Adbusters https://www.adbusters.org en a dada moment https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/dada-moment.html <br /></p><h3></h3><p>From Adbusters #123: <a href="/magazine/123" title="From the issue: Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI">Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI</a></p><p><img src="https://www.adbusters.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/magazine/splash_image/adbusters_123_dada_S.jpg?itok=ZjcVraIm" width="668" height="413" alt="" /><p>February 5th, 1916: <p>During the rational madness of the Great War, a group of artists and exiles founded the Cabaret Voltaire. Modeled after the 1880s Parisian bar, Le Chat Noir, the Cabaret’s inauguration was announced through a press release to Zurich Newspapers: “The Cabaret Voltaire. Under this name a group of young artists and writers has formed with the object of becoming a center for artistic entertainment. In principle, the Cabaret will be run by artists, permanent guests, who, following their daily reunions, will give musical or literary performances. Young Zurich artists, of all tendencies, are invited to join us with suggestions and proposals.”</p> <p>This open invitation culminates in the creation of Zurich DADA. On the stage of the Cabaret Voltaire a raucous and irrational counterpoint to the war occurs. The artists, in need of a cathartic release, called their open stage the center of the newest art. Upwards of 20 people would take the stage, reciting different pieces of writing simultaneously. Deliberately infantile behavior was common and intended to counter intellectualism. Hugo Ball will call the Cabaret a total work of art and for the first time gibberish, non-sense and anti-art are explored as acts of aesthetic terrorism, intended to break away from tradition and express life. With immediacy in the absence of representation, searching out a pre-rational self that existed at the kernel of the human psyche, they achieved an order of aesthetic anarchy previously unknown.</p> <p>Whenever we’ve faced an existential crisis, a new aesthetic is born. Artists, poets, designers broke out of the old ways of thinking and pushed us in brave new directions. Now, as catastrophic climate change threatens to plunge us into a 100000 year dark age, we need another of those great DADA moments to wash over us.</p> Mon, 25 Jan 2016 08:01:00 +0000 Adbusters 7863 at https://www.adbusters.org https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/dada-moment.html#comments Guatemala https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/guatemala.html <br /></p><p>by </p><h3></h3><p>From Adbusters #123: <a href="/magazine/123" title="From the issue: Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI">Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI</a></p><p><img src="https://www.adbusters.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/magazine/splash_image/adbusters_123_guatemala_S2.jpg?itok=XjKcG1Yl" width="668" height="413" alt="" /><p>The Swarm has spoken. In Guatemala, the collective action of thousands has led to the first signs of substantial change in decades. Led to the resignation and arrest of a President accused of stealing millions from his own people at the expense of basic public services. Led to the incarceration of 38 government officials and the denunciation of dozens more. Led to a seismic change in a nation with catastrophic murder and poverty rates, decades of repression, corruption, and civil war.</p> <p>Various branches of science talk of Emergence: the moment at which an unorganized system built of autonomous units begins to exhibit a complex, collective and mutually beneficial behavior. The self-organizing construction of ant colonies. The inadvertent hive-selection techniques of honeybees. The mechanism of indirect coordination between organisms, some trace left in an environment which stimulates the performance of the next complementary action by another, which leads to the spontaneous appearance of a coherent pattern necessary for continued survival. A collective consciousness. A swarm intelligence, dependent on no single leader, but beholden to the whole. To a single, achievable goal.</p> <p>And the Swarm has spoken. But Perez Molina was merely the flint. The embers have been smoldering for decades, not just in Guatemala, but all over Latin America: Brazil, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Honduras. Once the Swarm hit critical mass all it took was five months. Five months and tens of thousands of citizens in a steadily growing protest movement demanding justice, accountability, equality. A beautiful example of the Internet as a platform for equality and grassroots power. A beautiful example of the people’s ability to call the shots from below in the most unlikely of places, a nation where a few months ago, prevailing wisdom said it couldn’t have happened. The Swarm has spoken. </p> <p>Do activists stand at the edge of Emergence?