Mark Fisher’s book 'Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?'is a persuasive diagnosis of contemporary society, an analysis of its political impasses and a call for fresh organization and thought. In a wide-ranging interview, from Spinoza to Deleuze to Wall-E, from Supernanny to post-autonomist theory, Ceasefire's Alex Andrews talked to Mark Fisher about his book, education, the internet and the prospect of moving beyond capitalist realism.
Last week, Mark Zuckerberg, the Billionaire founder of Facebook, announced a $100million dollar donation to Newark’s crumbling public education sector. Much of the media attention has focused on how this coincided with the release of The Social Network, a biopic casting Zuckerberg in a negative light. However, the much larger and more pressing issue was ignored: that of why the US public school system is so desperately reliant on private donations in the first place. Ceasefire's US correspondent Humza Tahir reports.
With so much going wrong with our world, we still find it easier to focus our resentment and antipathy onto one single avatar: "The Banker", "The System", "The Man". As Corin Faife argues in this week's Modern Times column, it might be time to come up with a better target: The Beast.
In the news this week in Latin America: Brazil's bails out its oil company, Mexican mayors escape to the US, rising insecurity in Argentina and much more. Ceasefire correspondent Tom Kavanagh delivers his weekly round up of what's been going on south of the border.
In this week's Deserter's Songs column, Dave Bell revisits critical dystopia through the music of the Canadian band Silver Mt.Zion, which expresses a juxtaposition of horror and hope better than any other he knows. Their pained, sorrowful and always beautiful music invites the listener to meditate on the horrors of US imperialism; the ineptness of Canadian politicians and the general “shit and dismay” of a world in which neoliberal capitalism has run amok.
Since the introduction of the Terrorism Act in 2000, hundreds of new offences have been introduced and yet, this has hardly made us safer. Now that the legislation is up for review, Rizwaan Sabir argues, in his new column, that this is our chance to make sure we get rid of these redundant, harmful and unworkable assaults on our freedoms.
In a new regular column, Chess Corner, Paul Lam, Ceasefire‘s very own chess guru, explores the enduring mystique of a quasi-magical realm. Lam brings us the latest news on the various intrigues, rivalries, political machinations and, of course, epic duels. In his first column, Lam looks at what makes chess such a powerful obsession for so many.
You probably know that a woman threw a cat in a bin in Coventry this month. You probably don't know that 75 people have been killed in Pakistan by US drones this month. This isn't anything to do with you or your interest in current affairs. As Musab Younis shows in this week's CounterSpin column, the importance of a news story has almost no bearing on the coverage it receives.
Books - Thursday, September 23, 2010 11:15 - 6 Comments
Love him or loathe him, Slavoj Žižek is a cultural phenomenon. He seems to inspire unconditional adulation amongst his legions of followers and, predictably, equally unbridled derision amongst his many detractors. Some see him as a serious and original thinker, others as an overrated fraudulent showman. So who's right? Alex Baker tries to find clues in the pages of Zizek's latest offering 'Living in the end times'.
In an exclusive major interview, Noam Chomsky, considered by many to be the world's greatest public intellectual, responds to questions posed by Ceasefire Editor Hicham Yezza on the Middle East, global warming, the financial crisis, the future of the left, Iran, and on why all states are unacceptable.