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03 EditorialDemocraciareal YA!

06 Letters, Noticeboard Jeremy Hardy Thinks

08 PlattitudesTheworldaccording to Steve Platt

12 Under the radar Democracy squashed

36 Natural born rebel Bandile Mdlalose

57 A night at the multiplexSeanGittins talks to Mark Kermode about modern cinema and the role of the film critic

54 Toronto tales Juliette Daigre and Tom

Malleson guide us round Canada’s most radical city

60 Of with their heads! Red Pepper speaks to Martin Rowson about his 30-plus years as a scourge of the political establishment

66 Fight for power Selina Nwulu reviews new civil rights movement documentary Black Power Mixtape

62 Book reviews Britain’s Empire: resistance, repression and revolt, From Dictatorship to Democracy: a conceptual framework for liberation, More Bad News from Israel, No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way, The White Van Papers, Catch 22

n BP’s Olympic sponsorship n Extra bits from ‘Bashing the Fash’ n The food aid debate continues n Samir Amin at 80

Red Pepper is on Twitter as @RedPeppermag

04 red pepper dec | jan 2012 13 Occupy London! Creating space for change

Occupy LSX activist Kelly Bornshlegel talks about the dynamic democracy of the camps

15 A turning point in US politics?

Siobhan McGuirk visits the Occupy camp in Washington DC

18 MYTHBUSTER:The truth about the unions

Red Pepper knocks down some of the anti-strike myths thrown at the unions

34 Don’t fed the world? As the media again reports ‘famine in the horn of Africa’, Rasna Warah argues food aid can do more harm than good

37 In pictures:Then and now

Paul Weinberg introduces Afrapix’s work from apartheid-era South Africa and after

40 A quiet resistance Sokari Ekine meets women’s movements in the Niger Delta by Tom Lynton tomlynton.com with an introduction on page 27

28 HOPE FOR THE FUTURE Firoze Manji charts the revolts and rebellions across the continent

31 Aspiring to Tahrir Justin Pearce asks when

African hope will translate into real change

32 After Gaddafi The National Transitional

Council’s ‘new Libya’ is all too familiar, writes Tomy Miles

48 Olympian struggle East London activists write on their seven years of campaigning over the 2012 Olympics development

51 Winers and losers Richard Harkinson introduces those fighting the mining firms whose metal makes Olympic medals

52 Olympic waste In this extract from his latest book,

Ghost Milk, Iain Sinclair recalls a visit to the site of the Games

20 Educating the nation Melissa Benn, author of School

Wars, discusses education with teacher Anna Wolmuth

10 All work and no pay Anne-Marie O’Reilly and arren Clark report on plans to extend ‘workfare’

16 Punishing Palestine Liby Powell on how the US

has retaliated after Palestine’s UN statehood bid

24 The euro: break or remake?

enneth Haar opens our debate about the future of the euro

46 Bashing the fash Michael Calderbank speaks to some of those who have literally fought the fascists

42 Reclaiming the South African dream South African activist Vishwas Satgar looks at post‑apartheid South Africa 17 years on red pepper dec | jan 2012

05