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Usually exclusive to our physical magazine, we’ve treated non-subscribers to a selection of some of our best print pieces.
Every revolution, every authentic revolution, promises to redeem the failures of its predecessors. This is what Walter Benjamin thought — or at least, this is what Slavoj Žižek says Benjamin thought at the end of The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012). Paraphrasing Benjamin, Žižek says in the film that all the unsettled ghosts of the past will at last find rest in the new freedom born out of the true revolution to come. Yet he warns the path to this freedom comes with no guarantees. There is no train of historical inevitability that can be ridden to the safe harbour of emancipation. Getting there all depends on a fickle crowd of free riders, a ragtag huddle of the flighty and the faithless. They should be a familiar bunch because, it turns out, they are us. Our liberation rests on nobody’s shoulders but our own.
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The UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the liberal international order sought to guarantee rights on an individual level. These promoted freedom of thought and expression, of religion, of movement and association and of sexual orientation, whereby ‘any particular freedom is to be respected only insofar as it does not violate the equal freedom of others.’ Within a liberal international order, such ‘rule by the people’ encompassed freedom of political participation, representation, expression and association. It also included having regular free, inclusive and equal elections, the presence of accountable and transparent political institutions to guarantee the individual liberties and rights of citizens, and access to competing information. At its core, the US endorsed electoral democracy as the central and unquestionable pillar of its preferred international order. Such social and political rights are seen as being generalizable to the internal basis of all countries, and hence the whole international system. They also produced a sense of solidarity among Western countries concerning the preservation of a common social and political basis.
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Scientists used to think there were only six human emotions — anger, surprise, disgust, enjoyment, fear and sadness. We now know there is a seventh: awe. Awe is the feeling, registering more in our body than our mind, that we’re in the presence of something so vast and deep and powerful that it swamps our present understanding of the world. A skyful of stars in the middle of nowhere. A soaring piece of art. An act of wild kindness, fugitively glimpsed. Or an existential threat.
Read More...Dive deep into long form features on everything from smartphone addiction to what a True-Cost global marketplace would mean for the economy.
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.
Read More...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. 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
Read More...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.
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.
Listen to the voice of Adbusters proffering sweet ASMR vibes about the end of capitalism and where Occupy Wall Street went wrong.
Memes can be cinematic too. Turn up the volume and watch the chaos of the world unfold and disintegrate before your very eyes.
As the remaining shreds of Myanmar's long-troubled democracy disintegrate, atrocities are being committed against civilians. But where is the rest of the world?
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On Wednesday, imprisoned activist Alexei Navalny began a hunger strike to protest the unfair treatment he has received as an inmate of a penal colony outside Moscow. But while Navalny's hunger strike highlights the shameful handling he has been subjected to, there is much that can be done from...
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What do the dictatorial Mugabe regime, the Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar, the Sudanese junta, and now Myanmar's genocidal military government have in common — that is, besides a shared taste for blood and brutality?
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