The Freedom Shop Aotearoa

aargh   issue 7 is now online and can be downloaded  here When we picked the theme What is anarchism and how do we get there we thought this would be a positive, uplifting collection of articles. We should have known better. A look at the world around us should have been enough: millions fleeing from war and terror, and more terror being inflicted on those who thought that they had escaped, children being tortured in the hell hole of Nauru as part of a policy of deterrence, homelessness and poverty becoming rampant even in a relatively rich country like NZ. So what are we supposed to think of a world where you get into trouble for eating food instead of throwing it away? What do you do if the act of dreaming seems to be too concrete, but you don’t want to give up hope? How do you escape the daily urge to waste your energy fighting against yet another neo-liberal austerity measure?  A common thread of angst, frustration and anger runs through  this edition of aargh!, but there is also

aargh   issue 7 is now online and can be downloaded  here When we picked the theme What is anarchism and how do we get there we thought this would be a positive, uplifting collection of articles. We should have known better. A look at the world around us should have been enough: millions fleeing from war and terror, and more terror being inflicted on those who thought that they had escaped, children being tortured in the hell hole of Nauru as part of a policy of deterrence, homelessness and poverty becoming rampant even in a relatively rich country like NZ. So what are we supposed to think of a world where you get into trouble for eating food instead of throwing it away? What do you do if the act of dreaming seems to be too concrete, but you don’t want to give up hope? How do you escape the daily urge to waste your energy fighting against yet another neo-liberal austerity measure?  A common thread of angst, frustration and anger runs through  this edition of aargh!, but there

The following is a book review that originally appeared in issue 6 of aargh! (available online here ) A wonderful ease Wars Without End – the land wars in nineteenth century New Zealand by Danny Keenan -  Penguin 2009 Reviewed by Peppertree BY CHOOSING the title Wars Without End , Danny Keenan puts an important conclusion of his book on the land wars right up front. While the gun fighting mainly took place between 1843 and 1872, the battle over land has continued endlessly in the courts, in parliament and in tribunal hearings. In the age of neoliberalism, the armed force have been replaced by hordes of property developers who continue to dispossess people of a place to live. Every chapter of the very detailed book clearly shows how utterly incompatible the British concept of individual property titles and the collective ownership model of Māori society are. The British system with its clearly defined, surveyed and permanently owned plots was imposed on a society where land had always b

The following is a book review that originally appeared in issue 6 of aargh! (available online here ) A wonderful ease Wars Without End – the land wars in nineteenth century New Zealand by Danny Keenan -  Penguin 2009 Reviewed by Peppertree BY CHOOSING the title Wars Without End , Danny Keenan puts an important conclusion of his book on the land wars right up front. While the gun fighting mainly took place between 1843 and 1872, the battle over land has continued endlessly in the courts, in parliament and in tribunal hearings. In the age of neoliberalism, the armed force have been replaced by hordes of property developers who continue to dispossess people of a place to live. Every chapter of the very detailed book clearly shows how utterly incompatible the British concept of individual property titles and the collective ownership model of Māori society are. The British system with its clearly defined, surveyed and permanently owned plots was imposed on a society where land had always b

The Freedom Shop will be having a stall at the  Counterfutures : Left Thought and Practice Aotearoa gathering  Thursday and Friday, 1 & 2 Sept. We'll be setting up the stall midday Thursday - so if you are on campus, come along on check it out. Some of the books we will be selling include:    We also have numerous pamphlets and zines by a range of authors including: Michael Albert, Bakunin, Alexander Berkman, Boff, Murray Bookchin, Toby Boraman, Willamette Brown, Noam Chomsky, Voltairine de Cleyre, Sam Dolgoff, Leslie Feinberg, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Lucy Parsons, Rudolf Rocker & many more.  Have a look at our catalogue here: 2016 Zine Catalogue

The Freedom Shop will be having a stall at the  Counterfutures : Left Thought and Practice Aotearoa gathering  Thursday and Friday, 1 & 2 Sept. We'll be setting up the stall midday Thursday - so if you are on campus, come along on check it out. Some of the books we will be selling include:    We also have numerous pamphlets and zines by a range of authors including: Michael Albert, Bakunin, Alexander Berkman, Boff, Murray Bookchin, Toby Boraman, Willamette Brown, Noam Chomsky, Voltairine de Cleyre, Sam Dolgoff, Leslie Feinberg, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Lucy Parsons, Rudolf Rocker & many more.  Have a look at our catalogue here: 2016 Zine Catalogue

