We’ve got a special focus on the Middle East this month in our book reviews, Worldbeater profile and other features, along with a splash of Brazil via our new Letter from the Cabalo Seco Afro-indigenous community.

Black Lives Matter

Thu, 1 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A rallying cry

I spent many years trying to ignore my blackness. A futile effort growing up in an almost all-white area of rural Britain. The differences were not just in how I looked but also in the experiences I had and would continue to have for the rest of my life. In a world where racism exists, we can’t ignore race. The US as a country has been forced to realize this through viral videos of the killing of black people, and the galvanizing power of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has become a global force. Black Lives Matter has become a rallying cry for a generation of black activists around the world, from the US to the UK, Australia to Brazil – as featured in this month’s Keynote. As they build links across borders, one of the most empowering things about these struggles is that they make their blackness a source of strength, building on a long history of black resistance. There are so many stories to tell – many more than would fit in this magazine. Elsewhere, we explore other forms of resistance – including the bravery of an indigenous lawyer in Mexico, fighting to protect her community from oil companies; and, after five years, we revisit Mozambique where landowners are continuing to resist being bought out by foreign firms.

What's left for the young?

Mon, 1 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Forever young...

A sobering realization: I have 11 months left of being young. Well, to be more precise, I have 11 months left until my 16-25 Young Person’s Railcard – a little orange voucher that entitles me to a third off ticket prices on Britain’s dysfunctional railways – expires for good. I recently renewed it for the last time with a sense of wistful dread; I’ll soon be cast out into the world of responsible adulthood. Or will I? Only a few weeks ago, the rightwing Conservative government, desperate to rally young people flocking to the Labour opposition, announced a pilot scheme: the millennial railcard. This would introduce the same fare discount for people up to the age of 30. Just like that, I felt my youth extend by another five years. The railcard is a telling development: you know the economy is in dire straits when even 30-year-olds can’t be expected to pay adult rates. It relates to an idea that lingered in my mind as I researched this edition’s Big Story: millennials are trapped in permanent adolescence, locked in a straitjacket of youth. Speaking to and reading about under-employed and resourceful young people, from graduates in the Democratic Republic of Congo to migrants in Naples, I saw the outlines of an exhausted generation who want nothing more than to grow up. The stereotype of millennials as work-shy and mollycoddled faded under scrutiny. As I hope this collection of stories demonstrates, they are a cohort who work ceaselessly: both to survive and, crucially, to create the conditions for a better future. As this is the first issue of another Brave New Year it also carries the Unreported Year, which focuses on stories that were sidelined by the dominant media in 2017, such as indigenous resistance to mining projects in Brazil and ‘artivists’ demanding peace in South Sudan. At the back is a Q&A that evokes another generation of young radicals, as New Internationalist’s founding editor, Peter Adamson, recalls how student campaigning in the early 1970s was the springboard for starting this magazine.

Clampdown! Criminalizing dissent

Fri, 1 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Resisting the squeeze on public space

It’s hard sometimes to get the balance right. At the New Internationalist we strive to tell the unvarnished truth which can be dauntingly negative. But we try to leaven it with positive news. When it comes to the subject of December’s Big Story on the authoritarian assault on democratic rights around the world, one is in danger of being swamped by negativity. To balance, we sought out an example of a fertile political space with a record of creative alternative-building. Catalonia seemed to fit the bill perfectly. Then all of a sudden the determined but usually gentle Catalans became ground zero in the assault on democratic rights with bleeding senior citizens being dragged out of polling booths by Spanish police. Whatever the ultimate results of the current independence struggle, Catalans have a proud record of building radical democratic alternatives especially in their economic lives. In this issue we make common, if informal, cause with the international NGO Civicus, which is leading the way in the fight to defend democratic space around the world. As the number of examples of state and corporate assault on the right to dissent mount it becomes crucial to build effective coalitions to defend our basic rights. This issue of the magazine is a contribution to the effort to do just that. Elsewhere in this edition, we catch up with Pablo Beltrán, the guerrilla leader from the ELN at a critical point in the peace talks with the Colombian government; and we take a look at Port Augusta, the town in Australia that gave up coal for solar.

Humans vs robots

Wed, 1 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We are not the robots

1978. I still wore flared trousers while everyone else had graduated to skinny bottoms. I had just entered my teens and my soundtrack was Kraftwerk rather than the racket of punk. ‘We are the robots, do do do doo,’ I’d sing, arms jerking in a robotic dance, while the music blared from the family stereo. Back then, robots were definitely ‘of the future’. And the wave of new tech that has since transformed our lives with giant leaps in automation, robotics, computing and communications technology was barely taking shape. Today many would describe automation as a tsunami. The pace of change is accelerating, affecting our jobs, privacy, notions of governance and, increasingly, promising a rigid technocratic future. At times, it seems like technology itself will dictate how we live, rather than playing a subordinate, enabling role. ‘We are the robots’ becomes a bitterly ironic refrain. At such times it is useful to remind ourselves that it is not the tech that is at fault but the motives of those who jostle to control it. And when it is corporate players setting the agenda, that means we have a serious fight on our hands. Other features in this edition highlight some of the struggles that make us human – whether that be patients bending the rules to access drugs, exploited migrant workers rising up in Lebanon, or a savvy Rastafarian lawyer leading the charge for cannabis freedom.

Brazil's soft coup

Sun, 1 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Rebranding dictatorship in Latin America

Not so long ago Brazil was a country with both a booming economy and an enviably progressive set of social policies. Today, almost exactly one year since Dilma Rousseff’s ‘impeachment’ (which many call a ‘coup’), Latin America’s most populous nation is in social, political and economic meltdown. Each day brings a new government initiative to pillage on behalf of the super-rich. Every news bulletin delivers another instalment in a corruption saga that is shaping up to be the world’s biggest. ‘We always knew there was corruption,’ one young Brazilian journalist told me, ‘but the scale of it, the number of politicians and the amount of money involved, has left us totally disgusted and demoralized.’ Nothing is predictable. ‘Anyone who can tell you what is going to happen is certainly ill-informed,’ another journalist, a veteran, quipped. At various points, while researching this month’s Big Story, it looked like Brazil’s corruption-mired Michel Temer could not possibly hold on to the top job. At the time of writing, he is still in place. Then there is the case of ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who could win next year’s presidential elections – or could be in prison. These are the big players. But, being New Internationalist, we also tune in to the people who are most impacted by Brazil’s extraordinary and complex crisis – the people at the grassroots, whose voices are increasingly drowned out by the elite roar of privilege. Elsewhere in this edition, Cynthia Enloe unpicks the persistence of patriarchy, which she says ‘is as hip as football millionaires and Silicon Valley start-ups’, while Arun Gandhi, Mahatma’s grandson, talks to Danielle Batist about his grandfather’s ideals, technology and Trump.

Bad Education

Fri, 1 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Being the best

Do you ever get that ‘I wish I’d been a teacher’ moment? I get it, sometimes – usually at my seven-year-old son’s ‘sharing assemblies’. Hundreds of children fill the school hall, which is decorated by supersized creations – paintings, mobiles, 3-D shapes. Parents squeeze in at the back, teachers line the sides, using emphatic sign language, fingers to lips, to keep this jiggling, fidgety mass quiet and seated. The headteacher welcomes everyone and cracks a few jokes. On stage, Year 2 pass around a microphone with excruciating slowness, making mostly inaudible statements about a recent school trip, to parents’ collective, ill-concealed delight. The older children are gracious. They are used to this. Everyone gets a turn here – it’s built in the fabric of the school. The assemblies are all delivered under the motto over the stage that reads ‘Live, love, learn and be happy’. This order is important and not coincidental. Headteacher Rachel Crouch – a lifelong subscriber to New Internationalist, from whom you will hear more shortly – has always made hers an inclusive, welcoming school with equity at its heart. But in this magazine we look at how the noble endeavour that is education – the kind that gives you the ‘wish I’d been a teacher moment’ – is under threat from powerful business interests, while introducing you to those working to take things in a different direction. Elsewhere in the September edition, we unpick why stories that claim to reveal a biological basis to differences between men and women are so persistently popular and learn about how private corporations in Peru are hiring out the police to do their dirty work.

The Equality Effect

Sat, 1 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Holding on to hope

Why should we hold out any hope for greater equality when the very richest people in the world are taking more and more? Pessimistic reactions are commonplace. But there is often great pessimism just at the point when a great injustice becomes apparent – when it becomes widely accepted that it is an injustice and people start to correct it. The evidence that inequality is harmful comes largely from the rich world. In the 1960s affluent countries were so similar that it was not possible to see the negative effects of greater inequality. But since then some have become much more unequal, providing us with outcomes that illustrate the harm so well. Today, for many people – especially in the most unequal of countries such as the US, Brazil, the UK and South Africa – the idea that your children and their children might live more equitable lives can seem like a pipedream. But evidence from the more equal affluent nations – as well as from a growing number of poorer countries where inequalities are now falling – shows what is possible. This evidence is fully laid out in my new book The Equality Effect. Elsewhere in the magazine Ana Palacios’ remarkable photo reportage from Togo and Benin brings to life efforts to ensure a safer future for trafficked children. And our Making Waves profile of Indian activist Prafulla Samantara demonstrates how not giving up can sometimes bear fruit.

Homelessness

Thu, 1 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The meaning of home

I still remember buying our first (and only) house decades ago; pinching ourselves that we’d made such an impossible leap into the financial void. It was a late autumn afternoon when I slid the key in the lock and tentatively opened the front door for the first time. The rooms were empty and echoing; shadows of past lives seemed to hang in the air. Then, gradually, that house became our home. We patched and painted the walls and filled the rooms with cast-off furniture. The closets and cupboards were crammed with stuff. And a mountain of memories piled up: babies, birthdays, dinner parties, Christmas mornings, first bicycle rides, play forts in the basement – life. For me, that’s the core meaning of ‘home’ – it’s bricks-and-mortar, yes. But it’s more than that. It is also shelter wrapped in memory. That sense of security and of belonging is lost when people are homeless. But how do we calculate our loss when we are unable or unwilling to meet the challenge of housing those who have fallen between the cracks? In the words of the old Phil Ochs’ song: ‘There but for fortune go you or I’. The idea of home also comes under attack when the physical environment is threatened – as in our feature on the depredations of the sand-miners in Cambodia. And from Nigeria we report on the enormous effort to make the country polio-free.

West Papua - Freedom in sight?

Mon, 1 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Five decades of defiance

If you’ve never heard of West Papua, you’re not alone. It continues to amaze me how this 50-year freedom struggle on the world’s second-largest island is still so little-known. But then, I might not have heard of it myself if it wasn’t for Benny Wenda. Wenda, an Indigenous leader from the Lani tribe, was arrested by the Indonesian government in 2002 for peacefully advocating for West Papuan independence. Imprisoned on spurious charges, tortured and likely to be killed, he escaped from prison and reached the UK, where he gained political asylum here in Oxford. An accomplished strategist and diplomat with a gentle, unassuming style, Wenda has spent years building international support for his people’s cause. From Oxford, he launched the Free West Papua campaign, which is the reason why I and many others have now heard of this struggle. New Internationalist got there before me. Back in 2002, edition 344 was titled ‘West Papua Rising’. Benny Wenda was carrying a copy when he was arrested, which he believes may have caused the Indonesian government to hold back in their treatment of him. This evidence that the world was watching ‘protected me. It may even have saved my life.’ West Papua today stands on a knife-edge between freedom and disaster. In this issue, we hear the voices of people living under occupation and fighting to be free. We learn about the unifying power of Melanesian music, expose the extractive companies that are profiting from Papuan repression, and hear Indigenous leaders lay out their visions of the new country they want to build. With enough international support, those visions could at last become reality.

Populism rises again

Sat, 1 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

It’s crunch time! Final chance to join us

On 1 March we pushed the button and held our breath. We had just launched our Community Share Offer inviting you, our readers and supporters, to buy into a better story and become co-owners of New Internationalist. Despite all the groundwork and detailed planning, we had shot off into uncharted territory. I can at least reveal that we are breathing again. Your response has been immediate, tremendous and humbling. Within the first few days we reached a quarter of our target. The amazing messages you sent us (see Letters) have made us feel that you know us better than we know ourselves. On behalf of the entire NI co-operative – Thank You and Welcome. I wish I could tell you we have landed safely – but as I write there is still a way to go. The share offer runs until 6 April at factsandheart.org. Our target of £500,000 is all-or-nothing – if we don’t reach it, we won’t draw down a penny. To invest, go online at factsandheart.org, or call us on +44 (0)1865 413304 (UK) or (613) 826 1319 (US and Canada). The coming weeks will be critical. In that time, for want of a working crystal ball, we will be doing our damnedest to reach all the like-minded people we possibly can to make this happen. Please help spread the word. Many of our new owners have been telling us how, in a landscape of media distortion, fake news and alternative facts, you appreciate what we have to offer. Coincidentally, this wonky landscape is the setting for this month’s Big Story, which examines the frightening rise of rightwing populism. As always, we also consider the possible remedies.

The exceptionally brave - 500th issue

Wed, 1 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Our 500th issue – time for courage and change

It won’t last, the young founders of New Internationalist were told 500 issues ago. ‘The main problem was that no-one really believed that a magazine on international development was viable,’ recalls Peter Adamson, one of those young founders. ‘We worked on a leap of faith that there was a large enough potential readership for a magazine like the NI.’ Well, 44 years on, New Internationalist is still here and tackling the themes of global justice that are as relevant today as they were in 1973. It hasn’t been a smooth ride. There were many periods when it looked as if New Internationalist wasn’t going to make it. At one such point two staff members re-mortgaged their home to keep the presses rolling. But then, at another, worldwide circulation hit more than 80,000. Apart from an unusually strong focus on marketing and financial planning, what kept the magazine alive was its mission – to report on ‘the people, the ideas, the action for global justice’. Plus, the fundamental belief that change is possible. If there is one quality that sparks change, it’s courage. It seems fitting, therefore, that for this 500th issue we are focusing on ‘the brave’: courageous individuals who are risking life and limb to make a difference. You may not have heard of them – we have purposely sought people who are not all over the mainstream. New Internationalist is not a mainstream organization. Its news values are not those of the herd-driven corporate media. We often tackle topics ignored by others. We are not owned by any proprietor, pulling the strings behind the scenes. We only accept advertising that passes certain ethical criteria. Our books are informed by the same editorial principles as the magazine. And our mailorder operation – the Ethical Shop – sources products that are ecological and fairly traded. Above all we owe our continued existence to you – our readers, supporters and contributors. Which is why we are reaching out to you now at this critical time. It’s no secret that many magazines and newspapers are in a state of crisis. The internet has transformed the media landscape. On the good side, we are read by many more people now, with our website getting around two million visits a year. But a business model based on readers buying printed magazines delivers little in an era of free content. In the past few months we have stabilized subscription numbers and seen a slight increase. But it’s not enough for survival. Which is why we are going public – but in a special way. We are launching a Community Share Offer that will enable people like you to invest in New Internationalist, to own it. It’s a new way of funding independent media which has been successfully trialled by some small publications and is catching on. The media is too important to be in the hands of a few press barons, which is the current state of play. A democracy needs media plurality and to make this possible it needs diverse ownership models too. You can now be part of the change, part of the media you want to see. Together we can stand up to the Rupert Murdochs of this world. With Donald Trump in the White House and rightwing nationalism spreading across the globe, we need ‘new internationalism’ now more than ever. Together we can be part of the chorus that says: Yes, a better world and a better media are possible. We’ll buy into that. New Internationalist’s share offer is now live! To invest, or find out more, go to factsandheart.org Or call us on +44(0)1865 413304 in the UK, or (613)826 1319 in North America/Canada.

African village

Sun, 1 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Sisters and brothers - Three decades of change in an African village

Compelled by a news agenda with the attention span of a flea, it is rare enough for journalists to return to stories they have previously covered. But to return to the same African village community every 10 years, as I have since 1985, is more unusual still – especially when there is no ‘news value’ to the story and when the individuals featured are ‘unknown’. I regard this long-term project in Burkina Faso as probably my most significant journalistic achievement in what is now quite a long career – and the New Internationalist’s readiness to publish it perhaps indicates what sets it apart as a magazine. In 17 pages there is only so much you can show, of course. And for that reason we have made much more use than usual of the extra resources and infinite space that our website affords us. We have created an internet hub that offers many more ‘Then and Now’ photographs than we have been able to include here on the printed page, more detail on particular stories as they developed, as well as a few short video clips. Please do take up our invitation to delve deeper by going to nin.tl/villagehub We’re also pleased to announce that our web documentary on life after Ebola was highly commended at the AIB broadcasting awards last year. You can still catch it here: nin.tl/backintouch Finally, with the March edition under way – our 500th – we are working hard behind the scenes on perhaps our most ambitious plan in 44 years of publishing at New Internationalist – a community share issue that will give you the opportunity to co-own us.

We’re on the brink of something huge!