</p> <p> - Jesse Donaldson</p> Fri, 22 Jan 2016 21:38:26 +0000 Adbusters 7860 at https://www.adbusters.org https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/guatemala.html#comments SkipAd Project - Caio Andrade https://www.adbusters.org/content/skipad-project-caio-andrade <img src="https://www.adbusters.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/images/download.gif?itok=1ZWqGjyM" width="600" height="400" alt="" /><a href="http://www.hicaio.com/" target="blank">SkipAd Project</a> - Caio Andrade<a href="http://www.hicaio.com/" target="blank">SkipAd Project</a> - Caio Andradehttp://www.hicaio.com/ Wed, 20 Jan 2016 20:06:18 +0000 Admin 7859 at https://www.adbusters.org https://www.adbusters.org/content/skipad-project-caio-andrade#comments Luxe https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/luxe.html <p>by </p><h3>We act to strike the global ultra luxury economy in the interest of making a new space for imagination</h3><br /></p><p>From Adbusters #123: <a href="/magazine/123" title="From the issue: Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI">Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI</a></p><p><img src="https://www.adbusters.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/magazine/splash_image/adbusters_123_oilbubbles_S.jpg?itok=93_1P_8_" width="668" height="413" alt="" /><p>We are living in times dominated by a global ultra luxury economy. This economy masks the theft of public space, the dispossession of citizens’ rights, the abuse of workers, the ruthless extraction of debt revenue and the propagation of seeds of more racism and violence everywhere. We act to strike the global ultra luxury economy in the interests of making a new space of imagination, one that builds power with people and facilitates the re-arrangement of our own desires in the struggle for justice and freedom.</p> <p>We amplify a cry that reverberates across the globe. From Istanbul and São Paulo to New York and London, the proliferation of direct actions is disrupting business as usual at elite cultural institutions: #BlackLivesMatter at the Museum of Art, collective pressure for boycott at Haifa’s Technion, worker solidarity disruptions at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC, to name but a few. </p> <p>We now see a diversity of tactics being employed. At times, uninvited assemblies inside museums are announced. At other times the unexpected occurs, unheralded. Actions take aim at a range of targets: labor exploitation, white supremacy, the capture of public space, climate injustice, gentrification, police violence, Israeli apartheid, rape and sexual assault, and more. They are beautifully disruptive within their own arenas.</p> <p>In the Gulf, Americans and Europeans doing business are called expats, whereas people constructing and maintaining these surreal cities in the desert are called migrant workers. Actions within and against this economy must make the struggle against racism and white supremacy an essential component. This extends to the occupation, exploitation, and ethnic cleansing characteristic of Israeli policy, indeed, a global cultural boycott of institutions connected to Israeli apartheid is well within our reach. Boycotts, strikes, pickets, die-ins, occupations, web hacks, media hijacks, whatever the combination of tactics, our actions are at once oppositional and abundantly creative. As we disrupt and refuse the role that art now plays in the normal functioning of a global system that propagates racism and inequality in its shadows, we make space for something new to come into the world. Let each action be an opportunity to test, to unlearn and to train in the practice of freedom. Let us expand our analysis, deepen our struggles and reimagine together what art can be as a force of collective liberation and international solidarity.</p> <p class="author-bio">— G.U.L.F. (Global Ultra Luxury Faction), excerpted from “On Direct Action: An Address to Cultural Workers,” E-Flux Journal, May-August 2015.</p> Wed, 20 Jan 2016 19:54:40 +0000 Adbusters 7858 at https://www.adbusters.org https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/luxe.html#comments A war of ideals https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/war-ideals.html <h3>The West is suddenly infused with self doubt</h3><p>by </p><p>From Adbusters #123: <a href="/magazine/123" title="From the issue: Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI">Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI</a></p><p><img src="https://www.adbusters.