Category: Uncategorized
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A New Modernity
A review by R. Burke of Nick Srnicek & Alex Williams' Inventing the Future; Postcapitalism and a World Without Work. A necessary ingredient for the success of the world-left is a cultural climate of modernism. We may debate exactly when the period of modernism begins, but referencing the history of Western Art can help…
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Are Fair Skies Possible?
A Review of Brian Tokar's book Toward Climate Justice: Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and Social Justice (Porsgrunn, Norway: New Compass Press, 2014). This expanded edition of Brian Tokar's book is a concise, valuable summing-up of the most important issue facing humanity today: how to stop runaway climate chaos while at the same time achieving…
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Remember the Future?
A review by R. Burke of Douglas Murphy's Last Futures; Nature, Technology and the End of Architecture. Those of us who lived during the ‘60’s and early ‘70’s can remember a time when it was taken for granted that technological progress would lead to some kind of utopian world. The 1964 World’s Fair in New York…
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“Where to Invade Next”: A Review
“Where to Invade Next” by Michael Moore, reviewed by Kim Scipes Michael Moore’s new movie, “Where to Invade Next” is not what you’d expect from Moore. It is not some jeremiad against US nefariousness somewhere around the world, nor is it an enraged assault on capitalism, our health care “system” or anything else. What it…
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The Paris Climate Agreement: Hope or Hype?
It has become a predictable pattern at the annual UN climate conferences for participants to describe the outcome in widely divergent ways. This was first apparent after the high-profile Copenhagen conference in 2009, when a four-page non-agreement was praised by diplomats, but denounced by well-known critics as a “sham,” a “farce,” and a mere face-saver.…
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The Blob That Ate the Whales
The photo of brown bears feeding on a fin whale carcass near Kodiak is stunning: two species of Alaskan charasmatic megafauna we rarely if ever see together. What's more, there are several bears – a group of mother and cubs at each end of the carcass – because the whale is so large that there…
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Review: American Gandhi
A review of Leilah Danielson's American Gandhi: A.J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the Twentieth Century. A Question American Gandhi: A.J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the Twentieth Century is the most comprehensive and thoroughly-researched account of the life of A.J. Muste yet to appear. It is particularly valuable in its…
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Like A Clap of Thunder
A review by R. Burke of Kate Evans' Red Rosa; A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg. When the Cold War ended many shortsighted, and ill-informed people thought we had reached the end of history, and that Capitalism had triumphed, Socialism had failed. Today, after the events of the first 15 years of the 21st…
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Beware of the Centrist!
A review by R. Burke of Tariq Ali's The Extreme Centre: A Warning. Debates about "reform versus revolution" on the Socialist Left are by now more than a century old. Yet it seems that the political climate at this time is one in which even the revisionists of the German Social Democratic Party of…