In March we’re launching the biggest ever media community share offer and inviting you – our amazing readers – to become our co-owners. So, what’s a community share offer? It’s when a group of people who believe in something come together to make it happen. You buy community shares, but these are not the same as corporate shares – they’re not driven by profit. You invest in the world you want to live in and in return you become a co-owner of New Internationalist. This investment, underpinned by a robust business plan, will transform what we do and create an ethical and sustainable media business model for the 21st century. Want to find out more? Please register your interest online at: nin.tl/own-us

The coming war on China

Thu, 1 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I am delighted to be back in the New Internationalist as guest editor. This issue’s keynote and supporting articles are the result of two years’ work on a documentary film about the shift of the world’s economic power east, to China, and the US reaction to this challenge to its dominance. Losing its economic prowess, Washington has turned almost obsessively to its military might; and the prospect of nuclear war is no longer unthinkable. What I found in Asia, the Pacific and the US, was not only evidence of great risk and folly, but extraordinary resistance to a coming war among island people on the frontline: the Marshalls, Okinawa, Jeju: faraway places of which we may know little but which offer an inspiring example as they face the most powerful military machine. This NI is both a tribute to them and a warning, and will, I hope, raise an issue we all need to understand and act upon. Also in this issue is a special feature on Tax avoidance by Richard Swift and Josh Eisen. They write: One of the great privileges involved in writing for NI is the chance to vent over an issue that has been getting under one’s skin. The obsession from almost all political quarters that we should be ‘tightening our belts’ is an excellent example of this. It’s usually people who can barely afford said belts who are asked to do the tightening – refugees, the unemployed, those facing health challenges – in short, the vulnerable. So with a topic like tax avoidance we get to turn the tables and ask why the vaunted rich and powerful – who make much of government ‘waste’ yet live lives of frivolous expense – can’t at least pony up their fair share. Very satisfying.

Peace in Colombia? Hope and fears

Tue, 1 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Peace in Colombia?

This could so easily have been the best news story in a year when the world seems especially fraught with conflict and misery. The two main signatories of a historic agreement to end the longest war in the western hemisphere, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC rebel leader Rodrigo Londoño, were even being tipped for the Nobel Peace Prize (Santos has since won the award, for his efforts). Then came the result of the plebiscite on the peace accord – and the devastating realization that 50.2 per cent of Colombian voters had ticked the ‘NO’ box. Our Big Story for this month looks at what happens now to Colombia’s tortuous peace process – and finds reason for hope. We also pick over two subjects that are in and out of the news with some regularity. The first is the question of a universal basic income – usually seen as ‘a good thing’ on the Left. But is there a destructive agenda at work behind its championing by sections of the Right? And then there’s PrEP, the medication that could drastically cut HIV transmission. Should it be readily available and publicly funded? And for whom? There’s much more besides – a frontline report from Burma’s drug crisis, the views of Dutch physicians who perform euthanasia, and a fascinating exploration of why commercial competition almost always does a disservice to technical innovation. Lively thinking in sober prose.

World Fiction Special - Exquisite short stories

Sat, 1 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Stories that surprise

This issue of New Internationalist is rather different from the magazine you normally expect, in that its central section is devoted to four short stories. There is one from each of the anthologies of stories from around the world that we have published over the past year: Cooked Up, a lively compilation of fiction with food-related themes; Water, a new collection from Short Story Day Africa; The Daily Assortment of Astonishing Things and Other Stories, the latest anthology of the prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing; and One World Two, a follow-up to our successful book One World in which the writers’ geographical origins and cultural perspectives are even more diverse. The stories we have chosen are by: Krys Lee from South Korea; FT Kola from South Africa; the Cuban-American Ana Menéndez; and Efemia Chela, who hails from Zambia and Ghana. They can be seen as part of a new kind of ‘world writing’ that is emerging in the 21st century and are introduced by a conversation with Professor Elleke Boehmer of Oxford University – herself an acclaimed novelist – who explains how stories such as these are breaking down national and literary boundaries. Also in this issue, we welcome back popular contributor Maria Golia for a one-off letter from Cairo, and turn the spotlight on President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines.

Trade unions - rebuild, renew, resist

Thu, 1 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

A striking thought

It might just have been because I had my ear to the ground, but while I was researching this magazine, it seemed to me that the world had gone on strike. News cycles in May and June were reporting workers on strike in Britain (junior doctors, transport), France (transport), Italy (teachers), Belgium (transport), New York (communications), Greece (farmers, transport), Brazil (taxi drivers)... the list went on. I, like many others, no doubt, cheered them on while keeping my fingers crossed that I wouldn’t be inconvenienced by their actions. Then I realized that, though each group was protesting against a particular injustice, as a whole they represented our best bet against a corporate, globalized world gone mad. Workers don’t go on strike lightly – they know that they will sacrifice pay and may also lose public support, or their jobs, or, in some countries, their lives. They strike as a last resort – because governments and employers won’t listen and because, long-term, a lot is at stake if they don’t. So next time my travel plans are disrupted, or my routine doctor’s appointment cancelled, I will be trying to rise above the irritation and remember that trade unionists are fighting not just for themselves, but for us all. Also in this issue, Jo Eckersley and Ashwin Hemmathagama report from Sri Lanka on a country still struggling to unite seven years after the end of the civil war, and we meet Afghanistan’s inspirational ‘mother of education’, Sakena Yacoobi.

Smiley-faced monopolists

Fri, 1 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The digital titans unmasked

‘It’s a Faustian pact, but hell seems a long way away’ ‘Yes, but personally, I don’t mind,’ said a good friend and dedicated Facebook user. We had been talking about privacy on the internet and the ever-increasing power of the digital giants. My friend’s approach is undoubtedly shared by many of us, who make regular use of efficient and immensely successful services like Google, Facebook and Amazon – the main companies that feature in this month’s Big Story. We have traded our privacy for something we find useful and put on hold our support for ethical shopping in exchange for the ease of low (or no) price and almost-instant gratification. It’s a Faustian pact, alright... and hell may be nearer than we think. I have been surprised, while working on this month’s Big Story, just how far down the line we are; how deeply exploitative and anti-democratic is this new ‘surveillance capitalism’ under which we now live. This month’s contributors include such leading lights in the field as security expert Bruce Schneier, psychologist Robert Epstein and engineer and software activist Prabir Purkayastha. Maybe their arguments will prompt a bit of a rethink among those of my friend’s disposition... Elsewhere in this month’s issue we visit Toronto’s world-famous HotDocs festival, catch up with Máxima Acuña, the courageous Peruvian farmer who is standing up to US mining giant Newmont, and report on Malaysia’s slide towards authoritarianism.

Love in the time of Ebola

Wed, 1 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Ebola, as told by Sierra Leoneans

This edition is something of a journalistic experiment. It’s the product of a collaboration with a remarkable group of Sierra Leonean citizen reporters. Trained by media advocates On Our Radar, they give us a privileged insight into the aftershocks of Ebola in this corner of West Africa. The reporters took me on a journey from the coastal capital Freetown in the west to the early epicentre in the remote east; their stories reveal Ebola’s lasting impact on friendship, community and the ties that bind us to one another. More than half of this magazine’s Big Story is given over to reporters’ accounts, where they relate their experiences, and those of their friends and neighbours, in their own words (see Where my father lies and Everything is on my shoulders). This joint-effort storytelling is thanks to a partnership with On Our Radar, who use new technology to bring people from the margins on to the front page. The citizen reporter pieces you read in this magazine grew out of SMS messages on a hub that functions like a glass-sided story beehive – visit nin.tl/AfterEbolaHub to see how ideas germinated and took root to become features. This month, the magazine is actually only the half of it. We are also delighted to be publishing web documentary vignettes from our citizen reporters. Don’t miss it: newint.org/after-ebola This multiplatform Ebola project has been made possible by the European Journalism Centre (EJC) via its Innovation in Development Reporting Grant Programme. Elsewhere in the magazine, we reveal the inner workings of special tribunals that we will be seeing more of if TTP and TTIP trade deals are successful.

Technology justice

Sun, 1 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Shame and seduction

A few months ago, new friends of ours came to visit for dinner. So shocked were they by the squat television in our living room that they insisted we accept a flat-screen version they had going spare. Now, I’m usually of the ‘use it until it wears out’ school when it comes to my possessions and I was quite fond of the old box we had – its colours were still fine, it did its job. It was far from obsolete. But perhaps a combination of shame at being perceived as Stone Agers, the inability to say no to a gift and the determination of our friends, meant that a few days later they duly delivered an enormous flat-screen job. The perfectly serviceable old faithful was despatched to the municipal recycling point, where proper recycling is likely to be the last thing that happens to it. That box has been on my mind quite a bit, especially as this edition is all about technology – appropriate, inappropriate, the excesses of the West, the deprivation of much of the rest. Also this month, we have coverage of the efforts to declare Ecocide a punishable crime against peace. And a feature on the women fighters of Rojava in northern Syria: democrats and passionate idealists who show a different way is possible even in the direst circumstances.

Last stand - Saving the world's forests

Fri, 1 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Time to stop the plunder

One of my vivid boyhood memories is of scrambling amongst granite outcrops of the Canadian Shield in the shimmering heat of a July afternoon. I emerged from the forest into mottled sunshine and stretched out on flat, lichen-covered rocks, high above the black waters of a quiet lake. Stately white pines touched the sky. Underfoot was a cushion of sharply perfumed pine needles. The air was calm. That moment of perfection emerges still on those rare occasions when I am able to venture into the woods. But the truth is that like many of us in our modern world I’m a city guy. Most of the trees I encounter are in my local park. And that’s a problem. Because we’re losing our intimate relationship and understanding of forests as the world urbanizes. We don’t see the clear-cut hillsides, the splintered stumps and the plunder. They are outside our field of vision. Partly this stems from our mistaken sense that the natural wealth of the planet is boundless and inexhaustible. But this is folly. As this month’s Big Story argues, we can no longer afford to cut-and-run. The forces that are destroying the world’s last ancient forests need to be resisted, and the communities whose lives and culture are rooted there, defended. At stake is nothing less than the ability of the land, water and wildlife to provide for future generations. Elsewhere in this issue we welcome the return of New Zealand-based contributor, John F Schumaker, who explains the difference between depression and demoralization in our modern consumer culture.

Blood brothers - Saudi Arabia and the West

Tue, 1 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Saudi Arabia – making friends, making enemies

The Saudi regime won’t like this magazine. Nor will the Western governments who kowtow to it while exploiting its wealth and paranoia – which have been on full show recently. The Saudi justice ministry threatened to sue a Twitter user who compared the regime with ISIS after poet Ashraf Fayadh was sentenced to death ‘for spreading atheism and disrespecting the prophet’. This was met with an international #SueMeSaudi campaign. Humour is a good response to absurd displays of power. But in the kingdom itself, there is little place for it. There is no media independence; it is effectively controlled by the royal family. It’s illegal to speak to foreign journalists without authorization and what you say could easily land you in jail. Less easy to control is social media, which has a tremendous take-up in Saudi Arabia but is also not without risks. The regime has invested in systems to track users and in digital media itself. One Saudi prince has a five-per-cent – the second largest – share in Twitter, for example. What is guaranteed to please neither the Saudi ruling elite nor Western governments is our interview with Julian Assange. He talks about the latest batch of SaudiLeaks, the dissemination of which is punishable by 20 years in a Saudi jail. So do spread the word. Elsewhere, we uncover a Nepalese orphanage scam and our Worldbeater takes a pop at mild reformer turned pompous autocrat, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, president of Turkey.

Humanity adrift: why refugees deserve better

Fri, 1 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Death in peacetime

In October, I travelled to Lesvos, the frontline of Europe’s refugee crisis. I’ve been trying to work out ever since what it is that makes it so hard to forget. We are not used to seeing loss first-hand, the bereaved families and interrupted lives. But it isn’t just that. I’ve read numerous blogs by photographers and war correspondents who have seen death and destruction on a far wider scale yet can’t seem to get over Lesvos either. I think it’s because these deaths in Europe are so infinitely avoidable. It isn’t dangerous to get to Greece from Turkey. A big, safe ferry crosses into Lesvos three times a week. But our border regime stops refugees from catching it. So they sell up and risk their lives, and those of their children, in smugglers’ boats to Europe. By contrast, the dangers of the wars that refugees are fleeing are well known. Yet the deaths on our border are a result of the order that we impose on the world, not the chaos of conflict. Whatever logic has led us to this point, the result is madness, one that goes against every human instinct. This Big Story adds New Internationalist’s voice to the chorus of outrage at our governments’ handling of the refugee crisis, but also draws hope from the humanity of those citizens who are rebelling against the securitization of the border, by helping people over it. This month we also explore the camp at Calais, thanks to a cartoon supplement by Kate Evans, told with her characteristic warmth and humour. Elsewhere, we have an essay from Mark Boyle that takes a stand against ‘mindless nonviolence’ and a visual treat, ‘The Unreported Year’, shining a light on the stories the world forgot in 2015.

10 economic myths

Tue, 1 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Wrong prescription.

Does repeating a thing make it true? The followers of mainstream economic dogma must surely think ‘Yes’. After the financial crash of 2008 and the malaise ever since, they haven’t changed their tune much. Their prescriptions don’t work but the patients – you or me – are still being dosed with ‘freemarket’ medicine. It’s enough to make one go a funny shade of green. We’ve worked on this edition in the spirit of providing something of an antidote. The economic bottom line is inevitable, say the powers that be. Just the way things are. Well, we – and an ever-growing legion of dissenting economists and fed-up-to-the-back-teeth members of the general public – say, ‘No’. These cherished myths are causing real harm and we need to ditch them. A big thank you to my co-writer and fellow myth-buster on The Big Story this month – former New Internationalist co-editor David Ransom, who has brought his wit, insight and engagement to bear on it. Among other features this month is an unusual piece by Suprabha Seshan, who is director of a botanical sanctuary in South India. It’s the kind of ecological writing that has a heartbeat. Meanwhile, regular columnist Steve Parry’s ears are ringing after being subjected to much Twittering.

Paris climate summit

Sun, 1 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Heroes, villains and why there is still hope.

When we agreed to guest-edit a magazine on the upcoming Paris climate talks, we felt some trepidation. We’d been at the Copenhagen summit in 2009 – one of us inside the conference centre, the other outside with the protesters – and the bad memories still felt fresh. Grassroots, frontline and Indigenous campaigners thrown out of the talks. Thousands of activists locked in cages by the Danish police. A final stitch-up non-deal from a handful of polluting governments, and the overinflated hopes of millions of people brought crashing down. Was it all about to happen again? But in the course of putting together this magazine, we have spoken to climate-justice activists from all over the world. Much to our surprise, we’re now feeling unexpectedly hopeful. There’s plenty to play for in Paris, and while there are no easy victories to be grabbed, the global climate movement could be about to take a big leap forward. The story of Paris has only just begun. We’d love to see it through to the end, and bring you voices and perspectives from the talks that the mainstream media will ignore. That’s why we’re launching a crowdfunding appeal to allow us to report from the frontlines in Paris. We’re excited at the prospect of taking New Internationalist into the thick of the action – but we need support from you, our readers, to make it happen. See here for how to donate, and we hope you’ll join us – virtually at least – on the Paris climate rollercoaster...

The transgender revolution

Thu, 1 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The transgender revolution and how it could free us all

A couple of years ago, at a National Union of Journalists event in London, I heard a speaker from Trans Media Watch talking about the way in which the tabloid papers had ‘outed’ and hounded Lucy Meadows, a transgender schoolteacher who subsequently committed suicide. The incident was an example of the gutter press at its most despicable – and ignorant. Trans Media Watch condemned it, of course. But they also set about working with even the most bigoted and offensive sections of the media to try to change the way in which transgender people and their issues were reported. The work of transgender organizations is often two-fold – to provide practical and emotional support to transgender individuals, but also to undertake the massive task of educating non-trans or cisgender people. This month’s Big Story shows some of the progress being made, as well as the many challenges ahead. Most of the stories and illustrations are the work of transgender writers and artists, from different countries, while invaluable help has come from Christabel Edwards and Jennie Kermode of Trans Media Watch. Elsewhere in this edition: as Burma heads for the polls, what is in store for its ethnic minorities? Worldbeater, meanwhile, takes a closer look at Wolfgang Schäuble, German finance minister and darling of the ruthless.

Syria’s good guys - Inside a forgotten revolution

Tue, 1 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Syria – the good guys

Before the war, the best way to enjoy Syria was in complete ignorance. That’s what I did in 2005, when I arrived in Damascus as a tourist. For two weeks I explored the country’s Roman ruins and medieval markets, enthusing about the sophistication of the food and the friendliness of the people. Syria, as my guidebook put it, was ‘the Middle East’s best kept secret’. It was not until the following year, when I returned to Damascus to live, that I started to see that Syria had secrets of its own. Buildings from which Syrians averted their eyes. Jails from which no one emerged. To walk these streets, as writer Rana Kabbani has said, was ‘to walk on pavements that were the ceilings of basements where political prisoners hung upside down by their feet’. As my naïveté diminished, so my admiration for the Syrian people increased. After they rebelled against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in 2011, I followed their progress closely through the blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds where activists debate the revolution, the war, and the ongoing struggle to build a better Syria. Their stories deserve to be far more widely known, and this magazine is a contribution towards that end. In putting it together, I have relied on the insight of Syrians far more expert than me, as well as the contributions of Syrian writers, artists and activists represented in these pages. My thanks and respect to them all. Elsewhere in the issue, French economist Edouard Tétreau urges Pope Francis to take a stand against ‘insane money and alienating technologies’ when he visits the UN headquarters later this month.

