Z Nightly Commentaries
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Recent Z Nightly Commentaries
Monbiot: Climate & Consumerism
Nov 09, 2009
The 'licensing effect': Researchers have found that buying green can establish the moral credentials that license subsequent bad behaviour.
Majavu: Reviewing Black Flame
Nov 04, 2009
In writing 'Black Flame: The revolutionary politics of anarchism and syndicalism', Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt set themselves an ambitious task of writing a history of anarchism. I use the word ambitious mainly because, as Guerin (1970) once pointed out, it is difficult to trace the outlines of anarchism.
Monbiot: The Busybody State
Aug 05, 2009
Is it paranoia, or are they really out to get us? Most of the time it's paranoia. Every week I'm approached by people whispering about vapour trails from planes being used to control our minds, free energy devices suppressed by oil companies or missile attacks on the twin towers. Sometimes, as we saw at the G20 protests on April 1st or at climate camp last year, they are out to get us. The policing of these events shows that some of the UK's public authorities really do regard political activism as a threat that must be contained or eliminated.
Monbiot: Pulling Yourself Up
Jul 17, 2009
Here is the simple mathematical reason why large scale carbon offsets can't work
Monbiot: Blue Desert
Jun 04, 2009
I live a few miles from Cardigan Bay. Whenever I can get away, I take my kayak down to the beach and launch it through the waves. Often I take a handline with me, in the hope of catching some mackeral or pollock. On the water, sometimes five kilometres from the coast, surrounded by gannets and shearwaters, I feel closer to nature than at any other time.
Monbiot: Expenses Scandal
Jun 01, 2009
For a moment, my heart leapt. The headline on the front of yesterday's Daily Mail contained the words travel, scandal, extortionate and £6.2. I imagined, until I read it properly, that it referred to the £6.2bn contract to expand the M25 motorway, which has just been signed. Some hope. "The £6.2m bill: Scandal of how MPs are taking taxpayers for a ride with extortionate travel expenses" referred to a rip-off precisely 1000th of the size of the travel expenses scandal that interests me.
Monbiot: Barbarians
May 24, 2009
The principal cause of man's unhappiness is that he has learnt to stay quietly in his own room. If our needs are not met, if justice is not done, it is because we are not prepared to leave our homes and agitate for change. Blaise Pascal ("the sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his own room") couldn't have been more wrong.
Monbiot: Knowledge
May 13, 2009
The funding for academic research has been taken over by business...
Monbiot: Police Lies
Apr 26, 2009
The rightwing press has briefly turned against the police, but normal service will soon resume.
Monbiot: Cross Your Fingers
Apr 17, 2009
Why does the government refuse to make contingency plans for peak oil?
Monbiot: Plastic Fetish
Apr 10, 2009
Do you remember that unspeakably naff designer accessory, "I'm Not a Plastic Bag"? The "design", by Anya Hindmarch, involved thinking up the gauchest slogan ever contrived then printing it on a white shopping bag of the kind old ladies used in the 1960s. Tens of thousands were sold, at mind-boggling prices.
Monbiot: Woodchips
Mar 29, 2009
Here comes the latest utopian catastrophe...
Monbiot: Scrap It
Mar 16, 2009
The magic numbers spin before our eyes. No one can grasp the scale of the hand-outs, or understand how public money which didn't exist - could never exist - for hospitals or schools or public toilets begins to flow as soon as the bankers fall to their knees. We are punch drunk, reeling, uniquely vulnerable - because none of it makes sense any more - to new demands from every species of scrounger.
Monbiot: Proceeds of Crime
Mar 14, 2009
The US and British governments have created a private prison industry which preys on human lives.
Monbiot: England
Mar 02, 2009
You don't have to be a nationalist, or English, to accept the case for an English parliament.
Monbiot: Bottom Up
Feb 12, 2009
A new mobilisation could revitalise politics in the UK - but only if you get involved.
Monbiot: Squandered
Feb 04, 2009
This is how a government elected to stamp out sleaze became worse than its predecessor.
Monbiot: Credit Crunch
Jan 29, 2009
Here's how we could solve the credit crunch without giving anything to the banks.
Monbiot: Cuckoo's Nest
Jan 21, 2009
How did Marxist class warriors end up fighting for the bosses' right to fly?
Nov 15, 2009
It's a time of celebration in Prague this month. A time to mark the November day 20 years ago when the "Velvet Revolution" erupted. A time to mark the beginning of the end of the Soviet rule that had crushed democratic reform movements in Czechoslovakia and its eastern and central European neighbors.