Below are a few of the videos, with links to the transcripts.
From Melting Glaciers to Structural Adjustment: Maude Barlow on the Need for Water Justice
Transcript here at Democracy Now! webpage.
Sunday, 25 April 2010
Democracy Now! videos interviews from Climate Change Conference
Democracy Now! has heaps of coverage of the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, in both video and transcripts.
Below are a few of the videos, with links to the transcripts.
Transcript here at Democracy Now! webpage.
Below are a few of the videos, with links to the transcripts.
Transcript here at Democracy Now! webpage.
Saturday, 24 April 2010
20,000 at Bolivia climate conference
Delegates at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and The Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia (Pic: Kris Krüg)
By Suzie Wylie and Jonathan Neale
in Cochabamba, Bolivia
From Socialist Worker UK
Some 20,000 people gathered for a “people’s conference on climate change” in Cochabamba, Bolivia, this week.
The event is historic. The leaders of the world’s major powers decided that they would do nothing about climate change at the UN’s climate talks in Copenhagen last December.
Many environmentalists were enraged. The same leaders who were prepared to bail out the banks were not prepared to save the planet.
There was a danger that the climate movement would collapse in demoralisation.
But Evo Morales, the left wing president of Bolivia, called a global conference of the social movements to continue the fight against climate change.
Canadian youth activist reports from Cochabamba
Kimia Ghomeshi from the Canadian youth climate movement reports back from Cochabamba:I am now about half way through the 3 day peoples conference and feel a great sense of empowerment and sadness all at once. I feel a deep sadness for our civilization that is so incapable of living in harmony with one another and with mother earth. The developing world are to this day paying the price for colonialism in the form of neoliberal and capitalistic practices that are destroying their air, land, water and food – destroying their way of life. I feel a deep sadness that capital accumulation has taken precedence over human life so that developed countries like Canada can continue to develop, exploit and consume.
But I also feel incredibly empowered because what I am seeing before me, here in Cochabamba, is a truly global resistance. A resistance to the world’s greatest polluters– polluters who refuse to accept their responsibility for causing this global catastrophe. And this movement is building, becoming more tactful, more united, more committed, with a common vision: Systems change, not climate change.
Read Ghomeshi’s full report here: http://www.ourclimate.ca/wordpress/
Hat tip http://climateandcapitalism.com
Friday, 23 April 2010
Voices from the first day of the Bolivian Climate Change Conference
Report by Anjali Kamat and Rick Rowley
Democracy Now
As the peoples’ climate change talks here move into their third day, thousands of participants from across Latin America and around the world are streaming into this small Bolivian town to discuss how to slow the impact of global warming. Anjali Kamat and Rick Rowley file this report on Tuesday’s opening ceremony.
Click link below to read Rush Transcript
Democracy Now
As the peoples’ climate change talks here move into their third day, thousands of participants from across Latin America and around the world are streaming into this small Bolivian town to discuss how to slow the impact of global warming. Anjali Kamat and Rick Rowley file this report on Tuesday’s opening ceremony.
Click link below to read Rush Transcript
Thursday, 22 April 2010
Happy birthday Lenin
April 22 was the birthday of Russian Marxist Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known to the world as Lenin.
Lenin was the founder of the Bolsheviks (later the Communist Party) and became president of USSR as a result of the 1917 October Revolution. The success of the Bolsheviks in founding the world’s first socialist government won wide support for Lenin’s ideas on how a socialist party should be organised.
But as an advocate of the overthrow of the social and economic order, Lenin was always going to be a hate figure for defenders of capitalism. Today the mainstream view (shared by many on the Left) is that Lenin was a dictator who, if not quite as bad as Stalin, certainly paved the way for him.
As for Lenin’s idea on party organisation, these are often seen as a blueprint for dictatorship, both within the party and in any country unfortunate enough to fall under Communist control.
Lenin’s fans – including UNITYblog – hold a different view. We remember that Lenin argued that “democracy is indispensable to socialism”, that he wanted “every cook” to help govern the new socialist state. That the Russian Revolution failed to achieve this goal, we argue, was because of many factors beyond Lenin and the Bolshivik’s control.