Capitalism is spinning out of control

Wed, 1 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Seeking other paths

This month’s Big Story is a much-abbreviated version of my book SOS: Alternatives to Capitalism.* Why SOS? SOS is, of course, a nautical term sent out by ships in distress meaning Save Our Souls. The title of this book adapts this to Save Our Species. And that, I believe, is what is at stake. Not next year perhaps, or even next decade, but certainly in the foreseeable future we are heading socially and ecologically down a slippery slope – the bottom of which promises a very hard landing. The main villain of the piece is our current system which is committed to runaway growth based on ecological destruction and levels of social inequality unimaginable just 30 or 40 years ago. SOS is an attempt to help us put on the brakes and show we have other options. The purpose of this magazine – and the book from which it is drawn – is to tease out what such genuine alternatives to capitalism might look like. It looks at what the past experience of such alternatives has been, at the issues and problems that have haunted them – and some of the paths not taken. This is a bittersweet history of rich diversity marked by massacre, noble failure and tepid success. SOS then moves into the present to suggest ways out of the maze of life-threatening inequality and eco-catastrophe. Elsewhere in the issue, we meet Masih Alinejad, the Iranian women’s rights campaigner making waves through social media; and Susana Baca, an award-winning singer-songwriter championing her marginalized Afro-Peruvian community. * Special offers on book and e-book. See nin.tl/SOSoffer

Fundamentalism - Power, politics and persuasion

Mon, 1 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The value of doubt

India, the country I grew up in, experiences fundamentalism in tides. Upsurges are not spontaneous. They tend to be orchestrated by a particular party’s bid to gain and hold on to political power. But then the tide goes out a bit, when the populace tires of the usual political mismanagement and the appeal to hard-core religion begins to be seen as the dangerous distraction it is. Meanwhile, the usual havoc has taken place – communities insulted, angry and driven asunder, rioting and murder, and the growth of a jackbooted assertiveness. Ready for the next eruption. Why do people fall for it again and again? We could go right back to the colonial British administration’s policy of divide and rule. But maybe even they were only spreading a disease that already existed. When I asked one journalist what attracted ordinary people to such extreme thinking, I received the equivalent of an email snort: ‘So that they can lord it over the rest of us.’ One thing is certain, the bigotry and dogma of the fundamentalist mind takes no prisoners. Every religion is susceptible, not just those featuring in this edition, because fundamentalism is organized religion’s will to power. It is deeply political, of human rather than divine agency, and not in the least spiritual. Preparing this edition has given me a new appreciation of the values of scepticism and doubt. We also have two despatches this month from the fossil fuels frontier. One is a report on growing tensions in the Arctic as nations jostle to stake claim to undersea reserves. The other is on BP’s see-no-evil cosy relationship with Azerbaijan’s autocrats – what a gas!

Global banking now

Fri, 1 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Day of the zombies - banking laid bare

I’m not sure why I was trying to clear cat fur from under a bed, but as I did so I came across a packet of postcards I sent to my parents as a very young man. Almost all of them referred to money – or, rather, my lack of it. Oh, the humiliations of youth! In this respect, I fear nothing much changed thereafter – the craft of making money, let alone making money out of money, has proved not to be one of my talents. Maybe it’s just as well that some people have such a talent, but experience suggests to me that they are in a very small minority – and I can’t for the life of me see why it qualifies them to rule the world. Given that it does, I’m not entirely surprised to find the cause of the great banking meltdown morphing into its cure, or professional politicians coming to surpass bankers in their unpopularity. Ask yourself how people fined $300 billion for malpractice can also make $1 trillion in profits, and there you have the current state of banking laid bare. In their utter foolishness, bankers may even have come to relish the blood sport of banker-bashing because it serves merely to underline its own futility, like bleating on about climate change. But, to my mind, the conflict between money and democracy has only just begun in earnest and for real. Lithuania doesn’t often get coverage in our pages, but this month Daiva Repec˘kaite˙ reports on the growing interest in militarism in a country that is closely monitoring the conflict in Ukraine. And regular cartoonist Polyp offers a witty but sobering one-page Big Bad World which will ring true for all, parents or not.

Total control - is Monsanto unstoppable?

Wed, 1 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Monsanto... coming to a field near you?

As the conflict in Ukraine erupts, subsides, erupts, subsides, there seems to be one entity that cannot lose. Biotech-giant Monsanto has an office in Ukraine. In 2013 a proposed $17-billion IMF loan to Ukraine would, as a condition, have opened up the country to genetically modified crops. But then-president Viktor Yanukovych rejected the European Union agreement linked to the loan, deciding to go with a Russian deal instead. Yanukovych didn’t last long – ousted in February 2014 – and the country descended into conflict. A set-back for Monsanto? It seems not. The company is still pressing ahead with a $140-million non-GM corn seed factory in western Ukraine. And if the region sinks into all-out war, that is good for Monsanto too, says trader and investment analyst Brian Kelly. Conflict will constrict the wheat supply from ‘breadbasket’ Ukraine, forcing a big price hike. And when wheat prices rise, says Kelly, so does the share price of the world’s biggest supplier of seed – Monsanto. Meanwhile, influential pro-GM interests in several countries, including Britain and Australia, are pressing for a more ‘open-door’ policy towards genetically engineered crops and agri-giants like Monsanto. All the more reason for turning our attention to this most controversial and controlling of corporations – and the civil-society action against it that is spreading across the world. Elsewhere in this month’s magazine, Bangladeshi photographer Jannatul Mawa struck upon the simple but ingenious idea of asking middle-class Dhaka dwellers to be photographed with their maids. The result is, well, revealing...

The great green energy grab

Sun, 1 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

‘Corporate renewables vs people’s power’

We must demand something better. Last week, a fuel poverty activist told me this story. She’d been invited as the token campaigner to a corporate energy event, and was chatting to a rep from the notorious price-hiking frack-happy utility company British Gas. She decided to ask him a cheeky question: ‘What will you do if we get our way? If the world switches away from fossil fuels, to better insulation and renewable energy? What happens to your company then?’ The utility rep replied: ‘Well, I guess we’ll just move into insulation and renewable energy.’ This suggestion filled her – and me – with dread. It’s easy to get caught up in the urgency of climate change, and assume that we just need more renewable energy, and it doesn’t matter exactly what it is or who provides it. This magazine explores why, and how, we must demand something better: an energy system controlled by people, not by corporations, providing genuinely clean energy to everyone who needs it. Continuing the environmental theme, our Argument this month provocatively asks: if you care about climate change, should you have children? And Gavin Evans considers the ugly return of racism into science and academia.

Democracy in the digital era

Thu, 1 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

‘We are living in transformative times’

As chair of the International Modern Media Institute, I want to say how pleased we are to partner with the New Internationalist on the Big Story this month to focus on the challenges and opportunities facing democracy in the digital era. We are living in transformative times and there are amazing citizens’ initiatives occurring all over the world as people are waking up to the idea that they not only can but need to co-create their societies. The good news is that it has never been easier to do, thanks to new developments in digital technology and the way we now use it to engage and interact. I have one task for you, for us: let’s dream together of how we want the future to be. Some of my favourite tools for achieving that task are to be found in this magazine, along with articles from expert journalists and activists commissioned by IMMI Director Guðjón Idir. Elsewhere in this month’s New Internationalist you will find stories ignored by the mainstream press in the Unreported Year and the relationship between Augusto Pinochet and Chile’s indie music revival. Cover illustration by Molly Crabapple.

NGOs - Do they help?

Mon, 1 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

‘You won’t forget all the good work, will you?’

It’s a nightmare when articles get double-parked. Let me explain. When Ruby Diamonde’s Letter from Bangui came in for this month’s edition, it spoke movingly of a forest haven for animals in a country sadly better known these days for human strife. If Ruby had caught a glimpse of Eden, Sophie Pritchard’s piece on the excesses of some conservation NGOs offered up hell. The same nature reserve, with the same NGO partner (WWF), but across the border in neighbouring Cameroon, was a site of evictions and human rights abuses. What to make of it? Not much except to accept that the reality in Central African Republic may be somewhat different from that in Cameroon. At another point in the preparation of this magazine, a colleague asked: ‘You won’t forget all the good work NGOs do too, now, will you?’ I don’t think that was ever in doubt – it figures in some form in almost every edition of New Internationalist. But with NGOs numbering in the millions globally and the largest ones with budgets that match transnational corporations, it is also worth inspecting the charge-sheet against them. NGOs inspire public trust; we express solidarity by giving to them. Even their most trenchant critics are quick to add, ‘I don’t mean all NGOs...’ Maybe this edition will help you decide how to find ones you can support. A further provocation this month comes from Jeremy Seabrook’s searching essay on the roots of radicalization. It’s an analysis that’s largely missing among the friction the subject generates. And Roxana Olivera’s piece from Peru takes us back to the forest, where heroic defenders of nature and the public interest have put their lives on the line.

Big oil RIP?

Sat, 1 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Stopping Big Oil in its tracks

Did you go on one of the climate marches in September? As a confirmed march-sceptic, I approached the London event with caution. I’ve long seen marches as one of the least impactful tools in the activist’s toolbox: they are so easily dismissed and ignored, by politicians, the media and non-marchers alike. But this one felt different. I was in the midst of pulling together this issue, exploring how we bring about the end of the oil age. So it was thrilling to watch from across the pond as the record-breaking 400,000-strong New York march was led through the streets of Manhattan by people at the forefront of the struggle to keep the oil in the ground. First Nations from the tar sands ‘sacrifice zone’ in Canada marched with representatives of Native communities fighting pipelines and Indigenous Amazon villagers threatened by drilling. Young people of colour living next to health-destroying oil refineries marched with Gulf Coast residents devastated by Hurricane Katrina and the BP Deepwater Horizon spill. The march gave us a glimpse of the movement that could – indeed, must – end the oil age. It’s diverse, enormous, multi-pronged, and led by those who, forced to live daily with the devastation caused by fossil fuels, are genuinely starting to stop Big Oil in its tracks. Elsewhere in the magazine, the significance of the People’s Climate March is explored in more depth by Mark Engler, and Naomi Klein talks about her brilliant new book on how climate change gives us a shot at a more equal, democratic world. In the face of multiple ecological crises, hope seems to be rising again. I encourage you to get involved.

Cuba

Wed, 1 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

‘Julius Caesar from Havana sends his love’

Sunday morning in a provincial town in Cuba. We’d been chatting in a park for a good half-hour – and had migrated to a nearby open-terraced bar. ‘You know,’ the man said, ‘if this had been a few years ago, we’d have been interrupted by now by police asking to see my ID and wanting to know why I was talking to a foreigner.’ I’d noticed the difference. Compared with 10 years ago, people seemed more open, more relaxed. Less cautious and reticent. There were complaints aplenty still, but they were more detailed and nuanced than before. Many had to do with the profound economic and social changes that the communist country is going through – the topic of this month’s Big Story. Some things, like old Cold War allegiances, seemed to have stayed the same. One woman told me her heart went out to ‘that poor Assad’ who was trying so hard to ‘save Syria’, and she thanked heavens for Putin’s actions to ‘protect’ Ukraine. Others confounded me in different ways. Like the taxi driver, who, after a long and cogent analysis of why Cuba was not ‘socialist enough’, had offered as a parting shot: ‘Say hallo to Elizabeth for me.’ ‘Elizabeth?’ ‘Yes. Your queen. She’s a great lady, very dignified. Tell her Julius Caesar from Havana sends his love.’ This edition of the magazine also sees writers and activists Ilan Pappé and Norman Finkelstein debating whether the academic boycott of Israel is justified – a poignant question given recent events in Gaza. While our Worldbeater takes a swipe at Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, described as ‘a military strongman with an electoral fig leaf and a big ego’. Now there’s an image to conjure with.

Gold trouble

Mon, 1 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Bling is not in

Call me old school but I’ve never liked the new and the shiny. Not for me glitz and bling, whether it’s jewellery or luminous leather. The whole world of bright surfaces feels superficial and deluding. So I guess I was a natural to be editor of an issue on the price we pay for our obsession with gold. Don’t get me wrong: people should be free to like what they like. But in these days of ecological crisis the consequences of extraction and end use of everything we consume needs to become part of the equation. This issue raises questions at both the production and consumption stage of gold. Since almost the dawn of Homo sapiens’ history we have been drawn to the yellow metal. As a sign I once saw in downtown Manhattan proudly proclaimed, ‘Enough is never enough’. But if it’s in the DNA of some to rush about on lucrative treasure hunts, why not search for something more benign and sustainable like wild mushrooms or berries? Both are tasty and will grow back – and you can make a tidy sum out of selling mushrooms. The search for and the hoarding of gold is just too destructive of the environment and disruptive of convivial human society. Which is why this edition makes the case for ending the gold rush entirely. The struggle to preserve the sanctity of the environment is highlighted in our story from New Zealand/Aotearoa on the granting of legal status to a river. Meanwhile, the not so charitable side of Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity order in India is questioned in a first-hand account.

Feminism fights back

Tue, 1 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

‘So, pink or blue?’

The sonographer was prodding my belly. He grabbed a different ultrasound. ‘She’s using the wrong one,’ he said irritably of his colleague, standing next to him – who presumably had a name, and one that he knew. Apparently the link to feminine pink or boyish blue – and associated life choices – starts in the womb, already established while my foetus was still gulping down amniotic fluid in preparation for breathing. ‘If you mean boy or girl,’ I said, with as much stiff dignity as I could muster, on my back, smeared in cold gel, with the sonographer’s hand resting casually on my crotch, ‘then yes, I would like to know.’ After more prodding, her sex was revealed: it was a girl! Growing a girl, while I work on this feminism edition, brought the issues into sharper focus. It’s the world I have experienced as a woman in my lifetime and it’s the one that awaits her too. I wonder, how will she navigate the vagaries of consent? Persistent inequality? But while concerned about what she’ll be up against, I have also been impressed by the fantastic women whose work is likely to make the world that bit more equal by the time she starts to make her way in it. We were lucky to be able to draw on the expertise and experience of all-round internationalist feminist, the writer Hannah Pool, who has acted as Contributing Editor for this edition. Women are celebrated throughout this magazine – Mixed Media reviews solely female authors and filmmakers, and this month we’ve elected to highlight Yemeni political activist Tawakkol Karman in Agenda. We are also excited to welcome comedian Kate Smurthwaite, who has a beef with cupcakes. Elsewhere in the issue we check back in with developments in Haiti and analyse the propaganda war in Ukraine.

The politics of language loss

Sun, 1 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Save our speech!

‘I think they might be backward.’ This was the damning verdict of the health visitor on discovering that my twin sister and I, aged two, were resolutely refusing to speak a proper language (ie English), and were instead babbling away in some incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo. My mother knew better. Like endless sets of twins around the world, we had simply come up with our own language, in which we were perfectly fluent and happy, thank you very much. The rest of the family managed to decipher enough to know what we wanted – and given that that was the extent of our two-year-old world, why bother with anything else? When we went to school, we were put into separate classes and inevitably picked up the far inferior language our peers were speaking. And our own twin-speak soon died out. This, in a microcosm, is what is happening to the vast majority of the 7,000 languages currently spoken around the world, which struggle against political and cultural assimilation, fall out of favour or are beaten into obscurity. Many linguists believe their fate is sealed, and that within two centuries, we’ll all be speaking the same language. But all is not yet lost – as our Big Story this month reveals. Also in this issue, we highlight a theatre making waves in Afghanistan by encouraging people to act out their trauma. And Lydia James investigates the shocking – and growing – phenomenon of food waste, and offers some ingenious ways to stop our leftovers ending up in landfill.

Organ trafficking

Thu, 1 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Follow the bodies

In the early days of the Organs Watch project, when I was first looking into the rumours of ‘body snatching’ and ‘organ stealing’ among shantytown dwellers in northeast Brazil, my husband, then a clinical social worker at a large US paediatric hospital, returned home one evening elated and deeply moved. He had witnessed a paediatric transplant that had saved the life of a mortally ill youngster. Michael was almost beside himself in sharing the miraculous event. Distracted, I looked up from my writing desk and replied: ‘Really! Whose organ?’ My husband’s anger at my ‘heartless’ question, something only an oddball anthropologist would even think to ask, made me realize that, to the contrary, it was a question that had to be asked. My naïve question and my equally naïve method – ‘follow the bodies!’ – brought me to police morgues, hospital mortuaries, medical-legal institutes, intensive care units, dialysis units, blood labs and organ banks all over the world. I traced the missing link – the ‘blood diamond’ of the organ trafficking world – the fresh kidneys, which came across borders safely packaged in their warm, living containers. I met the ‘kidney mules’, recruited by brokers in slums, refugee camps and mental institutions, and the outlaw surgeons and traffickers behind the illegal flow of human traffic. This edition of New Internationalist reveals the damage wreaked by the criminal organ trade, and looks at what it might take to combat it. Elsewhere in the magazine, Amy Hall meets the activists suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and the Argument on banning religious methods of slaughter goes behind the clamour of the proposed Danish ban.

