Werewolf Edition 19 Is Now Available - Merry Christmas!

Hi and welcome to the Christmas mini-issue of Werewolf which has a certain retro feel - good record shops, Chairman Mao, rich New Yorkers being consumerist - appropriate for a festive season that is being conducted (for the second year running) in the shadow of recession. In our cover story Werewolf looks at the desperate state of music retailing in New Zealand, and the added value that good record stores ( take a bow, Slowboat) can bring to the entire community. Elsewhere in the world, people have more to lose than their record stores. In the case of West Papua, Jason MacLeod reports on the innovative - but-traditional forms of passive civil disobedience that are being used by the local resistance against Indonesian rule.

Chairman Mao? You can't govern with him, you can't govern without him. That's been Nepal's sorry experience for much of 2010. Strange as it may seem, Chairman Mao is still taken seriously as a force in Nepalese politics, and is not treated as merely a relic of a bygone era, or as an emblem of socialist chic. Werewolf interviewed Nepalese investigative journalist and editor Kunda Dixit about the divisions within the Maoists who dominate Nepal's national politics, and about the reasons for the paralysing stalemate between them and the non-Maoist opposition. Also, on the flipside of capitalism : from New York, James Robinson offers some words and images about Christmas in the world's greatest city.

In this month's columns Lyndon Hood sums up 2010 with a blow by blow analysis of what happened, concluding it wasn't all bad. In our classic children's book column, the focus this month is on The Incredible Journey, Sheila Burnford's classic yarn about the epic journey of two dogs and a Siamese cat, as they brave the perils of the Canadian wilderness to reach their home. In Milestone Movies Brannavan Gnanalingham picks his 10 Best Movies of the year. Our music column features the spectral electronica of How to Dress Well and also runs through the rest of the best music of 2010 - Janelle Monae, Robyn, Big Boi and Sleigh Bells. In Cartoon Alley, Tim Bollinger offers the next episode of his Little Eye strip. Barnsey Malone, an 11 year old Wellington artist new to Cartoon Alley, offers her take on the age-old battle between Monsters and Humans. Ultimately, Barnsey leaves it you, dear reader, to decide "Who Hit My Larry?" - which is the question we should be asking about almost everything, in 2010.

Werewolf wishes you a rockin' good time over Christmas and New Year - thanks for your support over the past year and hope to have you back again in 2011 for our next issue in late January. As always, Werewolf is a monthly thank you to Scoop supporters, and aims to provide a showcase for good journalism and cartooning. If you'd like to be part of it, contact me on the address below and we can talk story ideas. Thanks to Alastair Thompson for helping me to put up the issue online.

Gordon Campbell
Werewolf/Scoop
gordon@werewolf.co.nz