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/magazine/splash_image/adbusters_123_buzz_S.jpg?itok=yJVka-SB" width="668" height="413" alt="" /><br />Buzz salutes the U.S. Flag | NASA / Neil A. Armstrong</p><p>From under the floorboards of Fortress Modernity the West’s moral foundations are slowly crumbling. Contrary to its mantra, not all progress is good progress.</p> <p>Now the international community has taken notice. Disillusioned with the modern world, alternative ideologies are reaching for the gauntlet of power as it slips from the West’s hand.</p> <p> Western society has faced a long history of resistance to its imperialism. Since the 1790s, independence movements in regions such as Latin America, Africa and Asia have challenged the West’s authority. Instead of pushing an ‘anti-Western’ agenda, however, these rebellions focused on infusing Enlightenment values with their own cultural flavor. Not so today. For the first time, the West is assailed by escalating anti-Western sentiment.</p> <p> China’s President, Xi Jinping, pumps out government warnings against the insidious influence of the West. Still smarting over its unnecessary humiliation during the Opium Wars, modern China defines ‘Western values’ as a ‘non-traditional threat to its national security.’ Its policies towards economics, the media, think-tanks and NGOs directly oppose the West’s free-for-all moral culture. In contrast to the West’s selfish neoliberalism, workers in China toil for the common good. Pulling 680 million citizens out of extreme poverty in twenty years, China’s economic success far outstrips the West’s.</p> <p> A military powerhouse with a short fuse, Russia’s autocratic ruler refuses to compromise on his principles. Regularly quoting the doctrine of his favorite philosopher, Ivan Ilyin – a Russian nationalist with core fascist leanings – Putin hits back against the West’s unstable morals. In 1950, Ilyin correctly predicted that, under the dubious banner of ‘freedom’, the West would use any means necessary to dissolve parts of mother Russia. Ignoring its doctrines, the West curbed Russian independence to pursue its own agenda. Putin’s military continues to fortify against the West’s double standards, challenging their decadence to establish a Russian lifestyle.</p> <p> Jihadism similarly seeks to fill the void left by the West’s evaporated values. Founded upon the qualities the West has lost– community bonds, moral education, and a sense of decorum –fundamentalist Islamic groups scorn the West’s insecure principles. Radical Islamic fighters see physical violence as an antidote to the West’s hypocrisy.</p> <p> These alternative creeds aim to recreate a modernity where beliefs are still sacred: where Western modernity is reigned in. The West’s antagonists want to step back in time, to challenge its narrative of progress.</p> <p> And the West is afraid. Airport scanners. Armored vehicles. Aggressive trading. All a hyperbolic, blustering response to the threat of dominance. Post 9/11, it’s all about posture, military prowess, technological bravado. My tank is bigger than yours. My economy is better mechanized. But the West is fighting the wrong battle. This is not a war of technology. It’s a war of ideals.</p> <p> — Kate Wilson is a Vancouver-based writer and Cambridge graduate.</p> Tue, 19 Jan 2016 20:02:27 +0000 Adbusters 7857 at https://www.adbusters.org https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/war-ideals.html#comments the question of progress https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/march-progress.html <h3>the crux of the problem arises not out of psychology, but out of history</h3><p>by </p><p>From Adbusters #123: <a href="/magazine/123" title="From the issue: Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI">Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI</a></p><p><img src="https://www.adbusters.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/magazine/splash_image/adbusters_123_fire_S.jpg?itok=EpKvyWVh" width="668" height="413" alt="" /><br />afp - artyom korotayev</p><p class="lead">Several years ago, I took part in a conference of historians in London, addressing the question of whether there is such a thing as moral progress in history. </p> <p>Since the conference was timed to celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, I had assumed that the other participants would take an affirmative view. But I was surprised to find that I was the only one in the room willing to say there had been such a thing and indeed that there could be such a thing. </p> <p>That said, the opposition to the idea of progress that I saw in my colleagues did not seem to me to go very deep. It seemed almost entirely professional