The war on whistleblowers

Tue, 1 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Spilling the beans

When I was growing up there was one thing you did not do: tell tales. I suspect the reasoning behind it was that adults didn’t want to become embroiled in children’s squabbles. Times have changed – and brought a greater realization of the harm done by putting secrecy (and often loyalty) above addressing wrongdoing. The recent coming to light of sex-abuse cases, going back decades, has made this explicit. So common is the term ‘whistleblower’ today that it’s easy to forget its relative newness. It only became a household term in the 1970s, popularized by US activist Ralph Nader. Whistleblowing tends to come in waves – and it’s fair to say we are witnessing a tidal one right now. Necessary it most certainly is, as revelations show the extent to which we – the public – are being infantilized by the states that rule us and their so-called security apparatus. All is not lost, though, as the courage of whistleblowers testifies. One of the contributors to this month’s Big Story, David Morgan, drew my attention to this poem by Emily Dickinson: We never know how high we are/Till we are asked to rise/And then if we are true to plan/Our statures touch the skies. As usual, she says it best, with fewest words. Also in this month’s issue, Tim Gee travels to Yasuní in Ecuador to see how local people and environmentalists are still determined to resist oil interests intent on drilling into the heart of one of the world’s most ecologically valuable troves of natural biodiversity. And finally, Louise Gray catches up with Angélique Kidjo, the dynamic and fearless musician from Benin who makes archbishops dance and speaks truth to tyrants.

Commodities - the pitfalls of resource wealth

Sat, 1 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Cycles of history, chains of dependency

Who’s heard of Harold Adams Innis? Put up your hand! Not many, I see. Well, no surprise there. The Canadian academic died in 1952 and his most influential work (on the fur trade and the cod fishery, two prosaic strands of his country’s economic history) was published in the 1920s and 1930s. Eventually, this research became the core of his ‘staples theory’, an analysis of how reliance on raw material exports can shape a country’s economy and its culture. Dry stuff, I admit. But Innis’s relevance has not faded. Today it just has a different name. The phrase used is ‘resource curse’ and it’s a major source of political conflict, environmental destruction and social dysfunction. In this issue, we try to figure out what it means for those countries and communities caught in the ‘staples trap’. Elsewhere in the magazine photojournalist Isabella Moore travels to Russia, one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers, where she talks to that country’s gay citizens about the fear of living in an increasingly repressive state. Repression, of course, takes many forms in an era of economic austerity and globe-straddling digital surveillance. (Thank you, Edward Snowden.) What’s a self-respecting government to do without the latest in anti-riot gear and non-lethal ‘crowd control’ solutions? Anna Feigenbaum expounds on the profits to be made in policing dissent. To paraphrase Aldous Huxley: we don’t learn very much from the lessons of history and that may be the most important lesson of all. Ah, brave new world.

Why are we locking up migrants?

Wed, 1 Jan 2014 18:45:00 +0000

At the time of writing, Amnesty International was taking Britain to task for refusing to resettle any of Syria’s 2.3 million refugees. This government responded curtly that the application of any Syrian asylum-seeker who pitched up in Britain – around 1,300 people last year – would be considered on its merits. But of the few Syrians who do make it, not all find sanctuary. Some are imprisoned en route, such as the family pictured on the front cover who wound up in a Bulgarian detention centre. Another Syrian attempting to join his brother in Britain found himself detained under immigration powers in Oxfordshire. Two months (and two bail refusals) later, he had lost contact with his wife and seven children back home and was desperate to get out. Before I got the chance to speak to him, the Home Office had obliged, deporting him to Hungary, his entry-point to Europe, where he had been badly beaten. He was just the first of many would-be interviewees to disappear. At times, it felt like chasing ghosts. Detention is a hidden, parallel world where journalists are forbidden and rights evaporate. Access is highly restricted; migrants who speak out risk reprisals. Consequently, precious few of the many thousands locked up and later released were happy to ‘play with the lion’s tail’, as one Iranian put it. Out of public view, the most extraordinary abuses can happen. Take Peter Qasim. He spent seven years locked up after Australian authorities ‘forgot’ about him. ‘Feeling forgotten’ plagues detainees, according to one regular detention centre visitor. This magazine is our attempt to remedy this, by exposing what is happening, not in Burma or Eritrea but in Western liberal democracies – no more so than in New Internationalist’s main subscriber countries. Elsewhere, we have a visual treat in the form of The Unreported Year, and an exclusive interview with theorist of the moment, David Graeber.

Fracking - the gathering storm

Sun, 1 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Ah December! Month when citizens of the Western world can feel under an absolute, sometimes despairing, obligation to ‘be festive’. And what do we offer our readers? Why, an edition on fracking, of course. The subject of the December mag makes a brief appearance in editorial considerations as the end of the year looms into sight. Proposed topics are met with groans of ‘That’s really going to cheer them up!’ In the end, we just go with what we think is important, December or not. In our lowdown on fracking, a controversial form of fossil fuel extraction, there are some glimmers of hope. Chief among them being the sheer number of campaigns against the practice wherever it is proposed. Where fracking is concerned, it seems that despite the disinformation peddled by the oil and gas industry and mouthpiece politicians, large numbers of people are quite capable of making up their own minds. We had festivities of a different sort on 31 October, Halloween. We celebrated 40 years on the media landscape with a glittering panel of activists and thinkers who debated ‘What it means to be an internationalist today’ with an engaged and lively audience. Watch it at: nin.tl/174ezUq At times like these particularly I am reminded of our larger audience – you, our readers. Thank you for believing in us through the years and supporting us with your subscriptions. Thank you to those of you who have taken the further step of becoming a Friend of New Internationalist. We couldn’t do what we do without you. This month our Worldbeater column features Mr European Austerity, also known as Olli Rehn. He may not have a high media profile himself but the campaign of cuts over which he has presided is front page news on an almost daily basis. With the intractability of the Syrian conflict in mind, disillusion with the UN’s inability to find some way out is tempting. Our Argument on whether it is time to junk the UN Security Council gives pause for thought.

Time to rethink disability

Fri, 1 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

What about success?

One of the challenges of editing a ‘Disability Issue’ is that my mobility is not something I think about much. You might start to worry about my state-of-mind if I were to look in the mirror every morning, and say ‘Ah, yes, I still have two hands, feet and dark brown eyes.’ And just as I was born with them, I was ‘born like this’, which is not a very politically correct (or even accurate) way to describe my quadriplegic cerebral palsy. But while I don’t define myself by my ‘level of mobility’, the struggle disabled people face in their day-to-day lives both inspires and motivates me. Not least because it is one I face myself. But I was also tired of hearing about ‘obstacles’ for disabled people. So in this magazine you’ll hear from Anoop Kumar, a disabled citizen journalist, who interviews a visually-impaired science whiz who is breaking the mould in India. Then, from Britain, Francesca Martinez recounts how she shook the idea she was ‘faulty’ and found fame as a comedian. On a more serious note, Maysoon Zayid returns to Palestine to assist a new generation of disabled children born under occupation, and Luke Dale-Harris uncovers human rights abuses against disabled people that continue to tarnish Romania’s reputation. Since writing my personal account for this issue, I’ve started catching the bus again, and playing football; albeit one-a-side, and in the lounge of my flat. Both activities make me realize how much has changed since my childhood. And yet, just over a year since the Paralympics came to London with much fanfare, I think we have some way to go before the achievements of disabled people from all walks of life are encouraged and celebrated. Elsewhere in this edition we interview John Pilger about his latest film Utopia on the resistance of indigenous Australians, and expose the domestic slavery that can await South Asian brides under the smokescreen of arranged marriage in Britain.

Where have all the girls gone?

Tue, 1 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

117 million females are missing

Misogyny doesn’t get much more basic than this: taking steps to make sure that females are not born. I’d heard about the ‘missing millions’ but had not fully appreciated the sheer scale of pro-male sex selection or the collective and individual harm it is doing. Personal stories – like the one told by Kajri in ‘Keeping Prerna’– bring the nightmare home. But Kajri’s gutsy determination to defy her husband, keep her daughter and fight to give her a decent life, also delivers hope. That particular story came to us via Radar (onourradar.org) an organization that trains people from excluded or isolated communities to become ‘citizen journalists’. The democratic potential of such an initiative is tremendous. In Kenya and Sierra Leone, for example, Radar trained hundreds of people to ‘live’ report their own general elections and the organization is planning to do the same for India in 2014. Using mobile phones, citizen journalists will quickly expose any irregularities or misdoings, even in the most remote regions and among the least privileged communities. This month we also have a special feature on Syria. As the country descends deeper into chaos, we focus not on the foreigners busy fuelling this proxy war but those who are trying to help the country’s beleaguered citizens. Photojournalist David Brunetti captures the scene as the Jordanian authorities assist Syrian refugees to safety as they cross the border at night. Nigel Wilson catches up with Maha Alasil, an ordinary woman dedicated to helping the refugees rebuild their lives. Finally, to celebrate New Internationalist’s 40th anniversary year, we are hosting an event in London on 31 October. We’ll be talking about ‘what internationalism means today’ with a panel of leading thinkers from the field of development and social change. You can find out more at newint.org/about/events, and join us in person and/or on Twitter #newint40.

How the war on pirates became big business

Sun, 1 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

‘The arrgther side of the story’

While I was working on this issue of the magazine, I lost count of the number of people who asked if I’d heard the story about the Women’s Institute’s (WI) piracy gaff. Some members of this august British institution had dressed up in eye patches and sashes for one of their organized events, a talk from a sea captain, only to discover that he had suffered a traumatic hostage ordeal at the hands of Somali pirates. This throwaway tale had gone viral. Sure, it had a bit of dramatic irony and quaintness about it – showing up the British weakness for dressing up, for example – but its success was as much a reflection of the public’s voracious appetite for any story to do with pirates. Pirates’ sinister glamour transfixes beyond the WI. The world will celebrate ‘Talk like a pirate day’ on 19 September; I once ‘hijacked’ New York’s free ferry to Staten Island, with a load of anarchists and bottles of rum, on an excuse so spurious that it now escapes me. Yet piracy is really no more than robbery at sea. The enduring appeal lies in the asymmetry of this transgressive, violent enterprise and a human fondness for adventuring. The same opportunist spirit can be found in those profiting from piracy’s many spin-off industries. They range from ‘fake’ pirates catering for the Western media’s craving for Somali piracy stories to the sea-borne, private-security protection boom. In fact, the roots of piracy and the fight against it ended up being a more interesting story than that of the pirates themselves. By way of respite from men-with-guns, we are also running an interview with a courageous woman – Fawzia Koofi, the Afghan MP bidding for presidency. Finally, we would like to flag up a conference exploring ‘co-operative alternatives to capitalism’, where we will be launching our latest book People over capital, in London on 27 September. Visit newint.org/books for more details.

Debt - a global scam

Mon, 1 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Another day older and deeper in debt

I know it makes some people tremendously uncomfortable, but I can’t say it has bothered me much. Often, contrarily, it makes me feel appreciated, gives me a warm glow. I’m talking about being socially indebted, being on the receiving end of acts of kindness from friends or strangers. Funnily enough, the overriding feelings I get are of being valued and connected, rather than any immediate obligation to repay. I believe these things even out in the end anyway and if it costs me little to help, then I certainly don’t keep score! The reward of helping out is in the doing. My feelings about my mortgage debt are, sadly, entirely different – not only will the wretched thing haunt me until I am old and grey, it has turned me old and grey already. Such contractual, monetized debts are of a different order, of course; there is no trace of the social about them. And they can hang heavy indeed, especially when one feels tricked or forced into having taken on something unmanageable. Fifteen years ago, a New Internationalist edition on debt would have been almost entirely on ‘Third World’ debt. Today, debt of all kinds is much more global, but it can be just as extractive and unjust. That still needs to change. We also carry a report this month on the plight of the Kashmiri Pandit minority, many of whom were driven from their homes when the conflict in the region first began to escalate. In India, rightwingers exploit their example to spout anti-Muslim hatred, while progressive media often remain uneasily silent. A warm welcome to Eduardo Galeano, the treasured Uruguayan author, whose books have permanent residence in our library. He answers our questions with his usual wit and concision – and, I for one, will greedily devour his views, even on football.

Argentina's challenge

Sat, 1 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Are there lessons to be learned from Argentina?

It’s a journalist’s nightmare. You’ve just spent weeks taking notes, recording interviews, shooting photos, gathering material for a series of articles. And then you lose it. As two muggers were trying to tear my bag – with most of the contents of this month’s main theme – from my back, that nightmare seemed to be coming true. It happened a few hours after I’d arrived in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo, across the River Plate from Buenos Aires. My attackers’ technique was rough, but as poor as my bag was tough. My body less so – as several fractures and a punctured lung were to testify. But the content of this month’s special report on neighbouring Argentina remained resolutely intact and on my back. Argentina has been in the news a fair bit recently – for its battle with financial speculators, politely described as ‘holdouts’, more graphically as ‘vulture funds’. And for its loud pot- and pan-banging protests, of which there have been many recently. Often the country is presented in the international media as a source of trouble. But, as this issue of the magazine shows, it should be seen as a source of solutions. Which can hardly be said for Indonesia when it comes to responding to the world’s demand for cheap vegetable oil. It’s not just the orang-utans that have issues with the creation of massive palm oil plantations – as Ollie Milman’s feature on the subject explains. It’s a question of human rights too. On a more positive note, Veronique Mistiaen meets the Iraqi environmentalist who is credited with having ‘breathed life into the Garden of Eden’. Curious? Read on.

Land grabs

Wed, 1 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

‘We don’t like to turn people away’

When I landed in Mozambique’s gleaming Chinese-built airport in Maputo, a large group of South Asian men from my plane were doing their level best to appear calm. As we went through immigration, officials steered them to one side when it transpired they didn’t have visas. They had fallen foul of immigration rules that had changed just one day earlier, sending me scrambling to get a visa in time. Now most foreign visitors had to secure a visa before arrival. The rule-change was partly targeting people like my fellow travellers, but also Westerners – we’re not so used to that – after some job-seeking Portuguese got sent home in January. Refusing entry to citizens of a former colonizing nation is a novel place to be for the Mozambican state. ‘We don’t like to turn people away,’ commented a woman from the forests department, whom I had got talking to on the plane. She was watching the anxious group of South Asian men with some sympathy. ‘They are only looking for work. But it was all getting too hard to handle at the airport.’ It’s a testament to the upswing in Mozambique’s economic fortunes that even Europeans are heading here in search of work and opportunity. But with this new interest come huge challenges. Private capital can move freely across borders, unlike the worker hopefuls I saw at the airport. The Portuguese hope to supply meat to the expanding cities while Britain is digging up coal and rubies. Players from the global South – Brazil, China and Indian firms like OLAM – also want a piece of Mozambique. The government will need to manage this influx with a firm hand and integrity to have any hope of the investment benefiting its people, without whom none of this ‘emerging Africa’ would have been possible. Elsewhere in the magazine, a shocking story of how lack of public healthcare leaves people to die on the streets in Ghana – a chilling account as Britain sets about dismantling the NHS. This month’s issue also carries a review of Eduardo Galeano’s poignant and vibrant new book.

Demolition job

Mon, 1 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A mark on history The last time I wrote an editor’s letter, Hugo Chávez had just been re-elected president in Venezuela. This time, his death, after weeks of mounting speculation, has been announced. During the media blackout while he lay in hospital, his opponents exercised their vituperation, his followers offered prayers. According to the country’s Constitution, fresh elections will need to be held within 30 days. For now, amid fears of public disorder and political succession, it is difficult not to wonder what the mark of his leadership will be on history. The sheer scale of the deployment of the nation’s wealth (mainly oil resources) towards provision for the poorest is impossible to ignore, despite the criticisms of megalomania or even corruption. Will the Bolivarian revolution that he spearheaded, which has brought land reform, free healthcare, education and, more recently, free or affordable housing to millions, now falter, at a time when the world is more ready than ever for a genuine politics of equality? If Chávez’s claims sometimes seemed grandiose, the venom of his moneyed opponents was usually more unreal. One Venezuelan expatriate I met insisted that everything Chávez claimed to have achieved was lies regardless of proof; wealthy parts of the country should secede; the poor were being misled. The conviction with which this was said reinforced a cliché – money does strange things to people. In this edition we discuss the amazing Venezuelan project to build three million homes – public housing to shelter the most vulnerable. Its future will depend on Venezuela’s political leadership after Chávez. Also in this issue, Jeremy Keenan offers an alternative explanation for what happened at the Tiguentourine gas plant in Algeria in January – with Algeria’s secret service heavily implicated in both the kidnappings and the bloodbath that followed. And film director Ken Loach talks to us about his political passions and inspirations. Next month our focus moves from housing to land and the urgent issue of what massive land grabs in the Majority World mean to the people on the ground.

