The devil’s trade-off: public health or ‘the economy’
The virus and capitalist society, Part 3 As the capitalist rulers around the world move towards lifting the lockdown conditions imposed to halt the spread of Covid-19 disease, they are […]
Category Archives: morality
Grace Millane, consent, and Fifty Shades of Grey: what the trial tells us about the social, sexual and legal status of women today
Sometimes a criminal trial throws light on a deeper social or political problem; the trial of the murderer of Grace Millane is one of those times. For the benefit of […]
The liberal censors extend their reach
The self-appointed liberal censors have struck again in New Zealand. Emboldened by their success in no-platforming the visiting Canadian rightists Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern, and then disrupting a campus […]
Young Harry Holland: the soapbox preacher
Harry Holland and the early labour movement in Australia and New Zealand – Part 2. (For Part 1 click here). Little detail is known of Harry Holland’s childhood. Despite being […]
Loveless and A Gentle Creature – two flawed but brilliant Russian films
Andrey Zvyaginstev’s Loveless is not as good as his earlier masterpiece, Leviathan. But it has some moments of brilliance, and even at less than his best, Zvyagintsev captures the essence […]
Workers, farmers and war: New Zealand in 1914
Of all the questions confronting the working class in New Zealand in the decade beginning 1912, as it set itself on a course toward political independence, none was more decisive […]
Apology, anthropology, and colonial genocide
A review of Terra Nullius, A Journey Through No One’s Land, by Sven Lindqvist Terra Nullius – a Latin expression meaning ‘no one’s land’ – was a legal fiction used to clear […]
Fidel Castro’s ‘moral armour’ and courage under fire
In one of the videos of Fidel Castro that have been circulating since the revolutionary leader’s death, a reporter is accompanying Fidel on the plane trip to New York, where […]
A city built on the bones of prisoners
Komsomolsk-na-Amur is an industrial city in the Russian Far East. Founded in 1932, it was from 1937 unmarked on maps and off limits to foreigners – not just in Soviet […]
Voyage of the Damned: imperialist governments attempt to explain why refugees should be left to die
The refugee crisis confronting Europe today (as with earlier ones along the Mexican-US border and in the Indian Ocean) reminds us that the malaise spreading across the globe is not […]
A worker at large 