What about Lenin’s theory of party organisation?
The fundamental point was that revolutionary socialists / Marxists should form their own parties, independent from the “reformists” who rejected the idea of revolution, believing instead that the problems of capitalism could be solved through gradual reform.
Abandoning Leninism?
In the Western countries, a number of the most most well-known Leninist groups appear to be abandoning Lenin’s principle of an exclusively revolutionary organisation.
Broad Left parties such as Denmark’s Red Green Alliance, Portugal’s Left Blog and German’s Left Party include revolutionary and non-revolutionary groups and individuals.
In France the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR – one of the world’s biggest Trotskyist groups) dissolved itself in order to establish the broader New Anti-Capitalist Party.
Over in Australia, the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) has also dissolved itself into the Socialist Alliance, which includes revolutionary and non-revolutionary socialists.
Here in Aotearoa, Socialist Worker is one of several socialist groups who traditionally identify as “Leninist”. But we are also advocates of a broad left strategy and hope to see the formation of a “new workers party” or “broad left party” that includes not only reformist socialists, but also opponents of neo-liberal economics who are not socialists at all.
This raises some big questions about Leninism and its relevance today:
Have the former members of the LCR and the DSP have abandoned Leninism? Does it matter?
What is the role of revolutionaries and Marxists within these broader reformists (or not explicitly revolutionary) parties?
Was Lenin wrong to advocate organisational separation of Marxists from other socialists? Or was this idea right at the time, but not now?
Over the next month or so UNITYblog will examine the problems of Leninism in the 21st Century.
We will start by posting several international articles from Marxists in the Leninist tradition who have taken a new look at Leninism, before sharing the views of leftists (both Leninist and not) from Aotearoa and elsewhere.
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
The CTU’s Alternative Economic Strategy – a way forward for workers?
Also speaking will be Socialist Worker National Chair, Vaughan Gunson, who will discuss whether the Alternative Economic Strategy can be the basis of a broad left campaign against neo-liberalism.
A Socialist Worker Forum
Tuesday April 27, 7pm
at the Socialist Centre
86 Princes Street, Onehunga
For more information, or to organise a lift to the venue, phone Len
: 634 3984.
Monday, 19 April 2010
Grassroots action needed to save the Earth
Socialist Worker-New Zealand statement to the 'World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth' in Bolivia (19-22 April 2010).
19 April 2010
Socialist Worker-New Zealand agrees with the statement made by Bolivian President Evo Morales in his invitation to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth that “climate change is a product of the capitalist system”.
The pursuit of growth and profit is hard-wired into capitalism. Corporations and politicians wedded to capitalism cannot bring about the urgent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions we need to avert catastrophic climate change.
Therefore the transition to societies living in harmony with nature requires fundamental system change. The way we use resources, the way we produce things, the way we live has to change. This is the challenge that climate change, peak oil and other looming global crises place on the shoulders of all of us living today. Yet too many of our leaders are shirking their responsibilities, not only to those they claim to represent, but to future generations.
The pollution trading schemes and other market “solutions” promoted by the global elites will give even more profits and power to the very corporations that are the greatest source of pollution. Around the world grassroots people will carry the costs, as the price of fuel, power and other goods go through the roof. “Business as usual” will, as usual, leave the rich richer and the rest of us worse off.
System collapse
Because capitalism exists within a complex totality of social, political and environmental factors, it cannot escape the destruction it is wrecking on the planet. Socialist Worker-NZ believes that for the first time in capitalism’s 500-year history a perfect storm is beginning to engulf the world system.
The main elements are crises of profitability, ecology, resources, imperialism and legitimacy. Their concentration and intensification look set to trigger world system collapse within a historically short time period. (See: “Beware! The end is nigh”: Why global capitalism is tipping towards collapse, and how we can act for decent future, http://unityaotearoa.blogspot.com/2010/03/grant-morgan-beware-end-is-nigh.html.)
To survive the chaos of world system collapse, the Earth’s citizens must act collectively to build a decent future. We need concrete strategies for the world’s grassroots people to take up and use.