What has development done for me?

Fri, 1 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

My own first encounter with New Internationalist was with an issue on Water in September 1981. It was a revelation to me: having always taken clean water for granted as something that flowed at the twist of a tap, here I was suddenly transported into seeing it as a precious resource that had to be borne in pots from the well or that might carry horrible diseases. From the first, the magazine seemed to me to offer something unique, a window on the real world where the majority, far from chasing the latest consumerist dream, still had to struggle for the basic necessities of life. More than three decades later, 29 years of which I have spent here as a co-editor, there is still no other popular magazine that sees the world in quite the same way – that offers a platform for the myriad voices of people from Asia, Africa and Latin America, that celebrates their cultures and that argues consistently for global justice. Like all other magazines and newspapers, we are wrestling with a new digital age where the habit of subscribing to a paper magazine is less common and where information is routinely sought from the web. So we’re delighted to launch our new online subscriptions app digital.newint.com.au which works brilliantly on any device with a web browser. It incorporates a feature for which we’ve had many requests – easy sharing of favourite articles. For this special 40th anniversary issue, we invited the magazine’s founding editor, Peter Adamson, to write the keynote article, which looks back at his original hopes for the publication – and surveys the progress (or in some respects the lack of it) made by humanity over the four decades since. We have revisited just a few of the key individuals who have featured in our pages over those years. And we showcase a landmark essay by the great German thinker Wolfgang Sachs on why ‘development’ has become an empty shell that should be cast off even by those of us who care most deeply about global justice. Sad to say, notwithstanding all its technological progress, the world has actually become more rather than less unequal since the first issue of this magazine was unveiled in March 1973. Perhaps the time has finally come for globalization to be replaced by a ‘new internationalism’ that puts the needs of the poor and the planet above the idle interests of the rich.

The feral rich

Tue, 1 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

We need to talk about the rich

‘Exclusive’, ‘discreet’, ‘private’, ‘bespoke’. The words used to describe goods and services aimed at the rich – who are increasingly the super-rich – speak volumes. So, we found while putting together this issue, do agency photos of the wealthy. If you type in search terms like ‘poor’ or ‘poverty’ you will see any number of images of people, mainly in the Global South, that will give you a spontaneous, close-up view of their lives. You can see people eating, sleeping, working, playing; on the streets, in the fields, inside their homes. A search for ‘rich’ or ‘wealthy’ is more likely to produce staged public events such as conferences, award ceremonies or gallery openings. Unless ‘snatched’ by despised paparazzi, pictures of wealthy people in their home, work or play environments tend to be rather posed and controlled affairs. The subjects often come across as distant, removed, insulated from the tawdry world of mundane reality. A surprising number of the more arty studio shots are cropped so that their heads are missing – which is taking detachment a bit far. Today, the detachment of the rich from the rest of us is more than just a matter of style. In this month’s Big Story we join the dots between runaway riches and the global recession. We turn the spotlight on the actions of a global élite and its impact on millions of people around the world. Which is why our title – The feral rich – pulls no punches. Other features in this issue may be more heart-warming. ‘Good news from Greece’ sounds like an oxymoron, but Alexandra Saliba’s investigation into what people are doing to support each other through the crisis helps restore faith in humanity. She visited 11 grassroots collectives engaged in activities ranging from developing local fair trade and alternative currencies, to running rebel kitchens and preventing suicide. Some of the initiatives have received media attention; for others, this is a first. And, as usual at this time, we present our stunning alternative take on the previous 12 months with our Unreported Year photo special.

Internet showdown

Sat, 1 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

It struck me as the perfect irony when Google ads about cyber security popped up on my screen as I researched surveillance for this magazine. It was an excellent example of how much we reveal online, and who has access to it. Now that is not to say that we should all get paranoid, shut down our social network accounts and head for the hills. But seeing as this digital revolution thing is not going away, we need to get our heads around it. We are living in a time of accelerated innovation. It poses huge challenges – not least to the magazine industry – when digital data, freed of physical substance, can be shared as easily as ideas. It’s a time of great promise – the global democratization of information and knowledge, new ways to network, organize and innovate. But we don’t know, of course, where these new technologies will lead us. It won’t all be good news. Over the next 20 years, advances in open-design and 3-D printing promise to democratize and localize manufacturing. There will be environmental gains, and it will slash the import bill for Majority World nations – but it may also wipe out millions of jobs. We also need to be wary of overstating the impact of new technology. Open access to government data, for example, can empower communities but it will not automatically confer power over decision-making, particularly for the 60 per cent in the world without internet access. This is the case for 97 per cent of people in Mali, the focus of Jeremy Keenan’s exposé on US interference in North Africa. Keenan reveals how the US and other Western countries have been sponsoring terrorism, which is then blamed on Islamic militancy. His shocking report provides important background to a developing news story. This month’s magazine also has two prominent human rights campaigners, Peter Tatchell and Joyce Arthur, taking opposite views on a thorny issue: should hate speech be a crime?

Bad medicine

Thu, 1 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Puberty is a strange affair. I spent a large part of mine at the foot of our record player transfixed by a voice. While working on this edition about healthcare and health inequality and how they are bound up with economic inequality, a verse from a song from that time, ‘All My Trials’, has been on repeat in my head. In Joan Baez’s doleful, piercing soprano, it goes: ‘If living were a thing that money could buy/ Then the rich would live and the poor would die...’ Such well-worn truths when put so simply appear little more than clichés. But inspect the complexities of the debates around the divided health of our divided world, and beneath all the intricacy there’s that bedrock of inequity that still needs breaking up. My attention has been drawn many times by my British colleagues to what has been happening to the National Health Service (NHS) in their country. A service conceived in the spirit of providing reliable, free-at-the-point-of-delivery care to all is now suffering fragmentation and marketization. There’s even a new political party, the National Health Action party (nationalhealthaction.org.uk), with the impetus coming from healthcare professionals, launching this month to campaign for restoring the original principles of the NHS. Speaking of party politics, in news that will be old hat by the time you read this, Hugo Chávez has been re-elected president in Venezuela (something that was accurately predicted on our website by Jody McIntyre, guest editor of last month’s edition). The country’s all-out effort to bring healthcare to marginalized communities, with members of those communities being trained up as medics, will continue. Here you will find an article about the country that pioneered this vision of care – Cuba. In the name of equal opportunities coverage, our Worldbeater this month is about those heroes of the one per cent, the Koch brothers. And the suspense is killing us about what kind of showing the Booker-shortlisted author Jeet Thayil, who talks robustly about the work of writing in our interview, will make. That decision will happen, annoyingly for us, just as this edition goes to the printers.

Youth rising

Mon, 1 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Hip-hop artist Logic once rapped: ‘I get down for my people, down for my people, down with the government until we’re all equal!’ When I looked into the eyes of Logic’s first baby daughter, born a few weeks back, it seemed like a long time since we sat down to write those lyrics. It was before the police pulled me out of my wheelchair on a demonstration, when Hosni Mubarak was still chilling, before the London riots. I struggle to imagine how the world must look through a baby’s eyes. But when I see them smile, I know that however much destruction we cause, the generations that follow will continue to struggle to make things better.This issue celebrates youth movements working to do exactly that. Far from being apathetic, young people are challenging an unjust world and have the idealism and energy to change things. In this month’s Big Story, Farah Jassat challenges preconceptions, asking why certain schools of feminist thought are ignored by the mainstream media. Laurie Penny stokes up outrage with her lowdown on how youth in the West are shouldering the burden of a broken economic model. We take a look at the techniques of the uncompromising Chilean student movement and listen to the frustrations of youth activists in occupied Palestine. The cover image is by Andre Anderson, age 20, whom we found thanks to LIVE magazine (run by 15-24 year olds) in Brixton, London. It was the first-ever publication I wrote for, at the tender age of 15. Inspired by LIVE’s principles of being written for young people, by young people, this month’s Big Story is written almost wholly by under 25s, with the exception of music makers Akala and Seun Kuti (both 28). The next generation will inherit the planet we reside in. Who better to lead the struggle? Also this month, Australian journalist Ollie Milman writes of the disgraceful way his country treats child asylum-seekers; and regular contributor Stephanie Boyd visits Guatemala, where indigenous groups are leading the fight against Canada’s Goldcorp goldmining corporation.

Illegal drugs

Sat, 1 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Journalism isn’t a bad profession. It can have its risks, dangers and limitations, depending on what you do and where you do it. But, by and large, it isn’t life-threatening. Unless, like Sandra Rodríguez, you live just on the Mexican side of the border with the United States. Sandra works for El Diario, a newspaper in Ciudad Juárez. She investigates crime and corruption in a city torn apart by the ‘war on drugs’. This is a place where journalists are routinely murdered for just doing their job. The courage and persistence of Sandra and other reporters, who have lost colleagues when death threats turned real, takes your breath away. It shows a commitment to freedom of speech, to talking truth to power, way beyond what most of us will ever be called upon to prove. Writing in this month’s issue of New Internationalist on legalizing drugs, Sandra startlingly evokes what it is like to live and report, day-by-day, in the cauldron of impunity. And while we are on the subject of journalism, why is it that some conflicts get saturation coverage, while others are ignored? Nick Harvey explores this in an article that delivers some uncomfortable home truths. Finally, we are pleased to welcome the wonderful North American writer Alice Walker to these pages. She turns a simple Q&A into a kind of poetry that encompasses dust motes, the Dalai Lama, Fidel Castro and the Universe. PS: Special thanks to Tony Jackson for his help and tireless lobbying on the drugs issue.

Co-operatives

Sun, 1 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Like a lot of recent graduates, in my early 20s I lived briefly in a co-op house. It was a shaky experiment. The big social and political issues of the day were submerged in the daily grind. Dirty dishes were our downfall. Since then I’ve passed a major chunk of my life here at New Internationalist, a much more successful co-operative with a long track record. We’ve had our ups and downs but we’ve survived as a ‘worker co-op’ for almost three decades now. We’re not alone. Globally, co-operatives are thriving, a fact celebrated by this year’s ‘International Year of the Co-operative’. In this time of economic chaos co-operatives may be the only game in town, a human (and humane) alternative to business-as-usual. Here at New Internationalist being a ‘worker co-op’ means we run the show ourselves. Simple? No, it’s tricky being your own boss – satisfying, yes, but also frustrating. Hard to put the blame on someone else when you’re in charge. No doubt we come across as a group of earnest do-gooders ceaselessly thrashing out the best ways to save the world. But you’d be surprised at how little time we actually spend talking about the ‘big issues’. These days a lot of our time (meetings, meetings, meetings) is spent managing the business, figuring out how to survive in tough economic times. But we’re also not above having long, intense discussions about life-altering decisions – like what colour to paint the doors. This issue also looks at another kind of work fraught with contradictions: voluntourism. When our kids take off to spend a gap year in Malawi or Mongolia, are they just paying patrons like any other tourist? In addition, Tam Hussein, a writer with deep roots in the Middle East, looks beyond the daily bloodshed in Syria to probe the long-simmering tensions between contending ethnic factions in that country.

Protection racket

Fri, 1 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The United Nations says the global earth summit it is holding in Rio this month ‘is a chance to move away from business as usual and to act to end poverty, address environmental destruction and build a bridge to the future’. Splendid aims. However, a great many of those involved in shaping the outcome are from the fossil-fuel, mining, banking and carbon-trading sectors. So we reckon a reality check is in order. This month’s issue gives you the ‘unofficial guide’ to Rio+20, as the summit is called. Writer and activist Danny Chivers also removes the fig-leaves from a selection of corporate miscreants in his exposé of ‘Eight Great Greenwashers’. Some on the list are household names; others may be new to you. Also this month, Richard Swift answers the tricky question of why the political Right gained and the Left lost ground in the wake of the financial crisis. This essay won him the prestigious US Daniel Singer Millennium Prize. Time will tell if the tide can really be turned, in Europe at any rate, following the French and Greek elections. Elsewhere, intrepid filmmaker Nadia El Fani explains why she had to leave her native Tunisia. Outspoken US scholar Norman Finkelstein posits that Jewish Americans are falling out of love with Israel – and discusses what that could mean for peace in the Middle East. Charismatic Indian activist Bunker Roy talks about ‘granny power’, and British comedian Jeremy Hardy reflects on being a Marxist at the tender age of 10.

Mental health

Tue, 1 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

As an undergraduate, I took psychology for two years. People who study the subject tend to be drawn to it because they are seeking to solve puzzles in their own mental makeup. I was no exception. But I was also seeking another connection and answers to the question: what is my place in the world? That led to an informal dalliance with philosophy as well. I didn’t know it then, but the answers aren’t readymade, and I am still working them out. An answer I find particularly important is: in order to find my place in the world, I need to be of it. However much I love solitude, disconnection is a dead end. This has been painfully brought home on the many occasions I have had to visit locked psychiatric wards. Whatever their faults – tedium seems more common now than the horrors recounted by survivors just a couple of decades ago – they can be places where some people in extreme mental distress find the time and space to make peace with themselves. Society at large seldom offers such a space. The challenge of mental ill health is often seen only as an individual challenge; the social challenge to build inclusive, supportive communities is barely considered, perhaps because it appears too great a task. Or perhaps because it is too much like common sense. Since this edition was announced last month, readers have been writing in, wishing to contribute on this theme. Sadly, we were fully commissioned by then, but as ever we want to know what you think. So do email or write to us.

Adapt or die

Sun, 1 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Lurching through the streets of Dhaka on a narrow rickshaw seat, I thought I would be catapulted out at any time. Then I peered through the dust around me. I saw all sorts of precious cargo balanced on passengers’ knees: sleeping infants, panes of glass, towers of egg boxes. The driver understood his environment well, I realized, and could navigate the many hazards on the roads. A nail-biting journey by rickshaw struck me as an analogy for how Bangladesh is navigating the impacts of climate change: with grit, ingenuity, limited technology and no safety net. I chose not to run photos of natural disasters and floods in this issue. Devastation is already well documented on rolling 24 hour news channels, but we hear less about Bangladeshis’ resilience in the face of encroaching seas and erratic rains. I also met those people for whom the only adaptation option was migration. This brought with it the danger of cross country border-crossings or the misery of destitution in bursting cities. Adaptation to climate change charts a path between ecology, climate science and competing models of development. The latter is the subject of both our Argument and special feature this month. Our debaters consider whether aid should be cut to countries with poor human rights records, while Andrew Bowman considers some of the downsides to Bill Gates’ brand of ‘venture philanthropy’. Worldbeater returns this issue, taking aim at Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang: ‘ruthless kleptocrat and good family man’.

Time for a fair economy

Thu, 1 Mar 2012 03:13:00 +0000

‘You know what would be really useful,’ said Jamie Kelsey-Fry, a London teacher and contributing editor to New Internationalist. ‘A guide or “roadmap” for the kind of economy we want.’ Jamie had been at the Occupy London camp pretty much every day since protesters took up residence outside St Paul’s Cathedral in the heart of the capital’s financial district in mid-October 2011. His request for a roadmap seemed like a big ask at a time when leading politicians and their bevvy of economic advisers were plainly clueless and floundering at the helm. But then New Internationalist has never shied away from such bold – or foolish? – attempts. We have always thought that the media convention of reporting the ills of the world but rarely coming up with ideas for resolving them, is simply not good enough. And actually, when we started outlining the Roadmap that features as part of our main theme this month we found that, apart from our own ideas, there was a wealth of creative thinking and very practical proposals being formulated by progressive individuals, groups and networks. It’s a reminder of how easy it is to slip into believing that ‘there is no alternative’ if you rely on the mainstream media for too much of your information. This month, we also welcome Josie Long, a rising star of the alternative comedy circuit in Britain, who writes her first column for us on the topic of political awakening. There’s no getting away from it. Alternative ways of seeing things aren’t that hard to find at all.

Haiti two years on

Sun, 1 Jan 2012 04:44:00 +0000

One of my more pleasurable monthly duties is to choose a cartoon for our Open Window feature. This involves sampling work from cartoonists all over the world who contribute to the website cartoonmovement.org When our friends at Cartoon Movement told us about their project to produce a series of comic books marking the second anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti, we leapt at the chance to feature some of the material in this issue, not least because it is both written and drawn by Haitians in Port-au-Prince – Jean Pharès Jérôme and Chevelin Pierre. The cartoon work also, however, provided us with the opportunity to explore Haiti’s current plight in more detail and to lay out some of the historical context – with notable contributions from Phillip Wearne and Eduardo Galeano. The cover photo shows nine-year-old twins Renalda and Renane Bernabe in their house in Petionville. Renane lost her leg in the earthquake but is sporting a new prosthetic limb. The anniversary may well prove to be a rare point when the mainstream media will revisit Haiti (having broadly forgotten about the country since the disaster). At the moment media the world over are finding it difficult to focus on anything else but the economic crisis – particularly that in the Eurozone. Our Argument section this month takes the opportunity to ask if the European Union as currently constituted is damaging its citizens’ democratic rights. Elsewhere, we hear from former child soldiers in Colombia who are trying to make their way in normal society – and we see what happens when private security companies are given the responsibility of delivering aid in poor countries. Meanwhile, among our regular features is a round-up of the best film, music and books of 2011 – and an interview with actor Juliet Stevenson about, amongst other things, her passionate concern for human rights.

