The forestry companies must be held accountable
“Send them the bill for cleaning up the slash and for repairing the destruction it caused. If they can’t pay, confiscate their land to pay the costs.”
Category Archives: environment
Problems of the soil – Marx, Malthus, and George Monbiot
Large-scale industry and industrially pursued large-scale agriculture have the same effect. If they are originally distinguished by the fact that the former lays waste and ruins labour-power and thus the […]
There’s a storm brewing
What the local elections foretell I am one of the large majority who did not vote in the recent mayoral and local elections in New Zealand – not because I […]
Chernobyl, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and truth in fiction
A review of Chernobyl, written by Craig Mazin and directed by Johan Renck, a 2019 mini-series in five parts on HBO/Sky. In an early scene of Chernobyl, a young pregnant […]
Human beings and nature – lessons from My Octopus Teacher
For relief from the disgusting spectacle of the US elections, I turned to My Octopus Teacher (released on Netflix September 2020). This documentary records an unlikely but fascinating bond that […]
Climate change, climate hysteria, and the Sky City fire
Climate change is real, and so is climate hysteria. Anthropogenic climate change is generated by emissions of carbon dioxide (and some other gases) through human economic activity, mostly by the […]
“Half-caste Maori” strikebreakers at Waihi and Huntly (First of two parts)
(Note: In quoting historic documents, I have not attempted to modernise their Anglicised spelling and usage of Māori words, offensive as some of these things may seem today. The English […]
Pasteur, rabbits and the working class – a case study in the politics of science
Harry Holland and the early labour movement in Australia and New Zealand Part 7 The gold rush of the nineteenth century had brought large numbers of free immigrants to the […]
The nineteenth-century police state in New South Wales
Harry Holland and the labour movement in Australasia Part 1 In the year 1890, a mass strike erupted that eventually involved sixty thousand waterside workers, seafarers, miners, shearers and rail workers […]
Nomadic herders and workers – a visit to the Orkhon Valley of Mongolia
With about 3 million people and a land area of 1.5 million km2, Mongolia is one of the most sparsely populated nations on earth. Some 43% of the population is […]
A worker at large 