The Big Ideas of 2005

A special double issue full of the ideas that should change the world in the coming year. Featuring contributions by Norman Mailer, Slavoj Zizek, Ted Turner, Rick Poynor, Thom Hartmann, Arthur Kroker, George Monbiot . . .

Feature Articles

Life as Play

Jim McClellan

There are forces in informational capitalism that are undermining the current social contract, argues Scottish musician/theorist Pat Kane. The rise of open networks has led to open source, peer-to-peer networking and file sharing, and a new way of living, he says, in which we live to play, not to work. more »

School's Out

Matt Hern

I recently helped a kid who had never been to school get into a college kinesiology program. Shortly into my pitch, the admissions counselor stopped me and said, “She’s 19 right? Everyone over 19 is a mature student and accepted regardless of their academic background. Then it’s just sink or swim.” I paused: “You’re telling me you don’t need high school to get into college here?” “That’s right.” more »

Making another world possible.

Paul Schmelzer

There is an expanding chasm between rich and poor, looming environmental calamities, global terror seemingly growing in tandem with global markets. Now look at art being made today. Is art playing a vital role in mounting resistance to these forces? Does it have the capacity to catalyze social change? Or is artist Martha Rosler right when she says, "The total freedom of the artist in Western society also ineluctably signals total irrelevance"? As artists like Sam Durant are quick to point out, "art is an effective method of resistance and change - just as it is an effective tool for the maintenance of power or the status quo." But some recent strategies of artmaking are working to tip the balance to progressive change. more »

Coming in 2005: Revolution

Kalle Lasn

For 50 years after WWII, the US led grand narrative of the Western project has held despite some shaky moments. But now that narrative is unravelling. All the talk about spreading freedom and democracy around the world is increasingly seen by billions of people around the world as an excuse for keeping American consumers happy and voting for Tweedledum or Dee. more »

Hail the Multitudes

Michael Hardt

One distinctive feature of the most powerful political movements that have emerged in recent years is their refusal of central leadership and unified programs.This was clear, for example, in the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle as well as all the various antiglobalization and anti-war protests that followed. It’s a distinctive feature of the Zapatista movement. In this new framework there is no single movement but a movement of movements communicating in horizontal, decentralized networks. more »

Where to look for a revolutionary potential?

Slavoj Žižek

Today, there are many candidates for the position of “universal individual,” the particular group whose fate stands for the injustice of today’s world: Palestinians, Guantanamo prisoners . . . Palestine is the site of a potential event precisely because all the standard ‘pragmatic’ solutions to the Middle East crisis repeatedly fail, so that a utopian invention of a new space is the only ‘realistic’ choice. more »

Forget the State, It's Time for Global Democracy

George Monbiot

In his novel The Elementary Particles (Atomised), Michel Houellebecq writes of the “metaphysical mutations” which have changed the way the world’s people think. “Once a metaphysical mutation has arisen, it moves inexorably towards its logical conclusion. Heedlessly, it sweeps away economic and political systems, ethical considerations and social structures. No human agency can halt its progress- nothing, but another metaphysical mutation.” more »

The Myth of Balance

Kathleen Christison

A friend recently said that she had come to believe the level of Israeli violence against Palestinians is now so great that a balanced approach to the two sides - the middle way promoted by so many peace groups – has become totally untenable. more »

Politicians of the Year

Adbusters Staff

Mikheil Saakashvili started 2004 off by winning 96 percent of the vote in Georgia’s presidential election. Since then he has moved to reduce poverty, end corruption and unify his fractured state. But he refuses to bring wayward provinces South Ossetia and Abkhazia back into the fold through violence, vowing: “Georgia is fully committed to solving these conflicts through solely peaceful means. Georgia will not and cannot use violence to solve these conflicts because no democracy can go to war against its own people.” more »

A Crack in the Facade

Esther Kaplan

For the past 10 years or more, surveys consistently find that a majority of American Jews favor ending the Israeli occupation and dismantling Jewish settlements in return for peace. But this view has never held sway in Washington, where a commitment to going to the mat for Israel, no matter how outrageous that country’s provocations, is the closest thing the United States has to a coherent policy toward the Middle East. more »