The arms trade

Thu, 1 Dec 2011 05:29:00 +0000

It’s not long, as I write this, since we’ve seen EU leaders line up with pursed lips and prim self-righteousness to recommend that Greece further slash its public services in order to get its €130 ($179) billion ‘rescue package’. But while Merkel and Sarkozy have been waving much stick and much less carrot, there are cries from Greek civil society of continuing crimes in this climate of austerity. They refer to Greece’s unabated military spending, which has been rising during its deepening crisis, and which the great and good do not suggest cutting. What’s a slashed pension when there’s a much more urgent need for guns? Only the cynical would suggest that it’s because Greece spends most of its military budget shopping from US, German and French corporations that everyone’s keeping shtum. Meanwhile, it transpires that the British government is still demanding back money from Egypt for loans made to ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak which allowed him to buy arms. It appears that Egypt owes £100 ($160) million to the Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD) which blithely lends money in support of arms and fossil fuels. The ECGD claim not to remember what the loans were for. Who keeps track of such trifles? But intrepid activists at the Jubilee Debt Campaign dug up documents to show the arms link. So, on the one hand the British government parades its support for democracy in Egypt, while the hand hidden behind its back tugs back blood money it gave to a dictator who suppressed democracy for years. Two continuing scandals that reflect how things pan out at the confluence of arms industry interests with governance. The Euro debt crisis features this month in our Argument – bailout or default, that’s the question. Also check out our long reportage about a Brazilian mother whose struggle for a decent life has become emblematic of a mass movement. This is everyday heroism, but it remains extraordinary.

Banking on Hunger

Tue, 1 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Growing up in London, the harvest festival meant delivering dented cans of baked beans to local pensioners. Moving to Oxfordshire to take a job at the New Internationalist brought me the closest I’d ever been to the seasonal cycle of reaping and sowing grains. In May I biked to work past fields of stiff green wheat, cut through with red streaks of poppies. Over the summer months, the wheat grew a hat of soft green fuzz that shimmied in the wind, before finally turning golden. Then the combine harvesters moved into action, whirring through the night and depositing neat rectangular straw bales at regular intervals. All the while I was learning how food had been teleported far away from its earthly origins. This month’s main analysis section looks at how banks have alighted on food commodities, turning them intoan asset that can be invested in – like a stock or share. The resulting speculation has disrupted our fragile food system, which fails to feed people at the best of times. But campaigners are pushing for a clampdown on financial speculators. With the European Commission pushing for a Tobin tax on financial transactions and a Tahrir-style occupation of Wall Street under way, the political winds – for once – are blowing in their favour. Elsewhere in the magazine, we examine Russia today, 20 years this month since the break-up the Soviet Union. For the Argument, a humanist and a Catholic debate whether religious schools are good or bad for society. And leading children’s writer Michael Morpugo talks about how the story of the PiedPiper sheds light on the London riots.

Nature's defenders

Sat, 1 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Challenging consumer culture – the indigenous way The riots that rocked England this summer continue to produce a bumper harvest of opinion. In large part, this reveals more about the motivations of the opiners than those of the rioters. There was one feature of the disturbances that all can agree on – they resulted in an orgy of looting. Some commentators have pointed out that this might have something to do with the dominant mantra of our times – consume, consume, consume – which turns so easily into loot, loot, loot. (Ask expense-fiddling members of parliament or bribe-taking police how easy.) Many of the rioters were poor. That cannot be said of the multinational corporations rampaging across the world, looting the natural resources of others – albeit at the invitation of colluding governments. If that seems a bit extreme, I invite you to read the main Analysis section of this issue, Nature’s defenders. We go to Peru to tell the story of how indigenous people are taking a stand against the pillage of their lands. In doing so, they are opposing corporations that are making eye-watering profits by stimulating and stuffing the maw of global consumerism, while trashing local livelihoods and global ecosystems. Also in this issue, we get a close-up view of Syria’s protest movements and where they might lead, thanks to undercover journalist Daniel Wiggins (not his real name). Our Argument is about whether or not there should be a maximum wage. On the Arts pages we review an innovative thriller that enables you to take part in unravelling the mystery online. And we ask Faithless guitarist David Randall what really fires him up.

Pakistan - daring to hope

Thu, 1 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A brighter future for Pakistan? While in Pakistan earlier this year, I visited an art exhibition at the Indus School of Art and Architecture in Karachi. It was called ‘And Nothing But the Truth’. It was so well attended that I could hardly get in the gallery; and once inside, it was difficult not to marvel at the quality of art on display. The exhibition explored rumours, risks, negotiation and political complacency. It illustrated not just what Pakistanis are thinking but also what they cannot put into words. There is a great deal of despair and despondency in Pakistan. But there is also hope. It is provided by all the young people I met at the exhibition and on buses and restaurants in the country. For them Pakistan is not a failed state, but a young country – both in terms of demography and chronology – struggling to shape a viable future. It is a country where art and culture are flourishing. Civil society is alive and fighting. The highly independent media is fearless in the face of fatal danger. We should not underestimate the buoyancy of its people. We’re also delighted this month to feature an interview with Arundhati Roy, who talks cogently about the state of democracy in her country (India) and elsewhere. And regular columnist Mark Engler reflects on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and argues that the ‘war on terror’ should never have happened.

The changing face of masculinity

Fri, 1 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Obsessed with women's rights? ‘Why are you so obsessed with women’s rights?’ my son George used to moan as I had another rant about rising rates of domestic violence or lack of equal pay. He paid me back as a teenager by putting a poster of naked women on his wall, knowing that it would provoke me. But his question masked a feeling that somehow I was not interested in stories of boys being treated badly, or men who were suffering, and he felt this keenly because he too was a boy. Since then we have had many discussions and I think he understands much more why I feel women’s rights are so important. But he had a point. So recently I have been taking his advice and looking at this from a different perspective – a male one. I have been talking to men from different countries about what it means to be a man and how this is changing. Men who want change, not only to ensure that we live in a more equal world, but because inequality damages both sexes. I also talked to women who were suspicious of the growing trend of ‘men for gender equality’. After all, they say, women are still abused, raped and discriminated against. Too right. Squaring this circle is never going to be easy. Which is why I wanted to explore the issue here. There are other fascinating debates in this magazine, too – for example, the argument between Laurie Pycroft and Helen Marston about whether animal testing is needed to advance medical research. Danny Chivers writes about how big companies are moving in on biofuels, contributing to the global spike in food prices and depriving the Majority World of much-needed land. And Adam Beach, Canadian First Nations actor, talks about his new film Cowboys and Aliens.

The far right gets respectable

Wed, 1 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Time to retoxify the far right

Nearly 20 years ago, I moved to Vienna. The city, on the fringes of ‘Western Europe’, had suddenly found itself dealing with an influx of refugees from the civil war raging in nearby Yugoslavia. On my arrival in the Austrian capital, I had to go to the local police station to register. I – a white, English, 20 year old on a work visa – was graciously led by the police officer past queues of tired and confused asylum seekers. What shocked me even more was the swastikas daubed on Vienna’s walls, and the fact that Austrians would come up to me – a foreigner – in the street and moan about the Yugoslavs and how they were taking the locals’ jobs. Fast forward two decades, and, as K Biswas and Rowenna Davis report in this issue, the situation has worsened. What was once the domain of the far reaches of rightwing politics – racism, Islamophobia, homophobia and the obsessive fear and hatred of ‘the other’ – has edged into the mainstream, almost under our noses. By taking advantage of the current economic climate and people’s genuine concerns about their jobs and security, extremist parties have managed to ‘detoxify’ their image and gain popular support across Europe and beyond. So this month’s magazine is a call to ‘retoxify the far right’ and to reclaim the political ground we have lost. Jean Kayigamba fled his own war-torn home country – Rwanda – a decade ago. His return is an emotional journey of hope and renewal. And elsewhere this month we tackle a topical question which has divided the environmental movement: is nuclear energy necessary for a carbon- free future?

Climate change denial

Sun, 1 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Getting to grips with the climate deniers

To those who need no convincing on the matter of human-induced climate change, encountering deniers can be baffling and tiring in equal measure. It’s not just the spurious arguments, it’s the passionate conviction with which they are voiced that can wrong-foot one. Deniers also have a pesky habit of switching from one charge to the next, rather than staying the course of the argument. So this edition offers an article to hold them still for a while. It had been our intention for some time to present a guide to rebutting the arguments most commonly used by the deniers, including some that have a degree of scientific credibility. And in writer and climate activist Danny Chivers we found the perfect person to do the job. Danny has been on the frontline of such exchanges long enough to have the arguments, wit and facts to hand – but, as he was keen to point out, the psychology of denial plays an important role and knowing how to talk to a denier is perhaps as important as what you say. He is also the author of our brand new book The No-Nonsense Guide to Climate Change: The science, the solutions, the way forward. The flipside – the absurd and dangerous lengths we go to in pursuing fossil fuels – is revealed in our piece on fracking – a term, I fear, we will be seeing in headlines more and more. Not sure what it is? Find out the, literally, earthshaking truth on page 24. Finally, Morwari Zafar’s compelling report from Afghanistan demonstrates yet again why the West’s crazy war on drugs fails the real victims every time.

China - makers of the miracle

Fri, 1 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Tide of change coming

In a world battered by debt and speculation crises the Chinese economic miracle remains one of the few bright spots on the horizon of traditional economists. There is a preoccupation in the ‘dismal science’ (as Victorian historian Thomas Carlyle dubbed economics) with all things Chinese that can add or knock off hundreds of points on global stock markets on any particular day. The exchange rate of the yuan, the latest Chinese inflation numbers and how they affect interest charges, issues of intellectual property rights or protectionism have become the daily fare of the economic tea-leaf- readers. But what has been left out of this calculus until recently is the price of labour. Now Chinese workers are starting to change all that as they organize against a system that treats them as cheap and expendable commodities. China’s workers are announcing the end of the cheap labour model that has fuelled the biggest manufacturing boom in history. Spreading out from the Pearl River Delta in South China to the rest of the country is a movement that even the draconian censors of the Communist Party cannot keep quiet. In this edition we listen to what these workers have to say, particularly to Western consumers so hungry for inexpensive Chinese clothes and electronics. ‘At what cost?’ they demand to know. Elsewhere in this issue Mark Engler tackles the $700 billion US military budget and questions why even the hint of a suggestion of a cut (at a time when many citizens must tighten their belts) is so taboo. We also return to the Yasuní National Park, to find out how Ecuador’s bold plan to leave its oil in the ground – in return for compensation from the international community – is faring.

Up in arms

Tue, 1 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Who's pushing politicians' buttons?

Sat, 1 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Who’s pushing politicians’ buttons?

What’s Sarah Palin doing on the cover of New Internationalist? Don’t we get to see too much of her already? And what’s the connection with corporate lobbying? Admittedly, there might be more obvious symbols of the cosy relationship between politics and big business than the bear-hunting darling of the Tea Party. But that’s the point. Such relationships work best when they’re not obvious. And the covert corporate funding of the Tea Party is a mega-PR coup of recent times. It’s one of the examples highlighted in our awards for The 10 Worst Corporate Lobbyists, compiled for us by Corporate Europe Observatory. Someone whose name is firmly associated with challenging corporate power is veteran writer and activist Susan George. We interview her as her new book Whose Crisis? Whose Future? hits the shops. This month we are also featuring Hugo Blanco, Peru’s living answer to Che Guevara. Today he is a leading eco-activist, campaigning both for the environment and the indigenous people who are defending it against mining and logging companies. Our debate this month provides food for thought – literally. We ask ‘Is being vegan the only green option?’ And, for a bit of culture, our reviewers choose their best books, music and films of the past year – a first novel by an African writer hitting the top spot.

Zero carbon world

Wed, 1 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Can I have some truth with my news please?

It's an honour to have John Pilger back in the pages of the New Internationalist. An unflinching seeker after truth and justice, he has had quite an influence on me over the years. I remember vividly, as a student, watching his documentary about the brutal Indonesian occupation of East Timor, and the sense of disbelief and outrage at the revelation that my government was providing the Hawk jets responsible for the massacre of thousands. More than anyone else, it was John Pilger who brought home to me the extent to which the corporate media was presenting me with a distorted picture, and led me to seek out alternative, independent sources of news and analysis. His work is no doubt one of the reasons why I am now at the New Internationalist and not News International... This month, he releases a new film, taking aim at journalists and the news industry, and the way they support and perpetuate war. We talk to him about it on page 29. December also sees the Cancún climate summit, for which no-one, it seems, has high hopes. So to counteract the doom and gloom, we tackle the following questions: is a zero carbon world possible? (Answer: yes.) What would it look like? And how can we get there? Elsewhere in the magazine, we debate the emotive subject of whether there should be any controls at all on immigration, highlight the growing rebellion in West Papua, and take a peek inside the mind of legendary civil rights activist Jesse Jackson. All this, and (if you’re a subscriber) the magazine now arrives through your letterbox in 100 per cent compostable bags!

Humans vs. Nature

Mon, 1 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

When Jamie James’ report of strife and murder over mummified caterpillars in a remote high-altitude region of Nepal reached our office, it exerted a curious, somewhat icky fascination. This was rhino horn and tiger penis territory, but here the irresistible lure of a natural aphrodisiac was ruining human lives rather than endangering animal ones. It’s another variant of the youth- in-a-jar promise that we seem to be so good at falling for. Whereas the pharmaceutical industry has medicalized erections and turned the human penis into a blow-up device (while undoubtedly bringing relief to men with reluctant members), traditional medicine has always played up the symbolic values of potency – strength, virility, endurance. In short, it has gone for the jugular in terms of the values many men consider ‘masculine’, and inflated and distorted those notions to moneymaking advantage. It’s not just the male peacock that likes to strut. It is to James’ credit that he sees beyond the way-out aspects of the story and enters the lives of those affected by the trade in yarsagumba with empathy and understanding. Which is what compelled us to publish it. Another dangerous business is Lebanese writer Joumana Haddad’s publishing venture. She has received rape and death threats for the magazine she brings out which gives Arab contributors a unique forum for sexual expression. Prick hypocrisy and it goes on the warpath. Last month’s newly introduced Argument section which debated the ethics of buying and selling human organs brought some thoughtful responses – we’ve printed a selection on page 37. This month we enter the thickets of public service cuts which our politicians are peddling as a necessary evil. Our leading theme ‘Humans vs. Nature’ boils down to a simple question – can our self-obsessed species be stirred to safeguard the natural environment we live in? We’re sure you have a view.

A wake-up call for democracy

Fri, 1 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Exciting times at New Internationalist!

With this issue, we are thrilled to unveil a fresh design with many new elements. There’s now a regular debate – called Argument. This month’s tackles the ethical minefield of buying and selling human organs for transplantation. We have introduced a forward-looking news section – Agenda – that links to events in the month ahead. There’s more global culture in an extended Arts section. And we now have a slot for Alternatives and an ‘Applause’ page that celebrates individuals or groups who are making change happen. At the same time we have just launched a new website. See what you think at www.newint.org. The aim is for easier interaction with you, our readers and subscribers. But we also want to connect all of New Internationalist’s different activities – the ethical shop we run, for example, and the wide variety of books we publish. Talking of which, there are two mouth-watering recipes from the hot-off-the-press Global Vegetarian Kitchen on page 54. This new-look magazine is the product of months of consultation, with readers, subscribers and potential subscribers. You told us you wanted more positive stories, more debate, larger text and more of a chance to interact with us. We hope we’ve delivered. One thing we absolutely did not want, was to lose the things that people really value about the magazine – its in-depth analysis, its capacity to get to the issues behind the news, its international focus on justice, human rights and the environment. In this month’s issue we give special attention to the state of democracy in the world today, with an article from India about Arundhati Roy’s extraordinary confrontation with the authorities, an interview with Robert Fisk about the Middle East and a piece by Latin America’s leading commentator on grassroots democracy, Raúl Zibechi. As we worked on the magazine, democracy seemed a doubly appropriate subject for us to be tackling. The process of developing the new look has been unusually democratic – it’s the way we tend to do things in a workers’ co-op. As a charmingly understated placard on a recent demonstration in Stuttgart put it: ‘Democracy is sometimes a little bit difficult...’ But the most important part of this process is yet to come. That’s the bit when you tell us what you think of the new magazine and website. Please be honest. We can take it.