World Referendum
In this spirit, Socialist Worker-NZ welcomes the proposal for a World Referendum on Climate Change, which, (according to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change blog http://pwccc.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/referendum-on-climate-change/) will ask five “Yes or No” questions of the people of the Earth:
1) Do you agree with reestablishing harmony with nature while recognizing the rights of the Mother Earth?
2) Do you agree with changing this model of over-consumption and waste that represents capitalist system?
3) Do you agree that developing countries reduce and reabsorb their domestic greenhouse gas emissions for temperature not to rise more than 1 degree Celsius?
4) Do you agree with transferring all that is spent in wars and for allocating a budget bigger than used for defense to climate change?
5) Do you agree with a Climate Justice Tribunal to judge those who destroy Mother Earth?
An international campaign in support of such a referendum would establish stronger global links between environmental organisations, indigenous people, trade unions, social justice campaigners and other peoples’ organisations. A World Referendum, like the World People’s Conference itself, could be another important step towards the mass grassroots action necessary to put humanity on a path to sustainability, justice, equity and peace.
Socialist Worker-New Zealand sends our solidarity and best wishes to the conference attendees and look forward to the outcomes of your collective discussions.
In solidarity,
Socialist Worker-New Zealand
www.unityblognz.com
19 April 2010
Socialist Worker-New Zealand agrees with the statement made by Bolivian President Evo Morales in his invitation to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth that “climate change is a product of the capitalist system”.
The pursuit of growth and profit is hard-wired into capitalism. Corporations and politicians wedded to capitalism cannot bring about the urgent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions we need to avert catastrophic climate change.
Therefore the transition to societies living in harmony with nature requires fundamental system change. The way we use resources, the way we produce things, the way we live has to change. This is the challenge that climate change, peak oil and other looming global crises place on the shoulders of all of us living today. Yet too many of our leaders are shirking their responsibilities, not only to those they claim to represent, but to future generations.
The pollution trading schemes and other market “solutions” promoted by the global elites will give even more profits and power to the very corporations that are the greatest source of pollution. Around the world grassroots people will carry the costs, as the price of fuel, power and other goods go through the roof. “Business as usual” will, as usual, leave the rich richer and the rest of us worse off.
System collapse
Because capitalism exists within a complex totality of social, political and environmental factors, it cannot escape the destruction it is wrecking on the planet. Socialist Worker-NZ believes that for the first time in capitalism’s 500-year history a perfect storm is beginning to engulf the world system.
The main elements are crises of profitability, ecology, resources, imperialism and legitimacy. Their concentration and intensification look set to trigger world system collapse within a historically short time period. (See: “Beware! The end is nigh”: Why global capitalism is tipping towards collapse, and how we can act for decent future, http://unityaotearoa.blogspot.com/2010/03/grant-morgan-beware-end-is-nigh.html.)
To survive the chaos of world system collapse, the Earth’s citizens must act collectively to build a decent future. We need concrete strategies for the world’s grassroots people to take up and use.
World Referendum
In this spirit, Socialist Worker-NZ welcomes the proposal for a World Referendum on Climate Change, which, (according to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change blog http://pwccc.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/referendum-on-climate-change/) will ask five “Yes or No” questions of the people of the Earth:
1) Do you agree with reestablishing harmony with nature while recognizing the rights of the Mother Earth?
2) Do you agree with changing this model of over-consumption and waste that represents capitalist system?
3) Do you agree that developing countries reduce and reabsorb their domestic greenhouse gas emissions for temperature not to rise more than 1 degree Celsius?
4) Do you agree with transferring all that is spent in wars and for allocating a budget bigger than used for defense to climate change?
5) Do you agree with a Climate Justice Tribunal to judge those who destroy Mother Earth?
An international campaign in support of such a referendum would establish stronger global links between environmental organisations, indigenous people, trade unions, social justice campaigners and other peoples’ organisations. A World Referendum, like the World People’s Conference itself, could be another important step towards the mass grassroots action necessary to put humanity on a path to sustainability, justice, equity and peace.
