New Internationalist

North American magazine cover

The arms trade

It’s 50 years since Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex. Today we have moved from the Cold War to Continual War, all at great public expense. Time to bring the arms industry into the line of fire.

Plus: The Euro debt crisis: default or bailout • Antony Gormley • Everyone’s mother: the inspirational life story of a Brazilian trash-picker

December 2011, Issue 448

Subscribe for just $9

We post a sample selection of articles from each issue online.
To get the full magazine delivered to your inbox, iPad or iPhone sign up here.
Past magazine covers
Photo
“The New Internationalist is invaluable.”
David Suzuki
Photo
“People these days crave information that helps them to make sense of the world and the New Internationalist does that brilliantly.”
John Pilger
Photo
“New Internationalist reports on global issues with an adventurous spirit and a probing social conscience.”
Utne Reader
Photo
“NI is independent, lively and properly provocative. Read it!”
Desmond Tutu
Other ways to explore New Internationalist: Sample our past issues • Browse by theme • Buy this issue

Analysis

Anxieties of influence
The arms industry tends to have the government's ear. Why, wonders Dinyar Godrej, when it is so counter-productive?
Arms trades - the facts
Washington's white elephant
William D Hartung on the world's most expensive (pretty obsolete) combat aircraft and the unholy battle to keep producing it.
The shadow world
Andrew Feinstein examines the corrupt networks of arms deals. His own political career got choked in one.
Rise of the drones
The Terminator tendancy to the fore as countries rush to aquire weapons that can be steered from half a world away. Chris Cole reports.
God is my alarm clock
Meet Dona Maria Bras - a hero of the streets and one of the founders of a movement spreading across Brazil, giving the country's waste-pickers back their dignity. By Deia de Brito.

Agenda

Johnson and Johnson shuns poor people with HIV
On World AIDS Day, a stark reminder of how Big Pharma drug patents deny HIV treatment to the developing world.
Is India's anti-graft push off-target?
The Occupy movement goes viral
Zambia vs China
Time to explode myths of the eurozone crisis

Argument

The Euro debt crisis: bailout or default?
Stergios Skaperdas and Davis Olive debate the best strategy for Greece and beyond.

Arts

'I've not got a nice one for fracking...'
Poet and activist Nnimmo Bassey on mobilizing resistance through the arts.
Reviews
Films, books and music from around the world reviewed.

Alternatives

Gardening in the margins
Derelict inner-city sites are being transformed by green-fingered volunteers. writes Anna Weston.
The warm, green glow
A way to stay cosy without your green credentials going up in smoke.

Action

Don't just sit there!
Events to tempt you off the sofa this month.

Regulars

Letters
Cargill's role in food price spikes; population woes; and the plight of Iraq's Christian minority ignored.
Country profile: Federated States of Micronesia
Facts, figures and ratings.
Letter from Cairo
Mario Golia experiences beautiful music and blunt talk at an impromptu gathering.
Mark Engler
Why America's 99 percent have rebelled.
Cartoon corner
Polyp's Big Bad World, Marc Roberts' Only Planet and guest cartoonist Farhad Forountanian, and Iranian living in the Netherlands.
Puzzle page
Anna Chen
Big business turns TV toxic.
And finally...
Sculptor Antony Gormley's works pose as many questions as answers about the human condition, discovers Libby Powell.