Seed savers

Wed, 1 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The frontline against world hunger

This month’s main theme focuses on seeds – the real things, that is. In their bounty, however, they also offer a lazy metaphor for almost anything that flourishes. So here goes. The next time you see New Internationalist magazine it will have grown. For the past few months a fresh variety has been germinating in the fertile soils of Oxford, Adelaide, Ottawa and Christchurch. It has evolved organically in response to runaway climate change in the media, but without genetic modification to its roots. It will blossom in October to attract the pollinators it needs (not beleaguered bees, by the way, but you, our beloved subscribers, and your friends) to fertilize an ecosystem otherwise suffocated by invasive corporate monoculture. People have three-colour vision just to tell the difference, so the red of this new growth’s delicious fruit will be set against a background of leafy green. A staple crop of information, ideas and inspiration from around the world is, assuredly, the best way to nourish and propagate a future worth having. So, elsewhere in this ‘heritage’ magazine, there’s a foretaste of greater diversity to come: the long-awaited cross-fertilization of a major trade union (the United Steelworkers in the US) with a big co-operative (Mondragón in the Basque Country); a bloom of activism, and another potential infestation of corporate control, on the World Wide Web. The seeds of possibility may lie dormant in ground made barren by corporate globalization, but they are still fertile.

Life beyond growth

Thu, 1 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I put in a new vegetable garden this year, ambitiously too big, I’m sure. But it feels good to watch the thin green shoots battle with the birds, the bugs and the hot sun. This is growth I can live with – productive and life-affirming. The other kind, the one that rules our economic lives, is more disturbing. As the iconoclastic US writer Kenneth Boulding once quipped: ‘If you believe exponential growth can go on in a finite world, you’re either a madman or an economist.’ There are lots of people who understand that, at least implicitly. In my neighbourhood in downtown Toronto, our local park has become a laboratory for reclaiming public space, an alternative vision of the way the world could be. There are volunteer gardens, an outdoor bake oven, an organic farmers’ market and Friday night community suppers. Like the enthusiasm for local food systems and ‘downshifting’, our park is a small part of the transition which is slowly emerging. Thousands of people are thinking creatively and building new lives with a smaller environmental footprint – a post-growth world in the making. You’ll find more examples in this issue. You’ll find another kind of creativity in our ‘Southern Exposure’ photo feature as Bangladesh photographer Shahidul Alam uses his art to expose the impunity of the state’s notorious Rapid Action Battalion. Another feature from the New Economics Foundation (a terrific source of information on the need to challenge economic growth, by the way) looks at how to define and measure poverty accurately. As with economic growth, you’ve got to measure what counts, not just count what you can measure.

Deported! What happened next?

Tue, 1 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Deported people behave pretty conveniently once they have been bundled off. They keep quiet. There are a number of reasons why they do this. They have been shamed and traumatized by what they have undergone and want a clean break. They have landed into great danger and have gone into hiding. They have no wherewithal to support themselves and are struggling to survive. Or perhaps maintaining contact with the life they had wanted and had to leave behind is just too painful. So when I started digging around for people who had suffered deportation and who would be willing to talk to me, I kept drawing a blank. Some were too afraid to talk, even under conditions of anonymity. But more often the anti-deportation activists I got in touch with said that after the first few frantic exchanges, people tended to slip away. The pressures of the life they had been flung into ruled out further contact. It’s a silence that suits the authorities of wealthy countries who continue to treat people in this inhumane fashion, branding them ‘bogus’, and claiming smugly that deportees face no danger and have been resettled. Fortunately it’s a silence I was eventually able to pierce. Read the testimonies and judge for yourself. Elsewhere in the magazine we explore essential questions of equity that lie behind everything we do. Bob Hughes’s Special Feature makes the case cogently for an equality-based approach to tackling climate change – it has the best chance of offering lasting change and boosting wellbeing. Another article looks at what is happening on the ground on this front, reporting from the alternative climate change summit in Cochabamba, Bolivia. I must also mention our feature on the murders of Russian journalists, who have paid with their lives for speaking out when the state would rather have them maintain silence. It’s a salutary reminder of the constant vigilance needed to protect our freedoms.

Iraq - seven years later

Sat, 1 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The legacy of invasion

As I write this letter, Iraq’s fortunes hang in a delicate, dangerous balance. Politicians horse-trade, bombs continue to kill innocents and Iraqis get on with the art of survival. ‘Iraq is finished,’ a middle-aged man told me on my trip to the beleaguered nation in March. And indeed at times it felt like that: a broken, divided and ultimately colonized place. But, as always, it was the young people who inspired hope. A young actor, who had survived sanctions, Saddam and post-invasion violence, and who was rehearsing for a play about a beloved and fiercely nationalist poet, told me: ‘I love my country.’ And his statement was heartfelt. I often wonder about the children in this photo, taken in 1998 when I was reporting on the US bombing campaign called Desert Fox. Even the day after bombing, in the midst of a crippling embargo, they displayed so much joy and resilience. What has become of them now? And what will the future hold for their children? This issue offers only a handful of stories from a people who have suffered through decades of war, sanctions and occupation. But I hope it will give you a sense of the Iraqi spirit – al roh al iraqiya – that sustains them and has so touched me. And our special feature by Rwandan genocide survivor Jean Baptiste Kayigamba brings home both the damage done to victims of war and sectarian violence, and the urgent need to bring those accountable to justice.

Bloody oil - shut down the tar sands!

Thu, 1 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The extraordinary destructiveness of the tar sands is further proof – if any were needed – that we have to move away from our reliance on oil. But like it or not, that’s a big ask. Here at the New Internationalist Co-operative we try to put our principles into practice. So over the last few weeks we have been putting together a travel policy that, as one of its explicit aims, is intended to reduce the amount of flights we take as an organization. It’s controversial. Most people in our workers’ co-op support, in theory, a cap on the number of flights we take collectively over the year. But how do we decide? Should we ban flights to places in Europe, even if it takes more than a day to get there by train? Is it more important for an editor to fly to somewhere like Iraq or the Arctic for on-the-ground reporting, or for a member of staff from our Canadian, Australian or New Zealand/Aotearoa offices to come over to Oxford for face-to-face meetings, ensuring close, effective working relationships? Are we fetishizing flying when actually we only take an average of seven flights a year, which is already much lower than most similar operations? Are we risking losing touch with the world on which we report if we reduce the amount of time we spend out of the office? As we continue to tie ourselves in ethical knots, we would be interested to know what you think – and especially if your organization has attempted something similar.

Globalization on the rocks

Mon, 1 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Some time ago I read two pretty harrowing accounts of ‘seriously organized crime’. Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah describes it in the industrial hinterland of Naples. Misha Glenny’s McMafia visits similar territory almost everywhere else. The closer I looked into corporate globalization for this issue, the more it appeared to inhabit much the same place. The brutality, the banality, the blackmail, the bribes, the bets, the bag-carriers, the big bosses, the booty – the business model must surely have come from the same maker. The clearest difference between them is, of course, that one is considered legitimate. But even that has begun to blur. For instance, in Britain a venal but relatively paltry system of parliamentary expenses has been aping the antics of the corporate world for years. Was it really pure chance – I began to wonder – that induced the corporate media to ‘expose’ it, (thereby distracting public attention and discrediting parliament) only when immeasurably larger and more fateful sums of public cash were being requisitioned to salvage corporate globalization? Pure chance would be a fine thing. A profound conflict between corporate globalization and democratic legitimacy looks set to take centre stage for some time to come. After the Copenhagen climate change fiasco, more hopeful signs are now visible in Bolivia. A People’s World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth’s Rights starts in Cochabamba on 19 April. The prospects are explored in some depth on pages 21-24. By way of a reminder that the most significant causes always endure, on pages 34-35 some striking photographs celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day.

Too many of us? The population panic.

Fri, 1 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

At a political meeting recently, one woman got up and told us what rubbish ‘the media’ was and how you could not trust it. Others agreed. It gradually became clear that their idea of ‘media’ consisted of the corporate big fish in the mainstream. Not independent minnows like the New Internationalist. It’s no secret that print media is struggling in these straitened times. Newspapers are worst hit. But magazines too are feeling the pinch. New Internationalist is no exception. In some ways we are fortunate in that we never relied too much on the now collapsing advertising market. Nor have we had a sugar daddy or mummy in the background that could cut us off without a penny. Our business model is based on people like you subscribing to the magazine, buying the books we publish and the fair trade and ethical products we stock in our shop (shop.newint.org). And it’s thanks to you that the media does not consist entirely of just a few mass circulation titles in hock to corporate power. I’d love to hear from you (vanessab@newint.org) if there is anything you think we should be covering or could be doing differently. This issue’s main theme is the hot topic of population. Is the mounting panic about increasing human numbers reasonable? There’s an on-the-ground special report from the recent Copenhagen climate talks by Jess Worth. And we tell the inspiring story of an against-all-odds friendship between Rami Elhanan, an Israeli, and Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian, who feature in our best-selling book Nine Lives. As usual at this time, we present The Unreported Year 2009, a round-up of the best films, music and books, and the NI Jumbo Crossword.

Welcome to Copenhagen!

Tue, 1 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The Great Climate Sale

You may be wondering what Al Gore is doing on the front of this magazine. Hasn't he done an admirable job in raising awareness about the urgency of climate change? Isn't it a bit unfair of the NI to suggest that he views global warming as a means of generating a cascade of dollar bills? Well, yes and no. Millions of people have been moved by An Inconvenient Truth, but far fewer know that Al Gore was the original climate capitalist. It was Al who, back in 1997, insisted that business-friendly loopholes should be written into the first international climate agreement, allowing the industrialized world to ‘offset’ rather than curb its own pollution. Al has been lobbying hard for the expansion of carbon markets ever since. Now, I in no way wish to play into the hands of the US climate denialist nutjobs who point to Al's significant investments in carbon trading firms as evidence that climate change itself is a massive scam he dreamed up to boost his personal fortune. That's dangerous nonsense. The scam here is that the world's rich and powerful, including Mr Gore, are claiming they can fix the broken system that has brought us to the brink of climate catastrophe with the same tools that broke it. This will come to a head at the UN Climate Summit this December in Copenhagen. Hopefully this magazine will help you make sense of what's going on. I'll be there, reporting for the NI, so check our website for news and views you won't find in the mainstream media. Elsewhere in this issue, Jeremy Seabrook calls for socialism to be rescued, and we mark two 25th anniversaries: the birth of Brazil's Landless Movement, and the world's worst industrial accident in Bhopal, India.

Terror takeover

Sun, 1 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The monstrous march of the security state

Sometimes a story can make you want to run away and hide. I was on the phone to Ajit Sahi, talking about his tenacious reportage that had blown the lid off one particular narrative. Last year he had investigated how the Indian state had banned a grouping called the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) just days after 9/11, and thereafter how the police had locked up scores of former SIMI members as suspected terrorists. Incredibly, Sahi was the first independent journalist to explore whether the charges held up. The rest of the Indian news media had been content to parrot the official line. Over three months, he investigated case after case, met many of the accused, their families – and discovered that there hadn’t been a shred of viable evidence presented in any of the cases. He recounted how, after meeting a stream of weeping relatives whose lives had been ripped up and hearing tales of gruesome abuse, he thought he was going crazy. The truth can be like that sometimes. And then he said what was on my mind – if it could happen to all these people, could it not happen to me or you? Given the right set of circumstances and prejudices, of course. In his piece for us, he looks back on that story and the continuing scandal of those wrongly accused. Terrorism must be countered with the sharpest and best means at our disposal, there can be no doubt about that. And our best attempts must also be made to plug its wellsprings with whatever works – often boring diplomacy. But we cannot let justice suffer, and kick aside years of work on building up human rights, as our first response to terrorism. Which is exactly what we seem to have done. It does nothing to solve the problem; instead we create new ones to get mired in. The quest for justice continues in our photographic Special Feature this month, which chronicles the dogged effort required all round in a situation as complex as that in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the use of rape as a weapon of war was widespread. And in our Essay from Sierra Leone, we see how an expensive international judicial set-up has left a rather impoverished legacy.

Islam in power

Thu, 1 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Change from within

‘Islam in power’ is a contradiction in terms, said contributor Ziauddin Sardar, when I first mentioned this issue’s title to him. The foundation for Muslim democracy, he maintains, lies in egalitarianism not in authoritarian theocracies. In fact, he contends, the whole idea of the Islamic state is un-Islamic, since the faith is a universalist not a nationalist movement. Grassroots decision making is much more in line with Islamic tradition than authoritarianism. I was thinking about this the other day while attending a service at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford. The sermon was about the need for community consultation and consensus, whose Islamic equivalents are met in the concepts of shura and ijma. Later there was discussion about how to re-invigorate the church and make it relevant in the modern world. Issues around women bishops and gay rights were the elephants in the room. I was reminded of issues the ‘Islamic world’ is contending with – ones that we explore this month. With dispatches from a Saudi feminist, an Iranian Jewish woman and a gay Iraqi Muslim activist, we hope to expand the concept of the larger ummah or community. And with a feature by Nafeez Ahmed on the connections between Western intelligence agencies and Islamist extremists, we offer a peek at realpolitik. On the way back from the service at Christ Church, I crossed paths with a Muslim man coming back from his isha prayers at the mosque. Ramadan mubarak, I told him, and he nodded back. Acknowledgement and inclusion of the other are pan-Abrahamic traditions that need to be revived on all sides. And our special feature this month on green law is all about acknowledging the rights of the earth itself. Here’s to the fine art of mutual respect.

Where have all the Bees gone?

Tue, 1 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I had a lot of help and advice when I was preparing this issue from people who know much more about bees than I’ll ever dream of knowing. One was Charlie Parker, a beekeeper who lives near Beamsville, Ontario, not far from Niagara Falls. Charlie generously gave me a day of his time, drove me to see some of his hives and told me his life story. He started keeping bees when he was 13; he’s now 62. ‘It’s just like a disease, beekeeping,’ Charlie mused. ‘Once you’re stung, you’ve got the bug.’ No pun intended. NI friend and frequent contributor Mari Marcel Thekaekara, and her partner Stan, also helped by contributing the article on honey gatherers in Tamil Nadu, India. Keeping it in the family, her two sons shot a wonderful sequence of photos to illustrate the article. Unfortunately, you’re not going to be able to read about Charlie in the pages of this magazine. Nor see all the photos sent by Mari and Stan. But take heart digital devotees. We will be featuring the full interview with Charlie and all the photos from Mari and Stan on our website when this issue is posted in a few weeks’ time. Instead, we’ve added some timely features – including an analysis of the foreign aid debate sparked by the contentious Nigerian academic, Dambisa Moyo. And a pressing piece from journalist Nick Harvey on the situation of Hmong refugees in Thailand. We’re still not sure if the exploding world of digital media will be our demise or our salvation here at NI. But at least it gives you a chance to read the stuff we couldn’t squeeze into print.

Surviving change in the Arctic

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Some like it cold

Am I a hypocrite? In order to put this magazine together, I flew halfway across the world, contributing to the very problem – climate change – that is threatening the Arctic’s future. Some of my colleagues felt that I shouldn’t have gone: it caused a heated discussion in the New Internationalist Co-op while I was planning my trip. They felt that the flight wasn't justified and that we risked losing our readers’ respect. But what is the alternative? Could I have written with accuracy about this extraordinarily remote, unimaginably different part of the world if I had never set foot in it? More importantly, how can we fulfil our mission to tell the stories that are ignored and bring out the voices that seldom get heard if we do not, from time to time, venture off the beaten track to find them? It’s a painful dilemma for anyone who is paying attention to the scale of the climate crisis – especially those of us who work on international issues. Here at the NI we will continue to wrestle with it. Don't worry, we're still all speaking to each other – but we’d love to know where you stand. While I was breaking every rule in the Good Climate Citizen’s handbook, thankfully our Australian co-editor was Doing The Right Thing. Chris Richards attempted to survive without using her car. You can find out how she fared in this month's Special Feature. In Mixed Media we review some fascinating documentaries – exposing the way NGOs are packaging poverty for Western consumption, and Big Pharma's latest money-spinner: 'female sexual dysfunction'. If that all sounds a bit heavy, then discover with us the powerful beats of Comrade Fatso, Zimbabwean rapper and modern-day freedom fighter. Enjoy!

China in charge

Mon, 1 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I remember the Cold War with no warmth. It was a time of paranoid rantings. In one corner sat the capitalist ‘running-dogs’ (the United States); in the other, those ‘communist bastards’ (the USSR). Ignoring the poor inside and outside their countries, both sides threw ever-increasing fortunes at an arms race doomed to fail. Russia collapsed under the weight of it. Today – as China’s influence on the world overtakes that of the United States – paranoid rantings are returning to international debate. In my country, Australia, there’s public disagreement between the intelligence and defence forces about whether we need to ramp up our military to defend ourselves from the Chinese. Putting aside the rather awkward reality that the Chinese outnumber Australians 60 to 1, the good news is that China gives no indication of wanting to take up arms and expand beyond the boundaries it already claims. It doesn’t need to. This magazine should help to explain why. ‘Emerging superpower’ is just one of those buttons that, when pressed, provokes extreme reactions in governments. In China, ‘dissenter’ is another. Twenty years ago this month, Chinese tanks rolled over protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The picture of a young man standing alone in front of one of the tanks was – and still is – beamed around the world. It is a potent symbol of the power of protest, celebrating the bravery of individuals who stand up against the full force of government to claim their rights. It is a timely reminder, for it is not just in China where repression rages. This month’s Special Feature, ‘You are being watched’, reports on surveillance tactics being used by police and special forces on picket lines from New York to New Zealand. Tiananmen Square may be closer to home than you think.

