207 Winter 2012

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Human rights versus human freedom; priorities for the women's movement; politics of steampunk; the case for fat activism and much, much more.

Issue Contents

Features

The Arab Revolutions reloaded

Toufic Haddad

Republican Democrats

Louis Proyect

Bookshops, ebooks and the future of the novel

John Weldon, Jo Case and Malcolm Neil

'Intervene, I said'

Jessica Whyte

Porn and the misogyny emergency

Gail Dines and Sharon Smith

Non-market socialism today

Anitra Nelson and Frans Timmerman

Leftist constructs

Diana M Pho

A big fat fight

Jennifer Lee

Waiting on the Arriaga-Ixtepec

Matthew Clayfield

Fiction

Holiday in little Saigon

Stephen Pham

The dolphin

Sarah Schmidt

Of rivers and blood

Luke Johnson

Poetry

Published by Global Supermarket Pty Ltd

Sebastian Gurciullo

To Nina

Pam Brown

poem a

William Druce

‘Clouds fall like snow on the sky’s clear rocks’¹

Sam Langer

Step by Step

Patrick Jones

Corydalis

Mark O'Flynn

Your Bath

Fiona Yardley

Maximum Security

Fiona Hile

Wireless

David Prater

Islands

Andy Quan

Also Starring …

Alan Wearne

Starvation Box Blues

Joe Dolce

Editorial

Jeff Sparrow

Debate

Porn and the misogyny emergency

Gail Dines and Sharon Smith

Browse the issue:

Features

Published in Overland Issue 207 Winter 2012 · Politics

The Arab Revolutions reloaded

Toufic Haddad

By now, it is the stuff of legend: Muhammad Bouazizi, fed up with police harassment and poverty, douses himself in kerosene and sets himself alight in front of the local municipality. And so it began, more than one year ago in the ruin of a Tunisian backwater called Sidi Bouzid.

Published in Overland Issue 207 Winter 2012 · Politics

Republican Democrats

Louis Proyect

Obama has little incentive to follow Roosevelt’s example, in light of the major differences between the Great Depression and the Great Recession. The working class no longer has the leverage it had in the 1930s when the US was still heavily invested in manufacturing.

Published in Overland Issue 207 Winter 2012 · Reading

Bookshops, ebooks and the future of the novel

John Weldon, Jo Case and Malcolm Neil

Overland in conversation with industry insiders Jo Case, John Weldon and Malcolm Neil.

Published in Overland Issue 207 Winter 2012 · Politics

'Intervene, I said'

Jessica Whyte

In March last year, only days after NATO’s military intervention in Libya, the French ‘New Philosopher’ Bernard-Henri Lévy held a reception for Libyan insurgents at the Hôtel Rafael in Paris. Among the guests was Bernard Kouchner, the founder of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who played a major role in popularising the so-called ‘right to intervene’ on humanitarian grounds.

Published in Overland Issue 207 Winter 2012 · Activism

Porn and the misogyny emergency

Gail Dines and Sharon Smith

Without doubt, the porn question has, since the 1970s, been the most controversial and divisive issue in the women’s movement.

Published in Overland Issue 207 Winter 2012 · Politics

Non-market socialism today

Anitra Nelson and Frans Timmerman

Earth Overshoot Day marks the point when human activities use more resources than nature is capable of regenerating each year, an imbalance well established by the end of last century, creating a gap that has increased most years since. If we use models devised by the UK’s New Economics Foundation (NEF) and the Global Footprint Network, Earth Overshoot Day in 2011 fell on 27 September.

Published in Overland Issue 207 Winter 2012 · Culture

Leftist constructs

Diana M Pho

In 1987, when KW Jeter penned a simple letter describing his books to Locus magazine, his words were prophetic: ‘Personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective … Something based on the appropriate technology of that era; like “steampunks,” perhaps’.

Published in Overland Issue 207 Winter 2012 · Activism

A big fat fight

Jennifer Lee

If I listed all the insults, I’d fill a page. I note them here to show that fat prejudice is rife in Australia. Sometimes it is women who look over their glasses and direct their eyes up and down my body in shops where they don’t stock anything over size fourteen.

Published in Overland Issue 207 Winter 2012 · Culture

Waiting on the Arriaga-Ixtepec

Matthew Clayfield

What they are waiting for is el tren, the now infamous freight service that takes them to Ixtepec, Oaxaca, and on into the cartel-controlled state of Veracruz. There, many are beaten, sexually assaulted, robbed, extorted, kidnapped or killed – and there are few, if any, lucky ones.

Fiction