New Monbiot

Our countryside has once again become a playground for the rich Anything that can't be shot and eaten is shot and hung from a gibbet. The aristocracy is back in charge, destroying Britain's wildlife

New Monbiot

A little bit of a change of pace from George Monbiot this week, with some left-wing intellectual infighting.

New Monbiot

The latest from George Monbiot:

The unbiblical and ahistorical nature of the modern Christian cult of the nuclear family is a marvel rare to behold. Those who promote it are followers of a man born out of wedlock and allegedly sired by someone other than his mother's partner.

New Monbiot

George Monbiot's latest column is available at Guardian.co.uk. It is a cracker, enjoy!

Modern government could be interpreted as a device for projecting corporate power. Since the 1980s, in Britain, the US and other nations, the primary mission of governments has been to grant their sponsors in the private sector ever greater access to public money and public life.

New Monbiot

I am not quite sure how but George Monbiot has managed to release two new posts without me realising.

This piece on protesting against mobile phones:

Protesting against mobiles is damaging the environmental movement

And this on the inequalities of international law:

Imperialism didn't end. These days it's known as international law

New Monbiot

The latest from George Monbiot:

Deny the British empire's crimes? No, we ignore them

Follow the Money

The National Business Review reports on the formation of a new "libertarian think tank". It will be a merger of the Business Roundtable and the New Zealand Institute to form the New Zealand Initiative.

It appears to be styling itself as a "libertarian think tank" and let us hope that is what it is rather than a lobby group to advocate for the needs of corporations over people. With this in mind I am going to take a leaf out of George Monbiot's book and see if I can get to the sources of their funding.

I asked David Farrar earlier if they were likely to be releasing a full list of donors, his response as follows:

I'm not on the Board but the NZBR used to publish a list of all its members, and my expectation is that NZI will do the same. As far as I know they have members, not donors.

I have had a look on both the NZBR and NZI websites and they do publish a list of members. However this doesn't give an indication of how much membership costs or what they receive in corporate donations so it will be interesting to see if we can get our hands on this information.

Interestingly the NZBR has photos of quite a number of their members. Perhaps unsurprisingly it is not what I would call a particularly diverse group.

New Monbiot

The latest from George Monbiot:

No Primrose Path

New Monbiot

The latest from the Guardian's George Monbiot:

A Manifesto for Psychopaths