Multiculturalism

Fri, 1 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Multiculturalism. Is it working?

When designer Alan Hughes first pitched the cover that you now see on the front of this edition, I went, ‘Oh no...’ This kind of image is often used as a shorthand to pose questions of integration and identity. So up I got on my high horse, lecturing anyone who would listen about such essentialism. I felt uncomfortable that this woman was being reduced to her burkha, at the conflict of values suggested (‘Islam and the West’ – two grand monoliths!), at the singling out, yet again, of supposed Muslim identities when problems of cultural interaction are deeper and wider. There’s a debate on women’s clothing and choice raging in our Letters page at the moment and this seemed like an unhappy reflection of that, too. For me, identity and beliefs are about choice, taking on board the things to which I feel an affinity. But when the media goes into overdrive over ‘home-grown terror’ and ‘culture clashes’, I wonder about all those people identified immediately as being members of one group or another, and the limitations of such identity. Choice and reasoning seem to jump right out the window. But others in the NI co-operative felt differently. They felt the image went to the heart of people’s concerns about culturally diverse societies, concerns to which they might find some answers in the edition you hold in your hands. The provocation of the image, if such it was, could be answered by the nuance of the text. One more tricky decision was how to convey the issues surrounding faith schools. It would have been easy to run yet another piece analyzing and attacking their place in secular democracies. But I hadn’t really heard much from people who had been to such schools and when I interviewed Laura McAllister, she put up a robust defence. Whether I agreed with her was not the point; her personal experience animated the discussion. Getting to know the ‘Other’ is essential to making cultural diversity work to social advantage. Our Special Feature this month highlights peace initiatives among our most iconic ‘Others’ – Israelis and Palestinians. Despite everything that is stacked against them, civilians are picking up the common thread of their shared humanity. In the end that’s what it ought to be about.

Put people first

Wed, 1 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Jobs, climate, justice

So a receding economic tide has exposed the naked bathers. Once upon a time, a rising economic tide supposedly lifted all boats. The tide will rise again. Won't it? Well, the passing likeness of capitalism to one force of nature does not eliminate all the others. Throughout my lengthening lifetime capitalism has segued from one 'crisis' to the next, more like a cancerous growth. I can't, off-hand, think of a single day when a capitalist crisis of one sort or another was not seeking immediate attention. Though reports of the death of capitalism have often proved exaggerated, the tide receded most memorably just before the tsunami in 2004. Capitalism, socialism, fundamentalism, nationalism, isms and ists of all kinds have apparently failed us, claiming by way of an excuse that perfection would come with the next rising tide. In one sense everyone has been bathing naked – and finally has that one thing, at least, in common. So we have little choice but to recognize ourselves for what we are and consider the remaining options afresh. Some of them are remarkably attractive and are explored a little further in this magazine. At the same time, the New Internationalist has for once stepped out of the commentary box and actively joined the growing campaign for a just and sustainable future. One immediate focus is the mobilization (see pages i-xvi) around the 2 April meeting in London of the G20 – a self-appointed huddle of 'world leaders' that is part of the problem. In the years ahead, the real challenge will be to construct a more habitable and diverse economic, social and political 'architecture' from the bottom up, on much firmer foundations as a result. This will doubtless include the people of North Korea. You'll also find in this magazine a rare insight into the daily lives of people once judged to inhabit an 'Axis of Evil'. North Koreans may not be naked, but they are recognizable all the same. The financial meltdown has given the Minority World just a taste of what it has been like to live in the Majority World for far too long already. If the chickens do not eventually come home to roost, then eggs will be off the menu for good.

Mothers who die

Sun, 1 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This month’s main theme has been put together with the support of UNICEF. It actually emerges out of research and writing that I did last year for the UN agency, which has been doing its utmost in recent months to raise awareness of the unnecessary deaths of mothers and newborn children, especially in Africa and South Asia. I’ve been writing for UNICEF alongside my work for New Internationalist for eight years now, yet this is the first time for more than a decade that there has been such a close collaboration between the two organizations. We hope it will be the first of many. March marks the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile from Chinese-occupied Tibet, followed by thousands of his compatriots. Journalist Nick Harvey has visited Tibetans in both India and Nepal and heard about all the frustrations of life in exile – as well as their plans for future resistance. They are probably now wondering if the new US President might conceiv- ably make a difference to their situation. One of Obama’s first acts following his inauguration was to draw a line under one of the most shameful episodes in recent US history – the living monument to human rights abuse represented by its Guantánamo prison camp. This magazine carries testimony not only from a former prisoner but also from an ex-guard who is just as outspoken about the inhumanity of the penal regime. Maternal mortality, Tibet, Guantánamo... big issues clearly worthy of notice. But these editor’s letters rarely draw attention to some of our regular features that in their own quiet way tell us just as much about the shape of our world. Maria Golia’s Letter from Cairo, for instance, this month offers a vignette drawn from everyday life that speaks volumes about the knots of culture, race and class in which we all tie ourselves up.

Climate justice

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Taking the power back

'Is the economic crisis going to be the end of green?' New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has asked, provoking a furious debate online. I've been hearing such rumblings a lot lately. The financial meltdown has certainly eclipsed climate change as the crisis du jour: and if last month's UN climate talks in Poznan were anything to go by, it's making it even harder to get progress from governments that is anything other than cheap and half-hearted. This is a most dangerous state of affairs. It's like finding out that you've got cancer, but then delaying going to the doctor's for treatment for a few months because you want to repaint your house. No doubt your house needs a lot of work, but ultimately there's little point if you won't be around to enjoy it. Stopping climate change must be our number one priority – and this is the main theme of this month's magazine. But how we go about it goes hand in hand with the task of rebuilding a fairer economy, as we highlight in the 'Clean Start' special feature. The same crushing injustices that triggered the financial collapse have been driving global warming. Now, suddenly, we have an opportunity to change the system. Can we seize it? With this in mind, the NI held a 'Clean Start' event on 15 December. Speakers included NI contributors Walden Bello and Susan George, and the lively discussion ranged from how we got into this global mess, through specific policies that would put us on a fairer greener path, to how we build a movement to make it happen. Don't worry if you missed it – you can watch clips of all the speakers on our website. The stakes couldn't be higher. I urge you to get involved, at: www.newint.org/cleanstart

Crisis! Crisis! Food... Money... What next?

Mon, 1 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Manifesto for a fairer future

Told ye so! There, I said it – but for those of us long sceptical of corporate power and the money machine, it’s hard to resist the temptation. As stock markets tumble, banks plead for public bailout and predictions of a gloomy future cloud the neoliberal sky, we’re no longer prophets in the wilderness. And as usual, the real losers will not be those ‘who can’t afford to fail’ but those for whom failure has been preordained from birth. This issue deals with the series of crises that have hit so hard this year. The first part concentrates on the hunger crisis provoked by escalating food prices. This is followed by a special section dealing with the debt and credit situation that has plunged the world into the most serious economic downturn since the ‘Dirty Thirties’. In both parts we take an initial stab at what alternatives based on a fairer future might look like, and how to seize this vital moment. Over the years, the NI has spilt a lot of ink drawing out the common strands of experience (and often exploitation) that link people in the Global North to those in the Global South. But reality is now providing much more graphic lessons. During the 1980s almost every country in the South experienced a wrenching debt crisis as they tried to pay off usurious loans from big international banks recycling petrodollars. With the current ‘First World’ debt crisis, the shoe is on the other foot. Homes are being repossessed and job losses are starting to mount across the North. And who is responsible? Those same pesky financial wheelerdealers. So far the North has not experienced the widespread hunger and malnutrition that haunts a billion people – and counting – in the South. But we are facing some pretty hard times. What better point to start making the links of our common humanity, so that we can begin to control capital rather than the other way round. For, in the end, ‘told ye so’ will not build a fairer world.

Through Afghan eyes

Sat, 1 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The war that won't end

‘Good. You’re doing the obvious thing,’ said Zuhra Bahman, one of the contributors to this month’s New Internationalist. The ‘obvious thing’ in question was getting the main theme – on Afghanistan – written and illustrated by Afghans. I was pleased that she was pleased – but still a little worried by the logistics. Thirty years of armed conflict – yes, Afghanistan’s turmoil began two decades before the Twin Towers fell – has not fostered a rich and vibrant tradition of journalism in the country. Grinding poverty, warlord violence and Taliban strictures denied even the most basic education to large swathes of the population – especially women and girls. Today, press freedom supposedly prevails but the case of young reporter Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh, who is appealing against a death sentence for downloading material relating to women’s rights, suggests otherwise. The writers featured here are not to be silenced or intimidated, however. They have provided perspectives that are immediate and insightful; subtle, complex and brave. So have the photographers. Nearly all the pictures were taken by people trained in the remarkable home-grown Aina Photojournalism Institute in Kabul. Some had never held a camera before the institute was established eight years ago. Today they are producing first-rate imagery which is being sold around the world through the Kabul-based AINA Photo Agency/Afghanistan. Harder to sell these days is the disastrous model of capitalism that flourished under the watch of Alan Greenspan, head of the US Federal Reserve Board between 1987 and 2006. No single person is responsible for the current global crisis but Greenspan was the neocons’ economic guru and he could have read the writing on the wall had he chosen to. All of which makes him an appropriate target for this month’s Worldbeater. Meanwhile, for any nouveau pauvre city banker thinking of trading in the Porsche or the 4x4, we recommend our Special Feature – it’s all about the humble bicycle. Perhaps the ‘bamboo bike’ would suit? Special thanks to Abdul Basir of the British and Irish Agencies Afghanistan Group for his editorial advice, patience and readiness to make his contacts network buzz for this month’s main theme.

Wanted! For dodging tax justice

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

No-one enjoys paying taxes. So it’s not entirely surprising that conventional wisdom has taken the easy option and declared that the only good tax is a cut one. Less familiar is the way this became a ‘tax consensus’ imposed worldwide, much like the neoliberal Washington Consensus itself, with disastrous long-term consequences. For the time being, we’re still getting crunched by the consensus that is the real cause, even as its brokers cast aside what principles they ever had and blackmail taxpayers into bailing them out. Questions will have to be answered, and sooner rather than later, about what sort of taxes are now being paid by what sort of people to what sort of purpose, and these are explored in some detail in the main theme, which begins on page 4. Those who rely on the corporate media will not be fully aware, either, that a small island in the Caribbean has aspirations to become a ‘humanitarian superpower’. The extraordinary story of the 30,000 Cuban doctors who are propping up healthcare services around the world is told first hand-hand on page 34. If you share the Washington Consensus, you will dismiss this as political propaganda. If you think healthcare matters, there are plenty of useful lessons to be learned from the Cubans. Another example worth following can be found in the innovative campaign to prevent oil from destroying the much more precious Yasuní biosphere reserve in Ecuador. This was the focus of our July magazine and is the subject of our Yasuní Green Gold book of photographs, which is launched in October. The NI co-operative has decided to back the campaign in whatever way we usefully can. Our own limited resources are, of course, as nothing compared with what you, our many thousands of active subscribers and readers around the world, can achieve if you join in at this critical moment, which you can do quite easily by visiting www.newint.org/yasuni. In any event, we’ll keep you posted online and in future editions of this magazine.

Drowning in plastic

Mon, 1 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t know about you but I’m both an inveterate label reader and a sceptic – have been for years. Cans, boxes, bottles: you name it, I read it. It’s a bit of an in-joke at our family dinner table. There’s Dad reading the label on the pickle jar again. Maybe it comes from growing up when consumerism was still in its infancy and the wonders of modern science were accepted without question. ‘Better living through chemistry’ was more than an advertising slogan back then – it was, in those innocent times, a declaration of faith in modernity. Then came DDT, asbestos, agent orange and horrors of Love Canal. Suddenly, corporate chemistry didn’t look so good anymore. Today it’s more of the same. The toxic substances in your sunscreen, shower curtains, plastic bottles and cleaning products may be killing you. Chemical companies are literally getting away with murder. Profits trump human health – the industry continues to peddle poisons with little accountability while resisting any attempts to regulate their trade. So I read labels, recycle like crazy, shun food additives and try to limit my intake of hazardous chemicals. But it’s not enough. As citizens we have the right to know what poisons are out there. We need to push our lawmakers to get tough. How can we allow industry to poison people for profit in the 21st century?

We need to think about toilets

Fri, 1 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Viva Yasuní! Life vs Big Oil

Tue, 1 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

It was Sam Martingell, one of our street campaigners, who sowed the seed for the main theme of this issue. He knew two young people who were desperate to communicate the wonders of Ecuador’s Yasuní rainforest, with a view to saving it and the cultures of its peoples from imminent destruction at the hands of oil companies. Sam put the two – Ginés Haro Pastor and Georgina Donati – in touch with New Internationalist’s publications department. The result is a stunning photo book Yasuní Green Gold which will be published in September. But we wanted to do more to draw attention to a potentially revolutionary proposal for tackling climate change: compensating oil-producing countries for loss of revenue as a result of their deliberately not exploiting fossil fuel reserves. Hence this month’s issue of NI, which we hope will help to explain the idea, stimulate interest, and save this ecologically crucial corner of the Western Amazon. The next few months are vital as the price of oil bites and the pressure on the Ecuadorian Government exerted by petroleum companies intensifies. But this could be the beginning of something quite momentous – a turning point not only for oil producing countries like Ecuador, but for all of us who would like to go on inhabiting this planet. Also in this month’s issue of New Internationalist, we are venturing into a territory less common for a current affairs magazine – verse. ‘As if poetry mattered’, is how NI co-editor – and poet – Dinyar Godrej puts it, and his international selection manages to be both refreshingly immediate and hauntingly relevant. While on the subject of creativity, few manage the fusion of politics, passion and imagination as well as Billy Bragg, whose latest album is reviewed on our Mixed Media pages. And to show that even those with massive clout don’t always win, we report on how the combined power of President Bush, BP, Barclays, Coca-Cola and Ford have failed to squash a multimillion dollar lawsuit against major corporations accused of persecuting South Africans by doing business with the apartheid regime. To find out what’s happening to the groundbreaking case, launched by former political prisoner Lungisile Ntsebeza and others, look at this month’s Currents section. PS We would like to thank the Municipal Government of Orellana, Ecuador, for allowing us to use the pictures of Yasuní that appear in this magazine.

Dropping the bomb

Sun, 1 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The lorry carrying the warheads stopped in a lay-by so the driver could go to McDonald’s. So Russell, who’d been following the convoy, ran in after him and shouted: “Hey everybody, want to see what Britain’s weapons of mass destruction look like? They’re parked just outside!” I’m in a café round the corner from the NI Oxford office, chuckling away at Nigel and Margaret’s story. They are die-hard anti-nuke activists, part of a network called Nukewatch which doggedly follows the bombs as they are transported up and down the country. They have documented brake failures, crashes and one hair-raising incident where a lorry carrying two warheads skidded on ice and rolled on to its side in Wiltshire. They show me photos of just how close a nuclear convoy comes to my house on a regular basis. I had no idea. Before editing this issue of the magazine, I’d mainly thought about nuclear weapons in the abstract. The revelation that the Government is making new bombs all the time and driving them round the Oxford ring-road came as quite a shock. If the powers-that-be had their way, we’d never know about any of this. The fact that we do is down to people like Nigel and Margaret, who sacrifice their time – and in some cases their liberty – to watch, track, bear witness and resist.

Paris Climate Talks - COP21

Wed, 2 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

#NICOP21

Covering the real story from inside the UN talks and on the streets, Jess Worth, Danny Chivers and Richard Roaf (our filmmaker) report from the frontline of the Paris COP21 negotiations. These are the reports that you funded! Thanks so much for your support, and don't forget to check our full coverage unfold online: newint.org/live/2015/10/27/cop21 Join the conversation on twitter using #NICOP21

World food crisis

Thu, 1 Mar 1973 00:00:00 +0000

The New Internationalist arises from and in response to this growing movement. For the last two years it has been going out every term to the 33,000 students in British universities who are giving a percentage of their grants each year to overseas development projects through the Third World First bankers order scheme. With this issue, the New Internationalist becomes a monthly magazine, backed jointly by Oxfam and Christian Aid, and aimed at a wider audience. It will report on the people, the ideas, and the action in the fight for world development; it will give a platform to the new social and political ideas from Africa, Asia, and Latin America; it will debate and campaign for the great changes which are necessary to bring justice and help to the world's poor. The New Internationalist is only one part of this campaign. But in asking you to subscribe to it, read it, write to it, talk about it, publicise it, we are asking you to join this growing movement for action on the greatest issue of our times.