Socialist Worker-New Zealand sends our solidarity and best wishes to the conference attendees and look forward to the outcomes of your collective discussions.
In solidarity,
Socialist Worker-New Zealand
www.unityblognz.com
World People’s Conference on Climate Change starts today
From Without Your Walls
At least 15,000 people from 126 countries are expected to attend the World People’s Conference on Climate Change which has been called by Bolivia as a response to the failure of the recent COP15 climate change negotiations.
As one of the few countries that openly criticised the negotiations in Copenhagen and has refused to sign the Copenhagen Accord, Bolivia has invited governments, organisations and people to take part in finding real solutions to fight climate change.
The objectives of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth are:
1) To analyze the structural and systemic causes that drive climate change and to propose radical measures to ensure the well-being of all humanity in harmony with nature
2) To discuss and agree on the project of a Universal Declaration of Mother Earth Rights
3) To agree on proposals for new commitments to the Kyoto Protocol and projects for a COP Decision under the United Nations Framework for Climate Change that will guide future actions in those countries that are engaged with life during climate change negotiations and in all United Nations scenarios, related to: Climate debt, Climate change migrants-refugees, Emission reductions, Adaptation, Technology transfer, Finance, Forest and Climate Change, Shared Vision, Indigenous, Peoples, and others. These are split into 17 working groups, which will form basis of the final document of the conference.
4) To work on the organization of the World People’s Referendum on Climate Change
5) To analyze and develop an action plan to advance the establishment of a Climate Justice Tribunal
6) To define strategies for action and mobilization to defend life from Climate Change and to defend the Rights of Mother Earth.
Keep updated and participate:
You can follow what’s going on the following this blog, this blog and social network sites
Watch the conference live
As one of the few countries that openly criticised the negotiations in Copenhagen and has refused to sign the Copenhagen Accord, Bolivia has invited governments, organisations and people to take part in finding real solutions to fight climate change.
Auckland event, 3rd May:
New Zealander Sandy Gauntlett of Global Forests Coalition and the international Climate Justice Now! network will be speaking on what happened at the conference on his return to New Zealand.
For more details and to confirm your attendance [via facebook] click here.
New Zealander Sandy Gauntlett of Global Forests Coalition and the international Climate Justice Now! network will be speaking on what happened at the conference on his return to New Zealand.
For more details and to confirm your attendance [via facebook] click here.
The objectives of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth are:
1) To analyze the structural and systemic causes that drive climate change and to propose radical measures to ensure the well-being of all humanity in harmony with nature
2) To discuss and agree on the project of a Universal Declaration of Mother Earth Rights
3) To agree on proposals for new commitments to the Kyoto Protocol and projects for a COP Decision under the United Nations Framework for Climate Change that will guide future actions in those countries that are engaged with life during climate change negotiations and in all United Nations scenarios, related to: Climate debt, Climate change migrants-refugees, Emission reductions, Adaptation, Technology transfer, Finance, Forest and Climate Change, Shared Vision, Indigenous, Peoples, and others. These are split into 17 working groups, which will form basis of the final document of the conference.
4) To work on the organization of the World People’s Referendum on Climate Change
5) To analyze and develop an action plan to advance the establishment of a Climate Justice Tribunal
6) To define strategies for action and mobilization to defend life from Climate Change and to defend the Rights of Mother Earth.
Keep updated and participate:
You can follow what’s going on the following this blog, this blog and social network sites
Watch the conference live
Sunday, 18 April 2010
Asia-Pacific Socialists Show Solidarity with Thailand’s Red Shirts
Regional Joint Statement by the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM), the Working People Association (PRP) of Indonesia, the People’s Democratic Party (PRD) of Indonesia, Turn Left Thailand, the Socialist Alliance of Australia
Thailand: Resolve the Crisis through Democracy, Not Crackdown
10 April 2010
We are deeply concerned over the current situation in Thailand where military-backed Prime Minister Ahbisit Vejjajiva has declared a state of emergency and started a bloody crackdown amidst escalating protests calling for fresh election.
