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Mark Thomas
5- 6.30pm, 24 April at Housmans, 5 Caledonian Road King’s Cross , London N1 9DX
A discussion with Hilary Wainwright (author, Reclaim the State), Stuart White (editor, Building a Citizen Society: The Emerging Politics of Republican Democracy ) and Marianne Maeckelberg (author, The Will of the Many: how the alterglobalisation movement is changing the face of democracy)
Arts, Books, Culture
An alien gaze
Nobel prize-winning novelist Herta Müller’s work casts experiences of oppressive authoritarian regimes in strikingly poetic language, writes Lyn Marven
Objective fiction
Nathaniel Mehr reviews Newspeak in the 21st Century
An anthropology of civil war
Ewa Jasiewicz looks at Austrian film director Michael Haneke’s tenth film The White Ribbon, an unflinching gaze into the elemental roots of ideological violence
Cartoon history
Red Pepper cartoonist Tim Sanders reviews Speechless: World History Without Words by Polyp (New Internationalist and Friends of the Earth International, 2009)
Casement’s quest
The Devil and Mr Casement: One Man’s Struggle for Human Rights in South America’s Heart of Darkness by Jordan Goodman (Verso, 2009). Andy Higginbottom reviews
Comprehensive health check
Dr Wendy Savage reviews Socialist Register 2010: Morbid Symptoms – Health under Capitalism
Nuclear exposure
Lesley Doyal reviews Under the Radar: Cancer and the Cold War by Ellen Leopold (Rutgers University Press, 2009)
The critical struggle of our time
Maddy Power reviews People First Economics by David Ransom and Vanessa Baird (eds) New Internationalist, 2009
Everyone does everything
James O’Nions meets two members of the Italian novel-writing collective Wu Ming as they publish Manituana, their ‘story from the wrong side of history’
Being Tamsin
Kevin Blowe reviews Rush! The Making of a Climate Activist
Which eight books would you take to the ends of the world with you?
Heartfelt pleas for mistreated people and literary denunciations feature on radical lawyer Louise Christian’s reading list
Red Pepper’s new co-editor James O’Nions picks his favourite books
Aki Nawaz on god delusions, the Qur’an and fighting the National Front
Map obsessive Roger Lloyd Pack reckons he could ‘probably walk away with the Mastermind prize with Tintin as my subject’
See more Booktopia’s from Jo Brand and Mark Thomas to Billy Hayes and Paul Mason
Other blogs we’re reading this week
Tibet vs Iraq: good and bad occupations?
Politics at the bookies update
Stop treating these people like savages
No side effects from mass homoeopathic overdose
Make your own David Cameron poster
Red Pepper Forums
What people have been saying in the Red Pepper discussion forums
Latest
FOCUS ON IRELAND
Ireland rising
The Irish trade union movement has missed a chance to defeat government plans to make ordinary people pay for an economic crash they didn’t cause, writes Socialist Party MEP Joe Higgins
Government eats up the Greens
Former leading Irish Green Party member Bronwen Maher rues her ex-colleagues’ continuing support for the centre-right coalition government in Ireland
Special UK offer
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Help, advice and political correction from the woman who knows it all
How the Unions and the left can save our public services
Confronting the climate circus
Charter for innovation, creativity and access to knowledge
Casino crash
Critical radical thinking on the financial crisis
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Campaigning to end the occupation of Iraq
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Latest Issue
Don’t miss the new Red Pepper
Not leading but drowning
Editorial: Not flocks or herds
In our February/March issue, Red Pepper co-editor Michael Calderbank warns that in our current system financial pressures will trump democratic concerns - whichever party is in power.
Hilary Wainwright examines the Northern Rock experience and explains efforts to develop new community-responsive models of investment. Molly Scott Cato argues for public ownership of the financial sector to make it more ecologically sustainable and Costas Lapavitsas shows how to make banking more transparent and accountable.
In our cover story, Stuart White argues that models of republican democracy - incorporating a socialist and green commitment to economic equality - could reinvigorate the left.
Joe Higgins says that trade unions can no longer be relied upon to represent the people, while Jeremy Dear and Natalie Fenton argue that journalists - the original voice of the people - feel increasingly constrained to represent the elites.
Plus, international coverage of Palestine, Chile, Western Sahara and Italy. In our culture section Mike Marqusee celebrates flamenco, Ewa Jasiewicz looks at Austrian director Michael Haneke’s film The White Ribbon, an unflinching gaze into the roots of violence, we take an illustrated look at the new book Dress Behind Bars: Prison Clothing as Criminality. Plus much more, see our full contents list here
From Seattle to Copenhagen: 10 years of resistance
Editorial: A climate for change
In our latest issue, John Hilary examines the global justice movement’s decade since Seattle and Marianne Maeckelbergh looks at the movement’s democratic decision-making. Tim Jones argues the global North owes the South a climate debt.
