THE STARTING-POINT
The altered landscape
The fractured violence of the post-11 September world makes it all the more necessary to chart new paths into a better future, argues Jordi Pigem.

GLOBAL DEMOCRACY
A parliament for the planet
Globalization without representation? George Monbiot demands a real voice for the world’s people.

CULTURE
Unchaining captive hearts
Beyond the global monoculture, Jeremy Seabrook celebrates alternative ways of being embodied in diverse local cultures.

The right to rave
Eduardo Galeano claims our right to dream, to dance, to demand the impossible.

Illustration: Sara Fanelli

ENVIRONMENT
Going down in history
Global warming is sinking the island state of Tuvalu. But the concept of ‘ecological debt’ could yet bring the rest of earth back from the brink, as Andrew Simms explains.

RELIGION
Time for renaissance
Tehmina Durrani has launched her own movement for Islamic renewal to reclaim her faith from the fundamentalists.

The impossible dream
1789 and 2001. They said it could never be done. Dangerous demands from
the French Revolution set against our own.

JUSTICE & SECURITY
Might or right
The world has to be able to intervene to stop genocide. But Peter Singer contends that we need a new rulebook – and new global institutions to write it.

MONEY
Heavy surf and tsunamis
Ellen Frank explains why even the globalizers may have an interest in financial reform, while Carolyne Culver puts the Tobin Tax on the table.

Give us your dreams
A selection of NI readers’ own utopian visions.

FOOD & FARMING
The end of the styrofoam strawberry
The hungry will be fed not by ever-grander schemes, ever-bigger farms, but by smaller farms that are more in touch with the earth, believes Peter Rosset.

LOCAL RESISTANCE
Bringing it all back home
Jim Shultz hones some strategic tools we can use to fend off the free-trade agenda.

Your feedback
What do you think of this magazine? Give us your feedback. You can sample the views of other NI readers too.

“I have here a magic potion given to me by a great magician of the Amazon. It has marvellous properties and can work miracles,” says Durito the beetle, taking out from under his shell a little bottle of sherry.

I ask: “And if you take this potion, will it enable you to understand neoliberalism and construct an intelligent alternative?”’ The questioner in this short story is the Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos.

Needless to say, the NI has no such magic potion. We have no utopian manifesto, nor overarching blueprint. What we do have is a passionate desire to change this savagely unequal world.

In this spirit, we approached various writers, activists and advisors to ask for their visions of another possible world – starting with a seminar held on 12 September. Given what happened the day before, the discussion took place under a shadow but seemed all the more vital as a result.

This magazine is the eventual end-product. It was created not by any one editor, but by our whole team.

It offers no single alternative to the current global system but many diverse pathways into a better, fairer world. This is not an end, but a beginning.

Katharine Ainger & Chris Brazier
for the New Internationalist Co-operative
kat@newint.org