Maintaining a memory Dear Neil Roberts by Airini Beautrais VUP Press, 2014, ISBN 9780864739735 Reviewed by Ann R Key - review originally published in AARGH! issue 3 I’M NOT from New Zealand, and I'm also not much of a sophisticate when it comes to poetry. I read what I like, skim, or ignore the rest, I can’t really tell you why I like what I do or what is good about it, just that for whatever reason a particular line or idea, mood or thought spoke to me and that was enough. But don’t ask me about structure or form, or poetic traditions because I don’t know. So I might not be the best person to review Airini Beautrais’ new book of poetry, Dear Neil Roberts (Victoria Press, 2014). But I am an anarchist and I have been here in New Zealand long enough that I had been told the story of Neil Roberts before. In case you haven’t, the short version is that on 18 November 1982 anarchist and punk Neil Roberts blew himself up with a bomb he exploded outside the Wanganui Computer Centre. The

Maintaining a memory Dear Neil Roberts by Airini Beautrais VUP Press, 2014, ISBN 9780864739735 Reviewed by Ann R Key - review originally published in AARGH! issue 3 I’M NOT from New Zealand, and I'm also not much of a sophisticate when it comes to poetry. I read what I like, skim, or ignore the rest, I can’t really tell you why I like what I do or what is good about it, just that for whatever reason a particular line or idea, mood or thought spoke to me and that was enough. But don’t ask me about structure or form, or poetic traditions because I don’t know. So I might not be the best person to review Airini Beautrais’ new book of poetry, Dear Neil Roberts (Victoria Press, 2014). But I am an anarchist and I have been here in New Zealand long enough that I had been told the story of Neil Roberts before. In case you haven’t, the short version is that on 18 November 1982 anarchist and punk Neil Roberts blew himself up with a bomb he exploded outside the Wanganui Computer Centre. The

A new book order has arrived in time to save you from having to buy your loved ones a pair of socks for Christmas. A selection of titles: The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability by Lierre Keith. “Part memoir, part nutritional primer, and part political manifesto, The Vegetarian Myth will challenge everything you thought you knew about food politics.” Also on the subject of food - Abolish Restaurants: A Worker's Critique of the Food Service Industry by Prole. “A 60-page illustrated guide to the daily misery, stress, boredom, and alienation of restaurant work, as well as the ways restaurant workers fight against it. Drawing on a range of anticapitalist ideas as well as a heaping plate of personal experience, it is part analysis and part call-to-arms.” Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (Ed). “From the literary heft of Angela Carter to the searing power of Octavia Butler, Sisters of the Revolution gathers d

A new book order has arrived in time to save you from having to buy your loved ones a pair of socks for Christmas. A selection of titles: The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability by Lierre Keith. “Part memoir, part nutritional primer, and part political manifesto, The Vegetarian Myth will challenge everything you thought you knew about food politics.” Also on the subject of food - Abolish Restaurants: A Worker's Critique of the Food Service Industry by Prole. “A 60-page illustrated guide to the daily misery, stress, boredom, and alienation of restaurant work, as well as the ways restaurant workers fight against it. Drawing on a range of anticapitalist ideas as well as a heaping plate of personal experience, it is part analysis and part call-to-arms.” Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (Ed). “From the literary heft of Angela Carter to the searing power of Octavia Butler, Sisters of the Revolution gathers

Once more we have a range of new books on the shelves. Orders have arrived from both PM Press and AK Press , including: The line has been drawn: it has gone this far, but no further . Published in 2014 ' A Line in the Tar Sands ' makes it clear that the industry needs to be shut down. The tar sands are a pivotal position in the fight against climate change. Anit-colonial and anti-capitalist fighters are confronting an industry driven by some of the largest corporations on earth, which have no goals that are any nobler than maximizing short-term profits and growth. A sample of the book can be downloaded here .   Asia's Unknown Uprisings , by George Katsiaficas. “Through Katsiaficas’s study of Asia’s uprisings and rebellions, readers get a glimpse of the challenge to revolutionaries to move beyond representative democracy and to reimagine and reinvent democracy. This book shows the power of rebellions to change the conversation.” —Grace Lee Boggs, activist and coauthor of