It was a hot summer s afternoon when cartoonist Brick dropped into the NI offices with examples of his work. He d come from Third World First, the student campaign organization just up the road where the seeds of what was to become New Internationalist were first sown more than 20 years ago. Brick had been collaborating with them on a campaign against Third World debt and they had suggested he come and see us too. We had not used his work before - and immediately wondered why not when he was so clearly on the same wavelength. He was doing with cartoons what we at NI try to do mainly with words and photographs - devising stimulating, imaginative and lucid routes into important, dense and complex subjects.
Debt is just such a subject.
We know that it is probably the single most powerful cause of poverty and misery in the world today. And there is important and innovative research being done in this area. That s where this month s NI steps in aiming to bring new, eye- opening ideas in a startling format that can be quickly understood and used in campaign or classroom. She has produced the boomerang theory , which explains how Third World debt harms not only most people in the debtor countries but also most people in the creditor countries too. It s a significant departure from the conventional wisdom that Third World debt is essentially a Third World problem from which the rich world profits.