Our guest Editor Mary Kaldor celebrates ten years of the Global Civil Society yearbook with contemporary ideas on politics from below: Ferenc Miszlivetz brilliant and gloomy on the EU’s fatal flaw after expansion, Bernard Dreano looks at the fate of Arab Spring; Moyes and Nash say that new technologies mean new forms of violence and demand twenty-first century disarmament from activists, while Robin Murray charts the extraordinary rise of a mutual civil economy.

Nowhere else in the English language can you grasp the realities of the pain in Greece. In the second of two superb articles, Iannis Carras patrols Athens for us after the vote and demands the fascists speak to openDemocracy (they refuse). Vassilis Mourdoukoutas fears a ‘liquidified country’ writing just before vote - that was not helped by a weirdly brave voting advice tool.

You can follow the French presidential election in 11 sharp diary entries by Philippe Marlière, all still gripping reads, while Patrice de Beer sums up the historic success of not to be under-estimated François Hollande, and we look hard at Le Pen and the events of Toulouse.

The British government agreed to transform the UK’s media environment to help NewsCorp, while knowing that the Murdochs ran a criminal conspiracy, argues Anthony Barnett in a forensic, must-read account. If he is right David Cameron must resign.

These all pose a question: is populism growing or in crisis? You can ask it in Russia, where Medvedev’s return as prime minister looks anything but a done deal as a contender emerges; in China, where the fall of Bo XiLai is historic; in London, as it votes for its Mayor; and in the USA, as Goldman Sachs breaks the truckers. There is a young person’s view too, James Warner sees good in The Hunger Games.

On 50.50, following on from Yakin Erturk’s unforgettable account of women caught in the crossfire of patriarchal culture wars, Rebecca Johnson launches her feed-back from the talks on Non-Proliferation in Vienna.

And Graham Room in the latest Uneconomics debate says “euthanasia of the rentier”, no less, is essential for growth - and democracy. 

To end on a positive note, we were happy to introduce our new editor-in-chief: welcome on board Magnus Nome.

Four links not to miss:

Desertec - solar energy from North African deserts to power Europe

Greece’s painful transition

The Military-Academic-Industrial-Media complex....

Iceland’s president speaks up

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