and notional, without any echo in the conduct of their busy, well organized, ambitious and purposeful lives. No such thing as progress? Seriously? Who actually lives with such an assumption? Even our occasional efforts to sound fatalistic in our speech betray all the things that such speech silently presumes: that, as free and purposeful beings, we cannot help projecting certain ideals or goals, if even only short-range or proximate ones, into the inchoate future. This is particularly so in the United States, where every lamentation has a way of turning into a jeremiad, and thereby into a form of moral exhortation and a call to improvement and thus to become the polar opposite of fatalism. The language of true fatalism would be stony and resigned silence and that is not what we see or hear. There is a difference between what we think and what we think we think.</p> <p>Still the idea of progress in history – the liberation of the Enlightenment, the grand choral ode of the nineteenth century, the marching music central to the rise and dominance of the modern West – has gradually become problematic to us. Not only is it our faith in the inevitability of progress that we question, but also the very idea that we would have any sure means of judging what progress is, if indeed it does occur. </p> <p>Some of this can be attributed to intellectual fashion or cultural boredom, or the occasional metastasizing of the Western self-critical impulse into a raging self-hatred, what Pascal Bruckner has called “the tyranny of guilt.” But the nub of the problem arises not out of psychology, but out of history. The idea of progress received a rude and unforgettable shock from the First World War and we have not yet found a way to incorporate fully what we learned about ourselves from the cataclysm. </p> <p class="author-bio">— Wilfred M. McClay, <em>The Great War and the Future of Progress</em></p> Tue, 19 Jan 2016 18:55:30 +0000 Adbusters 7856 at https://www.adbusters.org https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/march-progress.html#comments Why is our Flag black? https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/why-our-%EF%AC%82ag-black.html <h3>Howard Ehrlich | Reinventing Anarchy, Again</h3><p>by </p><p>From Adbusters #123: <a href="/magazine/123" title="From the issue: Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI">Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI</a></p><p><img src="https://www.adbusters.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/magazine/splash_image/adbusters_123_blackflag_S.jpg?itok=BSF5rTwM" width="668" height="413" alt="" /><br />santiago sierra</p><p>Because black is a shade of negation. The black flag is the negation of all flags. It is a negation of nationhood which puts the human race against itself and denies the unity of all humankind. Black is a mood of anger and outrage at all the hideous crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of allegiance to one State or another. It is anger and outrage at the insult to human intelligence implied in the pretenses, hypocrisies, and cheap chicaneries of governments.</p> <p>— Howard Ehrlich, Reinventing Anarchy, Again</p> <ul class="tags"><li><a href="/taxonomy/term/2838" title="Posts tagged with: #123">#123</a></li><li><a href="/taxonomy/term/2849" title="Posts tagged with: black flag">black flag</a></li></ul> Wed, 13 Jan 2016 00:24:36 +0000 Adbusters 7855 at https://www.adbusters.org https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/why-our-%EF%AC%82ag-black.html#comments Welcome to PeñaNietoland https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/welcome-pe%C3%B1anietoland.html <h3>All is not well in Mexico.</h3><p>by </p><p>From Adbusters #123: <a href="/magazine/123" title="From the issue: Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI">Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI</a></p><p><img src="https://www.adbusters.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/magazine/splash_image/adbusters_123_pienetoland_S.jpg?itok=fwJr9IU-" width="668" height="413" alt="" /><br />fabian giles</p><p>Enrique Peña Nieto is, without a doubt, one of the worst presidents in Mexican history. In just three years his “new” old PRI (Revolutionary Institutional Party) has twisted the country into a fabric of lies, corruption, impunity and poverty, supported by big business and local mass media.</p> <p>In 2012, he became president through fraud. He purchased votes and manipulated the consciences of the poor. In giving them debit cards from a local financial group Monex, to be used at the supermarket Soriana, he manipulated their support. During his campaign he exceeded campaign funding limits 13 times, with funds being provided from alleged illegal businesses used for the purpose of money laundering. During his tenure he has left many promises unfulfilled.