The situation is worrying as the Thai government closes down all opposition media and gives sweeping new powers to the security forces to prepare for a violent crackdown on the Red Shirt protesters. Thai troops are using excessive force including tanks and live ammunition, against pro-democracy demonstrators in Bangkok.
The United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) or more well-known as the Red Shirts has re-launched massive protests against the military-installed unelected Ahbisit government since last March. This pro-democracy movement comprised of rural and urban poor, who stand up against the military-back oligarchic rule.
The current crisis unfolded in September 2006, when the military staged a coup against the government of Thaksin Shinawatra, scrapped the 1997 popular Constitution and replaced it with a military-sanctioned constitution. The royalist Yellow Shirts started to organize fascistic demonstrations when the pro-Thaksin party won in the 2007 election. The current Ahbisit government was installed by the military after the fascistic mobilizations by the Yellow Shirts and a coup by the court.
The government, the army and the Yellow Shirts are afraid to face real democratic elections, as they know that they would lose since the majority of the poor support the Red Shirts. Ahbisit and the ruling elite are refusing to call for elections and are trying to buy time and even preparing for a violent crackdown. It is becoming clear that Ahbisit and the old elite are bringing the country towards a fascist dictatorship.
Thailand has entered a new phase of class war. The old ruling elite with the backing of the military are using all means to scrap democracy in Thailand. The pro-democracy Red Shirts comprised of the majority of the working class, peasantry and poor have shown their real popularity and mobilizing strength which has definitely shaken the royalists and the military. With the broadening of the masses’ support for the Red Shirts, it could be a new and important step in the struggle of the ordinary people in Thailand for the restoration of democracy and social justice.
We call for:
• The immediate resignation of the military-installed Ahbisit government and the holding of fresh democratic elections.
• A halt to all forms of violent crackdown against Red Shirt protesters. Respect the right of the people to organize, to protest and to strike.
• A halt to the suppression of democratic rights and clampdown on the media.
• The Thai government to not resort to any military coup.
The current crisis in Thailand only can be resolved through genuine democracy and people’s power.
We extend our support and solidarity to all workers, peasants and poor in Thailand who struggle against the anti-democratic government and for the restoration of real democracy.
Contact: International Bureau, Socialist Party of Malaysia / Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM)
Address: No.22A, Lorong Vivekananda, 50470 Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA.
Tel: +60-3-22747791, (mobile) +60-19-5669518
Fax: +60-3-87374772
Email: (headquarters) psmhq@tm.net.my
(international bureau) int.psm@gmail.com
Web site: parti-sosialis.org
See also:
Thai Royalist Tyrants Use Violence to Cling to Power
by Giles Ji Ungpakorn
Thailand: Time for Fresh Elections
by Giles Ji Ungpakorn
Friday, 16 April 2010
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
Mobilisation for the climate and anti-capitalist strategy
The following article dealing with capitalism’s climate crisis was presented at the 16th World Congress of the Fourth International, held in Belgium in February 2010.
It raises similar issues and comes to striking similar to Socialist Worker NZ’s annalysis of the probability of capitalist collapse, as outlined in Grant Morgan’s essay ‘Beware! The end is nigh!’ Why global capitalism is tipping towards collapse, and how we can act for a decent future.
By Daniel Tanuro
Three billion human beings lack the essentials of life. The satisfaction of their needs requires increased production of material goods. Therefore increased consumption of energy. Today, 80 per cent of this energy is of fossil origin, and consequently a source of greenhouse gases which are unbalancing the climatic system.
It raises similar issues and comes to striking similar to Socialist Worker NZ’s annalysis of the probability of capitalist collapse, as outlined in Grant Morgan’s essay ‘Beware! The end is nigh!’ Why global capitalism is tipping towards collapse, and how we can act for a decent future.
By Daniel Tanuro
Three billion human beings lack the essentials of life. The satisfaction of their needs requires increased production of material goods. Therefore increased consumption of energy. Today, 80 per cent of this energy is of fossil origin, and consequently a source of greenhouse gases which are unbalancing the climatic system.
