After 11 years as East, we felt the time had come to make the challenge we face clearer even in the magazine’s title: to offer a convincing interpretation of international affairs on a global scale and not necessarily with an oriental bias. Wherever a war is raging or a trade deal is being signed, the impact of today’s events cross national boundaries at the speed of the web, from east to west, north to south. I am taking on the role of editor of this magazine from this edition onwards, and so I’d like to thank the publisher and the newsroom for showing their faith in me. We all want to continue reporting international politics and its many interweaving narratives for an ever expanding pool of readers. We will try to analyse the most important facts using all the means at our disposal: texts, photographs and the web. The latter has now become an independent publication, separate from the printed magazine, with online updates five times a day, seven days a week. I am proud to assume the mantle of a geopolitical magazine that is distributed in 23 countries spanning three continents, from the United States to Japan. No other mainland Europe publication can make such a claim.
We had to decide the cover story for this new beginning and we had no doubts: Pope Francis is now launching an extraordinary jubilee at a time when the survival of our democratically organised communities here in Europe is at risk.
Our model of civil cohabitation is being severely tested. At first by these seven long years of dramatic economic crisis, now by these terrible and tragic terrorist attacks, which I have trouble referring to as Islamic, given the complexity of the issue. The ethnic and socio-economic marginalisation of our own suburbs will certainly have to be called into question, as this is where the holy fires of terrorism have developed, albeit in an amateurish (and clearly not militant) form, yet no less dangerous and worrying.
The political motivation these young people display is not underpinned by any form of cultural awareness (any comparison with the Italian terrorist movements of the ’70s is way off the mark) since, in most cases, these youngsters have no background of civil commitment and are instead swayed by very superficial and commonplace role models.
Alongside a European coordination of intelligence that cannot be delayed any longer, we must also investigate what causes such dissatisfaction among these youngsters, straightjacketed by their ethnic background or their inability (partly due to the kind of role models they have) to find stable employment.
This calls for responsible, competent, farsighted politics, not the kind that’s constantly busy fishing for votes for its next domestic election campaign. Another matter is how to seriously confront the caliphate’s archaic and delusional plans for the now lawless territories of Syria and Iraq, which we will discuss at greater length in the editorial.
An analysis of the justifications for holding an extraordinary jubilee would have made sense even before the Paris attacks, but today it does so even more, as new forms of interfaith dialogue and social inclusion policies become essential as a way of stimulating discussions on how we can go beyond national boundaries (in order to remove them, certainly not to build new ones or re-instate old ones) and decide which policies can really boost widespread sustainable growth within our economies.
Thank you for reading our magazine and sharing your views with us.
We had to decide the cover story for this new beginning and we had no doubts: Pope Francis is now launching an extraordinary jubilee at a time when the survival of our democratically organised communities here in Europe is at risk.
Our model of civil cohabitation is being severely tested. At first by these seven long years of dramatic economic crisis, now by these terrible and tragic terrorist attacks, which I have trouble referring to as Islamic, given the complexity of the issue. The ethnic and socio-economic marginalisation of our own suburbs will certainly have to be called into question, as this is where the holy fires of terrorism have developed, albeit in an amateurish (and clearly not militant) form, yet no less dangerous and worrying.