</p> <p>Under the pretext of improving the country, a false “Pact for Mexico” was undertaken. PRI purchased the support of opposition parties. Congress managed and later imposed ineffective structural reforms that have facilitated the selling off of the country’s resources and local industry to transnational corporations. Our oil and manufacturing sectors have been sold to corporations such as Royal Dutch, Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Chevron and British Petroleum. Mexico has been sold out to big business under the pretense of economic growth and prosperity, yet only a small group of friends and business people have benefitted from this growth. Over 50 million are now poor. Free televisions are given out as compensation for the lack of education and basic services.</p> <p>Nieto’s shadow business interests have been exposed by investigative journalism. A 7 million dollar mansion, called the White House, is under the ownership of the Higa Group, a construction firm. The Higa Group owns the house while Nieto and his family occupy it, and as a result the group has benefitted from numerous projects and contracts. To protect his image, Nieto pays large sums of money to media companies like Televisa and TV Azteca. He pays off journalists, newspapers, even going so far as to purchase magazine covers, such as Time and Rolling Stone. All of this to white wash his image and keep the critics at bay. The truth is his government is corrupt, but the polls suggest his popularity.</p> <p>To counteract his media image, image memes that use humor and sarcasm are appearing, attempting to tell the world the truth about what is happening in Mexico. We do not live in a fair country, a happy country concerned for all its citizens. In truth we are under a perfect dictatorship that denies us freedom of choice and expression. Many memes remain unpublished out of fear. Local media owners, editors, they are afraid of punishment. The government will remove advertising dollars and run them out of business. Social networks, the Internet, these are the spaces where it is possible to show the reality of our current situation. With hope, we will raise awareness and interest about our situation. The government seeks to control our reality. Fortunately there are still a few mediums left to expose our government and to communicate with the outside world.</p> <p>All is not well in Mexico.</p> <p class="author-bio">— Fabian Giles is an Audiovisual Artist, Graphic Designer and Creative Director. He lives in Mexico City.</p><ul class="tags"><li><a href="/taxonomy/term/2838" title="Posts tagged with: #123">#123</a></li><li><a href="/category/tags/mexico" title="Posts tagged with: Mexico">Mexico</a></li><li><a href="/taxonomy/term/2848" title="Posts tagged with: pena nieto">pena nieto</a></li><li><a href="/category/tags/corruption" title="Posts tagged with: corruption">corruption</a></li></ul> Wed, 13 Jan 2016 00:10:28 +0000 Adbusters 7854 at https://www.adbusters.org https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/welcome-pe%C3%B1anietoland.html#comments So very different https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/so-very-different.html <h3>What a wild experience it is to come home after 8 months of traveling</h3><p>by </p><p>From Adbusters #123: <a href="/magazine/123" title="From the issue: Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI">Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI</a></p><p><img src="https://www.adbusters.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/magazine/splash_image/adbusters_123_garbage_S.jpg?itok=Melfa932" width="668" height="413" alt="" /><br />madlen hirtentreu</p> <p>What a wild experience it is to come home after 8 months of traveling. I have mixed feelings. </p> <p>Canada is so very different from Nicaragua. There are no dogs, roosters and drunken men making a ruckus all night. My bed is comfortable and I can have more than 1 pillow. There are no spiders, ants, flies or cockroaches in my room. I don’t have birds living in the rafters beside my room. The electricity, heat and hot water supply here are constant.</p> <p>I am overwhelmed by the waste and wealth of our culture. We eat fabulous food whenever we want. Our houses are far apart and you can own green-space if you choose. I can’t hear my neighbors’ sneeze, whisper, sweep, let alone hear yelling and every word of their argument. In Nicaragua, food portions are much less. I know how lucky I am to live in a country with health care and social services. We are so fortunate.