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
IS CAPITALISM ON A PATH TO COLLAPSE?
Public meetings in Christchurch and Wellington:
Guest speaker
Grant Morgan
Socialist Worker international secretary (Auckland)
Christchurch
7.30pm Tuesday April 27WEA 59 Gloucheter Street,
(opposite art gallery) Christchurch
Wellington
7.30pm on Thursday 29 April,
upstairs at Newtown Community Centre,
upstairs at Newtown Community Centre,
(Corner Rintoul & Colombo St)
Contact: Grant Brookes grant_brookes@paradise.net.nz | 021 053 2973
Synopsis
For the first time in capitalism’s 500-year history a perfect storm is beginning to engulf the world system.
The main elements are system-level crises of profitability, ecology, resources, imperialism and legitimacy. Their concentration and intensification look set to trigger world system collapse within a historically short time period.
Humanity will face a life-and-death struggle as we confront economic chaos, global warming, resource scarcity and imperial breakdown.
Can we survive the chaos, conflict and carnage of looming collapse? Can Earth’s citizens collectively built a decent future in the face of elite counteractions? Yes, says Grant Morgan.
He resurrects Marx’s analysis of social change to explain the growing intersection of system-level crises which will collapse global capitalism as surely as previous civilisations were brought down by their own perfect storms.
“At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production,” said Marx. “Then begins an era of social revolution.”
An era of social revolution will be triggered by the perfect storm appearing over capitalism’s horizon as it collapses the economic, ecological and imperial foundations of the world system. The need to unite or die will call forth a Global Uniting of the mass of humanity which ushers in a society of solidarity.
Grant will be drawing on, and developing, his 20,000 word essay ‘Beware! The end is nigh!’ Why global capitalism is tipping towards collapse, and how we can act for a decent future.
This essay takes up the entire contents of the 100-page March 2010 issue of UNITY journal. It can also be read here at UNITYblog.
Sunday, 11 April 2010
As Glaciers Melt, Bolivia Fights for the Good Life
by Jessica Camille Aguirre
Yes Magazine
Bolivia is watching its glaciers melt, early casualties of a changing climate. As communities struggle to adapt and the government tries to pioneer an alternative way forward, rural Bolivians believe the answer lies not in consumerist striving to live better, but in learning to live well.
Don Alivio Aruquipa [pictured right] is smiling as he gestures around his community. Behind him, groups of yelping children kick a soccer ball around a sloping green plaza. Every so often, the ball goes flying off the mesa into a plot of cultivated land below, and the children send someone to go retrieve it.
Looming over the verdant square that stretches among squat square buildings is Illimani, a blue, breathtaking colossus of craggy rock and snow.
On the other side of the mountain sits La Paz, the burgeoning capital city of Bolivia. But here, in the village of Khapi, the hush of remote tranquility is interrupted only by children’s cries.
Alivio, stocky and affable, is one of Khapi's community leaders. He turns somber as he explains how yellow water is beginning to come down from Illimani. The animals don’t like it, he says; they get sick or they refuse to drink. The water flowing down from the mountain has also become unpredictable, he adds. It has become impossible to know when to plant the crops.
Khapi is a village of 40 families in the western part of the Bolivian altiplano; its residents rely on agriculture to survive. It is the closest community to Illimani (the name for both the mountain and the glacier atop it, which provides water not only to Khapi but also to La Paz). For as long as anyone who lives here can remember, the community has relied on water from the glacier to drink, wash, cook, and cultivate food. But now Illimani is disappearing.
Yes Magazine
Bolivia is watching its glaciers melt, early casualties of a changing climate. As communities struggle to adapt and the government tries to pioneer an alternative way forward, rural Bolivians believe the answer lies not in consumerist striving to live better, but in learning to live well.
Don Alivio Aruquipa [pictured right] is smiling as he gestures around his community. Behind him, groups of yelping children kick a soccer ball around a sloping green plaza. Every so often, the ball goes flying off the mesa into a plot of cultivated land below, and the children send someone to go retrieve it.
Looming over the verdant square that stretches among squat square buildings is Illimani, a blue, breathtaking colossus of craggy rock and snow.