In Transitional demands, Sarah Irving shows how permaculture-style transition towns are reducing carbon emissions and Chris Baugh explores the UK unions’ response to the urgency of climate change. Alex Nunns assesses the damage a Conservative government might do to public services. Mike Marqusee and Heather Wakefield on public spending cuts and how to fightback. We interview radical lawyer Michael Mansfield and meet Wu Ming, the Italian novelist collective.
Our international coverage includes Chemical Criminals, twenty five years after Bhopal. Bilal El-Amine on Hizbullah and political Islam in Lebanon and twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we ask if there’s any hope for the left in Eastern Europe? And Pablo Navarrete and Steve Ellner look at popular democracy taking root in Venezuela’s barrios
Plus Rajkamal Kahlon uses autopsy reports from US military bases and prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan as a starting point for her art that we reproduce here. Steve Platt asks is Brecht still relevant? And Michael Calderbank reviews Angels of Anarchy, a major exhibition of women surrealists
Editorial: Reclaiming our food systems
In our October/November issue we examine the current global food crisis and call for radical change and food sovereignty. Red Pepper’s new co-editor James O’Nions says that the issue of who ‘controls our food system is a matter of basic democracy’.
Sue Branford investigates the global land grab sparked by the food crisis that is seeing rich countries buying up land in the poorer world to ‘secure’ their food supplies. Branford warns that this is a ‘Time bomb for the world’s ability to cope with climate change’. Kath Dalmeny, policy director for Sustain, argues that while we need new food policies to get a healthy, ethical and sustainable food system, government action is ‘inadequate and contradictory’. And Matt Sellwood profiles a Hackney organisation that is trying to change the way we get and eat our food.
In the build up to December’s Copenhagen Climate Summit, Michael Meacher MP says the government’s low carbon transition plan is built on an accounting trick that will make developing countries shoulder the burden. Plus Oscar Reyes examines the plethora of protests and actions planned for summit. And we also analyse the political debates going on inside Climate Camp.
More than 35 years on Hilary Wainwright and Andy Bowman ask what relevance does the Lucas Aerospace workers’ alternative economic plan have for red-green thinking today. Mike Marqusee argues that the ‘war on cancer’ is a misplaced metaphor for what is as much a political as a medical issue. Andrea D’Cruz travels to Abu Dis to find out more about the arrest and detention of Palestinian children.
Author Alastair Crooke believes that the left needs a more complex understanding of political Islam. But Saeed Rahnema and Azar Majedi strongly reject his interpretation of events in Iran. Plus, we investigate government support for the arms industry and ask is ‘community justice’ a more progressive approach to crime?
Start your subscription with our current issue for just £20 and get our last three back issues, absolutely free
Red hot
As negotiations fell apart inside the Copenhagen climate conference, protesters from around the world came together outside. But was the counter-mobilisation a success? Ben Lear reports
Banks for the people
A call to rethink the financial system from a socialist perspective could have real popular resonance, argues Costas Lapavitsas
Tales of the riverbank
The transition to a sustainable economy requires that we lock horns with the beasts that stalk the corporate jungle, if only to replace their world of testosterone and risk with one of stability and mutuality, argues green economist Molly Scott Cato. So what can we propose as our vision for the banking system?
Royal Bank of Sustainability
At the end of 2008, UK taxpayers became majority owners of the Royal Bank of Scotland, one of Britain’s largest banks. So, since we’ve paid for it, shouldn’t we have some say in how it is run?
Rocking the system
A campaign is mounting over Northern Rock. Hilary Wainwright reports on the effort to create a community-owned bank serving wider social needs, not private profits
New futures
We must protect trusted news sources and liberate them from the free market, says Natalie Fenton
What would Rupert Murdoch say?
Saving local newspapers is not a matter of money but of political will, argues Jeremy Dear
Broken bones and bruises aside, what actually came out of Copenhagen? Oscar Reyes suggests much of the process was flawed from the beginning
The abolition of the monarchy is only a minor part of modern republicanism. Stuart White, of Jesus College, Oxford, outlines the key values of republican democracy and argues that its commitment to an active, participatory citizenship has much in common with red and green politics. Is a fusion of these three strands in the radical tradition the way forward for a new, transnational progressive philosophy?
