Alex Salmon reviews a recent book about the International Brigades that helped combat the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War.
book review
Andrew Chuter reviews a 2014 graphic novel that communicates the science, politics and personal impacts of what is arguably humanity’s greatest existential threat.
Ian Angus presents five new books and an essential magazine for ecosocialists.
Ian Fleming had few pretensions about the literary merit of his James Bond novels, writes Phil Shannon.
Tom Doig's book is a highly-readable account of profiteering and denial at the expense of the health of tens of thousands of people, told by those affected, writes Alan Broughton.
JD Svenson's Direct Action is a slow-burning novel, which steadily builds suspense to the very last page, writes Niko Leka.
Canadian socialist and feminist Suzanne Weiss begins her recent memoir with these words by W B Yeats: “There are no strangers here, only friends you have not yet met.” More than just an epigram, they describe a practice of solidarity that saved Weiss from the Holocaust and later shaped her more than six decades of activity as a life-long socialist, writes James Clark.
Nuclear weapons need never have been built. Our world could have been free from the “frozen tableau of terror” of 9500 nuclear warheads capable of destroying the world 100 times over, as Peter Watson comprehensively shows in Fallout: Conspiracy, Cover-Up and the Deceitful Case for the Atom Bomb.
Since it was first mooted in 2010, the Adani Carmichael Coal and Rail project in Queensland’s Galilee Basin has proven controversial. It has faced a series of legal challenges by environment groups and Traditional Owners, as well as campaigns by activists calling on financial institutions to divest from the fossil fuel industry. The starting date has been rescheduled several times as the viability of the project has been called into question and potential finance proves elusive.
It is timely then, at this impasse, that two new books are released documenting the story so far and canvassing possible outcomes.
Climate and Capitalism editor Ian Angus takes a look at a series of new books of interest for ecosocialists.
Doug McEachern’s novel follows the progress and regress of the two friends living in the 1960s as “endless acrimonious debates over militancy” pepper their student group house in inner-city North Adelaide.
The former British colony of Malaya (now Malaysia) gained its independence on August 31, 1957. However, this was based on a deal by the Malay elites represented by the conservative United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) and Chinese and Indian capitalist classes with British colonialism. This deal preserved the privileges of the Malay elite.
Ten years earlier in 1947, a different vision of independence based on popular democratic participation and multi-ethnic solidarity came together in the “People’s Constitution”.
Dissent didn’t obey strict decade-demarcation lines on Australian campuses in the radical 1960s, writes Sally Wood in Dissent: The Student Press in 1960s Australia.
Climate and Capitalism editor Ian Angus looks at five important new books on famines, deadly epidemics and the pesticide poisons in our food.
In Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 11-12 last year, an infamous mobilisation of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other far-right groups was met by anti-fascist and anti-racist protesters. In violent clashes, attacks by the far right resulted in many counter-protesters being injured and one dead — anti-fascist activist Heather Hayes, who was killed when a fascist drove a car into the crowd.
US President Donald Trump, whose election was supported by and emboldened the far right, refused to condemn the far right, stating: “You had many fine people on both sides.”
The furore surrounding Michael Wolff’s book is unsurprising because he lifts the lid on the foetid cesspit that is US President Donald Trump’s White House. In the tradition of scandal-mongering journalism, he reveals the back-stabbing, in-fighting and squabbling of this ramshackle administration of bigots, ignoramuses and incompetents.
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