In the wake of The Guardian’s exposé of PC Mark Kennedy, who lived as ‘Mark Stone’ for six years while spying on environmental activists, the policing of environmentalist groups has come under scrutiny. After infiltrating the movement at Earth First in 2003, Kennedy embedded himself in a group of activists and joined protests across Europe. [...]
David Fraser Clarke’s Sea Change or Climate Change
I like to think of our battle against climate change as like that of a recovering alcoholic. Often well intentioned, we know the dangers of doing nothing. When the circumstances are right, we make huge strides forward and success seems possible, but we can’t help but fall off the wagon the moment things get tough. [...]
Jasmine Tarmey on Dickens’ Train of Thought
Murder on the Orient Express, Thomas the Tank Engine, The Railway Children: literature, especially children’s fiction, is rife with images of the steam train. Many would love to board the Hogwarts Express for a magical world of spells, potions and broomsticks without thinking about their journey’s side effects. After all, a child’s first impression of [...]
Sophie Taylor’s Shrinking Golding Down to Size
English Literature is not exactly considered synonymous to the theme of environmentalism and with around 30 million trees being destroyed every year for the production of books in the US alone, this is hardly surprising. However, one common theme in literature is man’s relationship in the world with nature, an element explored by art movements [...]
Helena Kaznowska is Addicted to Austen
Today’s society seems obsessed with every aspect of both the novelist and their novels. This seemingly recent craze has resulted in the production of countless books, films and documentaries on the lives of writers, such as the 2003 film The Hours (based on Virginia Woolf and her novel Mrs Dalloway) Shakespeare in Love, Kafka and [...]
Harriet Evans is Making Herself Heard
It’s been over 180 years since Shelley called poets the ‘unacknowledged legislators’ of the world and since then, the number of writers and poets has increased unfathomably. Yet, when was the last time a writer really held up a mirror to the world and critiqued it? It’s a long-standing tradition that the act of writing [...]
Maksymilian Fus Mickiewicz’s A Tribal Culture
Speaking to The Zahir, Miriam Ross, press officer of the London-based NGO Survival International, describes her own battle with the Botswana government to protect the alternative way of life the Kalahari Bushmen have chosen to lead. Their mission statement is simple: to protect marginalised people’s rights. Those in opposition range from corporations looking to grab [...]
Eleanor Howe and Dario Traum’s A Swamp Full of Dollars
Nigeria’s environment is gradually being destroyed by greed. On top of political instability, conflict, poverty, corruption, inadequate infrastructure and poor macroeconomic management, the country is also tormented by an environmental problem of catastrophic proportions, a problem that has continued relatively unnoticed for decades. It stems from the maze of pipelines riddling the landscape. These pipes [...]
Jim Conway on Crisis and Cuts: Public Sector Incentive or Public Nightmare?
There is a debate that has raged ever since the explosion of capitalism from industrialisation over 200 years ago. Since then millions of workers have lost their jobs and millions of companies have gone bust. The question of the last 200 hundred years is this: how do we deal with economic crises? Now as much [...]
Leena Sobahi on The Uprise of Arab Spirit
For decades, many Arab populations have been the victims of harsh political regimes, ones that have restricted change and basic universal rights like freedom of speech and democracy. They are lumbered with the same immovable leaders and taught to say only what is expected of them, otherwise, as is commonly understood, ‘You won’t live to [...]
Josephine Harmon’s It’s Not Easy Being Green
In his recent talk, Adrian Ramsay’s Great Matter was inevitably his struggle to free himeslf of the Greens’ reputation as single-minded. The talk largely comprised discussion of environmentalist issues, bizarrely interspersed with comments on wider contemporary issues like the economic crisis – as if both were intimately inter-connected. The Greens’ name and image exposes them [...]
Zahir 6.1
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Urban Kenya? – Rachel Knighton
Rachel Knighton speaks from personal experience I remember sitting in a geography class, several years ago, learning about urbanisation. The textbook in front of me told of the rise in migration from rural to urban areas, as people flocked to the city in search of a higher income for their families. The case study was [...]
“All my people, man, my father, my uncles, it’s just what we do” – Alexandra Reynolds
Alexandra Reynolds questions how gender is hardwired to urbanity. Accelerated urbanisation has inevitably brought with it a rapid growth of urban poverty; a poverty produced not only by poor provision for housing, health services and education, but from socially conditioned constructs of equality, gender identity and criminal activity. The recently fevered support for David Simon’s [...]
A life with my Dad and Daddy – Josephine Rust
Josephine Rust tackles LGBT adoption Recently a Catholic adoption agency won the right to be exempted from legislation which would have forced it to consider homosexual couples as parents. Catholic Care, which serves the dioceses of Leeds, Middlesbrough, and Hallam in South Yorkshire, claimed it would be forced to stop its work finding homes for [...]
D:Reaming of ’97 – David Clarke
David Clarke recalls the spirit of change of 1997 “Things can only get better”. Did they? Perhaps, but it all seems a long time ago. D:Ream, the band behind New Labour’s election anthem is now best known for the former membership of Brian Cox, who currently presents programmes about physics on the BBC. The highly questionable [...]
The State of Care – Sarah Dean
Sarah Dean considers our future care. As a student old age seams a far and distant fate, detached in almost all ways from the lives we are currently living. However during my gap year I found myself working at a care home and giving home visits to elderly and disabled people in my area. This was a [...]
Setting the poverty agender – Alexandra Khoo
Alexandra Khoo looks at the patriarchal bias in the fight against poverty. The portrait of poverty is often given a female face, and it is a fact that women are over-represented in poverty. Yet, women’s agency is rarely given much thought in poverty-reduction projects. It is falsely assumed that they benefit equally in regaining control over [...]
