Adbusters Archive

The (almost) complete archive of all the stuff that Adbusters has ever made - Articles! Podcasts! Spoof ads! - in one convenient place for your viewing pleasure.

Articles

Usually exclusive to our physical magazine, we’ve treated non-subscribers to a selection of some of our best print pieces.

City of Thieves

Which island country plays host to the most egregious financial misdeeds? Hint: it’s no beach-blanket paradise. It’s the UK, and London — its crime den of a capital — is at the heart of a globe-spanning system of money laundering, tax evasion and fraud, pumping dirty cash and facilitating dirty dealings around the world. Forget Switzerland, Luxembourg and Ireland, Hong Kong and Singapore, Delaware and South Dakota, Panama and all the rest. Britain, including its overseas holdings such as the Cayman Islands, is the world’s crowning tax haven. Over two-thirds of the 956 companies named in the Panama Papers and linked to public-office holders were incorporated in the British Virgin Islands — which, as its name suggests, is very much a part of the UK. But far from the tropical shores of the former empire’s colonial conquests, London itself — the place where the really bad stuff goes down — sits at the center of the spider’s web.

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Pay Up

The truth is out. The crimes of colonialism have been laid bare. Now, in return for centuries of rape, pillage, slavery, and exploitation, the moment has come to ensure the descendants of colonised peoples get their fair share of the spoils. Calls for reparations are as old as the evils they seek to redress. Yet in the wake of Queen Elizabeth’s death, new energies are being harnessed to compel the onetime tyrants of Europe to compensate those they tyrannized. “Pay up” is on the lips of every half-righteous observer of the imperial legacy — and for good reason. The time is ripe for the expansionist West to pay reparations not merely for the suffering it caused but for ruining ways of life going back ages, leaving behind scars both psychological and material which may never heal.

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World War 3

The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran's top nuclear scientist, was carried out by Israel's Mossad using an autonomous machine gun.‍Russia is developing an undersea Poseidon nuclear torpedo that can travel across an ocean under its own guidance, evading existing missle defenses to deliver a nuclear weapon days after it is launched.‍This is the brace new frontier of the 21st century warfare. Nothing will stop the current crop of nuclear powers from pushing their autonomous warfare capabilities to the limit. It will be an arms race like no other (with China quite likely coming out on top).‍Will autonomous killer robots lock out their human creators and duke it out in WW3? ‍Is a ghost-nukes showdown between the forces of autocracy and democracy inevitable?‍Only We the Poeple of the world, coming together forthefirsttimein history as a global community, can stop the madness.

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Deep Dives

Dive deep into long form features on everything from smartphone addiction to what a True-Cost global marketplace would mean for the economy.

Lone Wolf Activism — Live Without Dead Time

The only thing that gives me satisfaction lately is going out and getting my nose dirty. Pulling off some little act of subversion — like placing an OUT OF ORDER sign on an ATM, or taping an Ultimatum to World Leaders poster on a bus stop shelter. Once in awhile I’ll drop by the economics department of the University of British Columbia and pin KICKITOVER MANIFESTOs on professors’ doors. In future I might, I dunno, let the air out of some SUV tires; place a stink bomb in a bank; throw a handful of pixel dust in Justin Trudeau’s face. Such acts of civil disobedience aren’t exactly denting the universe. But they always turn my day around. Like, now I have the strength to fight another day.

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Capitalism has Failed and Degrowth Communism is the Future

An Interview with Kohei Saito, Kohei Saito, a professor of philosophy at the University of Tokyo, seems poised to become the new Thomas Piketty, winning scores of converts to anti-capitalist economics within mainstream Western culture. His new book has just been released in the United States as Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto

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I am Four

I am four. A man who is supposed to take care of me touches me in a way that I know is wrong, even when I don't have the vocabulary to explain it. When my mother, white with rage, complains to my family, she is told off. In Kerala there is a saying: whether the leaf encroaches on the thorn or the thorn encroaches on the leaf, it's the leaf that tears. In other words, it is not their job to protect the girl; it is the mothers' responsibility to protect her daughter.I am eleven. I hear what's said about me: Too bossy. Talks too much. Doesn't have enough girlfriends. Doesn't help out in the kitchen. At a family vacation, a man six times my age puts his disgusting mouth on mine without my consent. My aunts and uncles are in the room just next door. Many years later, recounting this story to my mother, I realize the violence I experienced was a mere slight compared to what she and her mother

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Spoof Ads

Our fingers are on the global pulse, counting beats as we stutter towards the throes of death. If you want to know what Adbusters thinks about the news, this is where you find it.

KalleCasts

We're in the middle of a guerrilla marketing war for the future of the planet. Conventional weapons are useless — all we have are ideas. These are the best of our culture jams.

Media

Listen to the voice of Adbusters proffering sweet ASMR vibes about the end of capitalism and where Occupy Wall Street went wrong.

Adbusters 161: Hope/Nope

The Pulse

Memes can be cinematic too. Turn up the volume and watch the chaos of the world unfold and disintegrate before your very eyes.

Unprime Day

Prime Day, Amazon’s yearly deal-hawking hoopla for its swindled subscribers, begins on June 21. And there’s never been a better occasion to cancel your Prime membership and boycott Amazon and all its subsidiaries (which include AbeBooks, Amazon Studios, Audible, Book Depository, ComiXology, Goodreads, IMDb, Twitch, Whole Foods, Zappos, and dozens more).

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Why Don’t We Put the Head of the Sackler Family in Jail for Life?

For two decades Purdue Pharma peddled the falsehood that OxyContin, the painkiller at the heart of the deadly opioid epidemic, was safe and non-addictive. “More people in the United States died from overdoses involving opioids in 2017,” in Nature’s account, ”than from HIV- or AIDS-related illnesses at the peak of the AIDS epidemic.”

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Who Will Win the Planetary Endgame?

Our world is being carved into two spheres of influence. For now, those spheres are limited merely to economic competition. But as the the tension mounts, there is a real possibility that the China-vs-U.S. face-off could spill over into an all-out war — a global fight for worldwide hegemony — maybe even World War 3.

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