</p> <p>We are extremely wealthy in Canada, bordering the excessive. The maid that worked in my Nica family’s home made $40 US per month working 6 days a week. Sometimes I’d go away for a weekend trip and spend two or three times her monthly salary. There are fewer jobs and fewer options in Nica. Yet there is a substantial friend and family support network, many live in the same town for their entire lives. But people seem happier. They laugh louder and more often.</p> <p>What a privilege it is to travel by plane, car, bus and bicycle. Many of us take short vacations to tropical places regularly, which is an incredible concept. It is a luxury and a privilege to be able to take time off and still keep your job.</p> <p>Although Nica has labor laws, sweatshops are built in “free trade zones” and therefore exempt from all laws. They bribe the government annually to make sure they won’t be asked to leave. People work 12-16 hour days, 6 days a week. They are fired the moment they get sick, injured, pregnant or old. They are given a 15-minute lunch break and ten minutes a day to use the washroom. Literally, a card is given to each employee, they put it into a slot in the bathroom door to open it, once inside, there is a timer for 10 minutes maximum. My friends told me of one that was so bad the people chose to wear diapers, so as to ensure that they didn’t lose their job. </p> <p>My Nica friends would be astounded by our food portions, especially for meat. They would be aghast by the way we buy new clothes, new phones, or new houses when our old ones are still in good condition, just for fun, just for a change, or just to look cool. They would be shocked to know that the majority of us regularly buy sweat-shop products when we all know it’s wrong. They would be terrified by the fact we don’t look after our own children, or our own aging parents. They would be dumbfounded as to why we throw out so much good food.</p> <p>So there you have it, I am in culture shock.</p> <p class="author-bio">—Tamara Koziar is a Registered Massage Therapist and Chartered Herbalist living in Peterborough, ON.</a> Sat, 09 Jan 2016 08:01:00 +0000 Adbusters 7853 at https://www.adbusters.org https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/so-very-different.html#comments Cool Money https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/cool-money.html <h3>wherein financial instruments flow within an independent sphere, seemingly detached from the real economy,</h3><p>by </p><p>From Adbusters #123: <a href="/magazine/123" title="From the issue: Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI">Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. VI</a></p><p><img src="https://www.adbusters.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/magazine/splash_image/adbusters_123_merkelBW_S.jpg?itok=HBveRIVC" width="668" height="413" alt="" /><br />bart maat/ ap</p><p>Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, the world’s major central banks have been plowing vast quantities of money into the banking system. The U.S. Federal Reserve has made commitments totalling some $29 trillion, $7 trillion to banks during the course of one single fraught week. The Bank of England has spent around £325 billion on quantitative easing alone — a figure that could yet rise to £600 billion — while the UK government has committed £1.162 trillion to bank rescues. The European Central Bank has made low-interest loans directly to banks worth at least €1.1 trillion. These measures are not addressing the crisis alone. In April 2013, the Bank of Japan embarked on a quantitative easing program worth some $1.3 trillion, designed to end more than a decade of deflation. The social costs of the crisis, too, have been devastating. There are the costs both of the crisis itself and importantly of the policies used by governments and central banks to alleviate its effects on those very institutions that caused it. </p> <p>With a grotesque reflexivity, financial speculation becomes nothing more than a form of speculation about speculation itself. This is the era of what Baudrillard called “cool” money, wherein financial instruments flow within an independent sphere, seemingly detached from the real economy, as if finance was its own self-perpetuating reality.</p> <p class="author-bio">— Nigel Dodd, The Social Life of Money</p><ul class="tags"><li><a href="/taxonomy/term/2838" title="Posts tagged with: #123">#123</a></li><li><a href="/category/tags/finance" title="Posts tagged with: finance">finance</a></li><li><a href="/category/tags/bank-bailout" title="Posts tagged with: bank bailout">bank bailout</a></li></ul> Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:06:50 +0000 Adbusters 7852 at https://www.adbusters.org https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/cool-money.html#comments