Z Nightly Commentaries
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Recent Z Nightly Commentaries
Monbiot: Britain Party to a Crime
Jan 05, 2008
If you doubt Britain needs a written constitution, listen to the strangely unbalanced discussion broadcast by the BBC last Friday. The Today programme asked Lord Guthrie, formerly chief of the defence staff, and Sir Kevin Tebbit, until recently the senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, if parliament should decide whether or not the country goes to war. The discussion was a terrifying exposure of the privileges of unaccountable power. It explained as well as anything I have heard how Britain became party to a crime that may have killed a million people.
Monbiot: The Kings of England
Jan 03, 2008
If you doubt that Britain needs a written constitution, listen to the strangely unbalanced discussion broadcast by the BBC on Friday. The Today programme asked Lord Guthrie, formerly chief of the defence staff, and Sir Kevin Tebbit, until recently the senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, if parliament should decide whether or not this country goes to war. The discussion was a terrifying exposure of the privileges of unaccountable power. It explained as well as anything I have heard how Britain became party to a crime that might have killed a million people.
Monbiot: The Kings of England
Jan 02, 2008
If you doubt that Britain needs a written constitution, listen to the strangely unbalanced discussion broadcast by the BBC on Friday. The Today programme asked Lord Guthrie, formerly chief of the defence staff, and Sir Kevin Tebbit, until recently the senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, if parliament should decide whether or not this country goes to war. The discussion was a terrifying exposure of the privileges of unaccountable power. It explained as well as anything I have heard how Britain became party to a crime that might have killed a million people.
Monbiot: Banning Bomb in Iran
Dec 21, 2007
George Bush and Gordon Brown are right: there should be no nuclear weapons in the Middle East. The risk of a nuclear conflagration could be greater there than anywhere else. Any nation developing them should expect a firm diplomatic response. So when will they impose sanctions on Israel?
Majavu: Xenophobia and Society
Dec 17, 2007
Various research studies conclude that South Africans, black and white, are xenophobic. In 1997, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) identified xenophobia "as a major source of concern to human rights and democracy in the country." The same study revealed that one in five South Africans sampled believe that everyone from neighbouring countries living in South Africa (legally or not) should be sent home.
Monbiot: The Road Well Travelled
Nov 19, 2007
The Road Well Travelled
Monbiot: Libertarians are the true social parasites
Nov 11, 2007
Libertarians are the true social parasites
Monbiot: Playing in the Rough
Oct 29, 2007
Most human differences can be overcome, but there is one unbridgeable divide. The world is split between people who play golf and people who don't. Each faction regards the other as an alien lifeform. One is astonished that any human fails to see that life without golf is not worth living. The other watches grown men in two-tone shoes dragging a bag of sticks round Tellytubbyland, and shakes its collective head with incredulity.
Monbiot: The Junta's Accomplices
Oct 09, 2007
China has become the world's excuse for inaction. If there is anything a government or a business does not want to do, it invokes the Yellow Peril. Raise the minimum wage to £6 an hour? Not when the Chinese are paid £6 a year. Cap working time at 48 hours a week? The Chinese are working 48 hours a day. Cut greenhouse gas emissions? The Chinese are building a new power station every nanosecond. China is our looking-glass bogeyman. If you behave well, the bogeyman will get you.
Majavu: Life After Colonialism
Sep 19, 2007
A shortened version of this paper was presented at the 30th Anniversary Commemorative International Biko Conference, which was held in Cape Town from 10 - 12 September 2007.
Monbiot: Drumming Up a New Cold War
Sep 10, 2007
In one short statement to parliament last week, the defence secretary, Des Browne, broke the promises of two prime ministers, potentially misled the House, helped bury an international treaty and dragged Britain into a new cold war. Pretty good going for
Monbiot: Eco-junk: Green consumerism will not save the biosphere
Aug 20, 2007
It wasn't meant to happen like this. The climate scientists told us that our winters would become wetter and our summers drier. So I can't claim that these floods were caused by climate change, or are even consistent with the models. But, like the ghost o
Mcdonald: Response to Scipes
Jul 31, 2007
One can certainly understand the impatience of Kim Scipes as he poses the question "Where are the Greens" in his June 16 ZNET Commentary. Scipes is right to demand leadership in this time of struggle. The reality is that people are really suffering in t
Monbiot: Union With the Devil
Jul 26, 2007
Gordon Brown appears to have tested them. It is as if he wanted to discover how far he can go before the affiliated trade unions - which provide most of the Labour party's funds - decide that they have had enough. The results must reassure him: they will
Monbiot: Without Principle
Jun 26, 2007
Never let members of this government complain about corruption abroad. Never let them blame the failure of Tony Blair's mission to rescue Africa on venal dictators and grasping officials. The new allegations published in the Guardian yesterday about slush
Monbiot: The Conspiracy Widens
Jun 13, 2007
[ZNet editors note: see related debate between Cockburn, Monbiot and others here http://www.zmag.org/debatesglobalwarming.html]
Monbiot: No More Ventriloquists: A world parliament allows the poor to speak for themselves
Jun 07, 2007
It was first proposed (as far as I can discover) in 1842, by Alfred Tennyson(1). Since then the idea has broken the surface and sunk again at least a dozen times. But this time it could start to swim. The demand for a world parliament is at last acquiring
Monbiot: Car-nage: We need a global campaign for road safety, but not one controlled by the motor industry.
May 25, 2007
Corporate social responsibility often resembles the adventures of The Good Soldier Svejk. In 1914, about to be conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army, Svejk puts on his old uniform and a volunteer's buttonhole and, waving his borrowed crutches and shouting "to Belgrade, to Belgrade!", has his landlady push him to the recruiting office in a bath chair. Jaroslav Harsek's marvellous creation is lauded by the newspapers for his extraordinary patriotism.
Monbiot: In the Company of Wolves
May 24, 2007
What would it take to disqualify a nation from running Europe's official human rights organisation? Persecuting gays? Not a hope. Torturing and murdering political opponents? Forget about it. Waging an illegal war? You must be joking. The Council of Europ
Jan 08, 2008
The European Union had asked for greenhouse gas cuts of 15% by 2010. Gore's team drove them down to 5.2% by 2012. Then it did something worse: it destroyed the whole agreement.