Blueprint for a New Left
THE BATTLE FOR THE CANUCK SOUL – Deborah Campbell portends the death of Canadian peacekeeping.
FEEDING FRENZY – Chinese art shakes hands with global capital.
DOES THE ISRAELI TAIL WAG AMERICAN DOG? – Kathleen and Bill Christison on the special friendship that’s kept our world on the brink.
OUTLAW NATION - How Australia fell from global grace, by Eric Johnston.
Plus analysis and non-fiction by Leslie Sheffield, Paul Kingsnorth, Sue Lange, Ben Davis, Naomi Rockler-Gladen, Tom Green...
Images by Spazz, Brian Ulrich, Martin Parr, Wang Guangyi, Liu Wei, Chen Wenbo, Liu Jianhua, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Chnag Xugong, Zhou Xiahu, Li Shan, the Liu Brothers, Ai Weiwei, Liu Rentao, Hugo Tillman, Richard Phillips, Anne Wallace...
Guest art directed by Malcolm Brown.
Selected Articles
Christmas in China
Mike Levy
“Christmas,” says Mr. Honey, “is the day Americans celebrate the birth of Santa Claus.” Christmas Day is the exclamation mark on a week-long capitalist dream-come-true. Everyone I know has rushed out to partake in the buying spree. more »
The Death of Peacekeeping and the Battle for Canada's Soul
Deborah Campbell
Stephen Harper – the most pro-American prime minister in Canadian history – has moved into the driver’s seat and hit the pedal to the floor. While most Canadians still identify with peacekeeping, Harper has stated that what Canadians really want is a Canada that “punches above its weight.” more »
Outlaw Nation: The Lucky Country is No Longer So Lucky
Eric Johnston
Once upon a time, it was called the "Lucky Country." Australia's current problems began to take shape just over a decade ago, when Pauline Hanson and her anti-immigration, nativist (read: anti-Aboriginal and xenophobic) One Nation party won a seat in the federal election. more »
Dog Wagging in the Middle East
Bill and Kathleen Christison
Many have characterized the relationship between what the United States does in the Middle East and what the lobby wants it to do as a case of the Israeli tail wagging the US dog. Others maintain that the tail-wagging is the other way around: that the United States is unmistakably the senior partner and the dog that wags the tail. The question, therefore, is which is the accurate assessment? more »
In Search of New Comrades
Max Dunbar
This anecdote seems to encapsulate what's gone wrong with the left over the last few years. We believed that capitalism was not the best of all possible worlds; we believed in comradeship and justice and freedom. Now the anti-war movement demonstrates in Manchester and hold up placards calling for an Islamic caliphate and the right of theocratic regimes to develop nuclear bombs. What happened? What the hell happened? more »
Anabolic Art: Underground Chinese Art Meets Footloose Global Capital
Ben Davis
Several years ago, I happened to overhear two academic economists at a café. They were having the kind of conversation about China as an investment destination that rarely gets voiced quite so directly. The age of escalating corporate profits would never come to an end, they marveled, because there would always be more peasants from central China available to exploit. In the last few years, a similarly excited quiver could be heard in the voices of Western art dealers with regard to the seemingly inexhaustible well of undiscovered Chinese artists. more »
Suicides
Sue Lange
Let me try and draw a picture for you. I’d been downtown at the Berne facility for the Mentally Questionable for about ten years, always carrying a load of about 15 teenaged attempted suicides. The number ebbed and flowed. The kids drifted in and out. Sometimes I carried more, 18 maybe, sometimes less, around ten. But always a classroom full of individuals who had at one point declared “Enough!” more »
Economists Get Stern Warning
Tom Green
There are many reasons to be concerned about global warming, and now the Stern report on climate change has added the economic dimension to the worries we face with this mounting catastrophe. Leading ecological economists told Adbusters that they agree that climate change poses challenges to mainstream economics. Here is a sampling of their reactions. more »
Double the Joy, Half the Sorrow: Neuroscience & Friendship
Jenny Uechi
A young woman, face streaked with tears, picks up the phone and dials her best friend. She has just been laid off from her first well-paying job, and is overwhelmed by grief and self-loathing. How will she pay back all her loans? What will her parents say when they find out? more »
The Small-Mart Revolution
Eric rumble
The stark reality of corporate expansion and consolidation is more and more familiar: once-bustling downtowns rendered derelict; once-busy commercial warehouses abandoned; once-plentiful resources pillaged; once-promised jobs gradually axed. But consumers are starting to take back their territory and traditions. more »
Me Against the Media: From the Trenches of a Media Lit Class
Naomi Rockler-Gladen
“Today’s class is proudly sponsored by Nike, a strong advocate of education. When it comes to education, Nike says, ‘Just do it!’” I take a swig of my Pepsi. Over the years, I’ve resorted to lots of gimmicks like these in my quest to teach students about consumerism. more »
El Presidente: Will Ecuador's New Leader Break the Chain of Corruption?
Sean Angus MacKinnon
Largely unnoticed by the outside world, Ecuador is a country in quiet turmoil. After “20 years of a long and sad neoliberal night,” as stated by the president himself, it may finally awaken to a new socialist beginning. more »