The state of Israel and its supporters have attempted to brand the use of international law in aid of the Palestinians as ‘legal terrorism’. Daniel Machover explains the need to resist their efforts
The left must overcome its fragmentation if it is to halt future advances by the Chilean right
Rats flee a sinking rat
The Chilcot inquiry into the government’s conduct around the Iraq war is speaking volumes about our inability to hold state authority to account, argues Alex Nunns
New rules on the admission of overseas students have provoked anger among university and college staff and students. Frances Webber reports
James O’Nions says the tragedy of Haiti doesn’t just lie with the recent earthquake
Profiting from Haiti’s crisis
Benjamin Dangl on disaster capitalism in Washington’s backyard
Pablo Navarrete introduces the importance of community councils in Venezuela’s barrios, while Steve Ellner assesses their prospects for deepening the ‘Bolivarian revolution’
Leigh Phillips spoke to Stefan Zgliczynski and Jane Hardy about the left’s prospects
Time is running out for our public services - trade unions, service users, community organisations and the left must act now
With public sector spending cuts the new orthodoxy, the trade union movement needs to mobilise a stronger counter-attack, argues Heather Wakefield of public sector union Unison
Rolling back the new ‘common sense’ of spending cuts may seem like a difficult job, but it’s not impossible, says Mike Marqusee
With the Tories still setting the political agenda in the run up to the election, Alex Nunns examines what a Cameron government might actually have in store for us
Chris Baugh explains how UK trade unions are beginning to respond to the urgency of climate change with an agenda of ‘just transition’
David Beetham, Stuart Weir and Stuart Wilks-Heeg write down our unwritten and undemocratic constitution
Breaking rank
Tim Hunt speaks to Clare Glenton, wife of Joe Glenton, the British soldier facing court martial for refusing to return to Afghanistan
Reinventing democracy
Marianne Maeckelbergh argues that one of the global justice movement’s key innovations has been its approach to democratic decision-making
Transitional demands
As a global deal on climate change recedes into the future, perhaps the local level is our only hope of preventing climate catastrophe. Sarah Irving investigates the Transition movement, which aims to move us ‘from oil dependency to local resilience,’ using the power of community
Liz Davies reviews Memoirs of a Radical Lawyer by Michael Mansfield QC
An ability to persuade
From the Birmingham Six to the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, radical barrister Michael Mansfield has represented them all. Jon Robins interviews him as he takes a break from his high-profile legal career
While it is commonplace for the left to argue that greater equality is desirable, it is less common to see a huge evidence base used to make the case. Matt Sellwood spoke to Richard Wilkinson, who has done just that in his book The Spirit Level
The UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December is a major event in the battle to strike a deal on cutting carbon emissions. Oscar Reyes picks his way through the plethora of campaigns and networks that are making demands and calling protests and actions
Ten years ago, the global justice movement burst from the streets of Seattle onto the world’s television screens. John Hilary examines the victories and challenges of the last decade
The ‘Taxpayers’ Alliance’ has become a ubiquitous commentator on tax and government spending. Clifford Singer finds out who they really are
Bilal El-Amine considers the experience of Hizbullah in Lebanon
On 3 December 1984, the world’s worst industrial disaster took place at Bhopal in India. Twenty-five years on, Rajwinder Sahota visits the city to find out what happened to the victims
Andrea D’Cruz talks to a group organising collective action among people on the margins of the welfare system
Frances Webber investigates the Home Office’s policy of imposing poverty on those seeking asylum in Britain
The great global land grab
The global food crisis has prompted various rich countries to start buying up land in the poorer world to secure their food supplies. As well as affecting domestic food supplies in the countries affected, Sue Branford says it could be a time bomb for the world’s ability to cope with climate change
Feeding the city
Matt Sellwood profiles a Hackney organisation that is trying to change the way the London borough gets and eats its food
Hungry for change
Britain’s food policies could set us on the road to a healthy, ethical and sustainable food system. Yet government action so far has been inadequate and contradictory, says Kath Dalmeny
Confronting the City
Mat Little profiles Maurice Glasman, dubbed the father of ‘Blue Labour’ and learns more about Glasman’s plans to clean up the City of London
Tim Hunt fails to find any redeeming features in agro-giant Monsanto
Mike Marqusee argues that the ‘war on cancer’ is a misplaced metaphor for what is as much a political as a medical issue
Nick Dearden assesses the chances for real change in the global economy as a result of a UN summit on the economic crisis held in June 2009
The community justice centre in Liverpool has been called a more enlightened approach to dealing with crime. Jon Robins investigates
The arrest and detention of Palestinian children by the Israeli army inflicts long-term trauma on Palestinian society. Andrea D’Cruz travelled to Abu Dis to find out more
Red Shi’ism, Iran and the Islamist revolution
From the Iranian revolution to the Palestinian struggle, it has often been Islamic ideas that have inspired resistance to imperialism. Here, Alastair Crooke argues that the left needs a more complex understanding of the thinking, critical forms of political Islam.
Saeed Rahnema responds saying that Alistair Crooke’s understanding of the Iranian revolution and recent events is deeply flawed and Azar Majedi argues Alastair Crooke’s glorification of the Islamist movement is based on distortions and falsification
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