On the other side of the mountain sits La Paz, the burgeoning capital city of Bolivia. But here, in the village of Khapi, the hush of remote tranquility is interrupted only by children’s cries.
Alivio, stocky and affable, is one of Khapi's community leaders. He turns somber as he explains how yellow water is beginning to come down from Illimani. The animals don’t like it, he says; they get sick or they refuse to drink. The water flowing down from the mountain has also become unpredictable, he adds. It has become impossible to know when to plant the crops.
Khapi is a village of 40 families in the western part of the Bolivian altiplano; its residents rely on agriculture to survive. It is the closest community to Illimani (the name for both the mountain and the glacier atop it, which provides water not only to Khapi but also to La Paz). For as long as anyone who lives here can remember, the community has relied on water from the glacier to drink, wash, cook, and cultivate food. But now Illimani is disappearing.
Friday, 9 April 2010
'We've already moved public opinion' – NZEI organiser
UNITYblog spoke with Peter Hughes (left in photo above), an NZEI field officer (union organiser) who travelled on the Bus Tour, about the union’s campaign against national standards.
How did the tour go?
“The Bus Tour kicked off on the first day of term. Hundreds of schools have been visited. We’ve aimed to do four or five a day. The initial meetings spurred demand for a whole lot more.
“We found that those who were concerned to start with have become very concerned, and are trying to find strategies for engaging with communities. It’s already moved public opinion.”
What do you think about teachers boycotting national standards, an idea mentioned by NZEI president Frances Nelson at the rally at parliament on March 31?
“Technically, a boycott is industrial action, which is illegal under the Employment Relations Act. But it won’t be illegal after July 1, when our collective agreement expires. Some teachers want to link our pay claim to the campaign against national standards. There’s a concern that national standards will lead to ‘performance pay’, where teachers are paid more or less according to their school’s test results.”
The government has threatened to sack elected school boards and replace them with commissioners if they refuse to implement national standards. Can they do it?
“It’s a numbers game. If even 200 schools refuse to do it, the government won’t be able to carry out its threats. There won’t be enough commissioners! But it must be done collectively. Individual boards and principals can be picked off.”
What’s the potential for this campaign to feed into more general grassroots resistance to the National government?
“I was in the union office this morning. The members who came in to support the campaign were talking about the government’s plans to mine the National Parks. The issues are crossing over.
“Right now, the public petition calling for a trial of national standards before they’re introduced is extremely important. We’ve got over 21,000 signatures now. We need tens of thousands more.”
(For more on the fight against the government's national standards, click here)
‘National Standards’ in primary schools – first big defeat for the government?
by Grant Brookes
The growing campaign against “national standards" hit parliament on March 31, when around 200 teachers handed over signed Appeals to the government from nearly half the school communities in New Zealand. The Appeals call on the government not to implement the standards without trialling them first.
It was the culmination of the nine week Bus Tour organised by the NZEI primary teachers union. The Tour had visited schools and held hundreds of community meetings from Kaitaia to Bluff.
Labour and Green Party MPs lined up on parliament steps to greet the noisy teachers. Some Labour MPs had even spent time on the campaign bus to show their support. A wide array of trade unionists – from the Nurses Organisation to the Maritime Union, from the Finsec bank workers union to the National Distribution Union – joined the teachers' rally.
The protest reflected the scale and breadth of the movement that’s building around this issue. A UMR poll in February found that two thirds of people, and 71 percent of those with primary school age children, support NZEI’s call.
Their campaign has the potential to deliver the union movement’s first comprehensive defeat of the government and tip the balance back in favour of all grassroots people.
Yet just a week earlier, Labour education spokesperson Trevor Mallard told a Wellington campaign meeting, “I think in the end, we’ll end up with something that looks like some kind of compromise.
“NZEI is pushing hard for a trial... But public reporting is almost inevitable now.”
Put simply, "national standards" are like exams for primary school kids – in reading, writing and 'rithmetic – with the results published in the media.
The government touts them as the solution for low educational achievement by a minority of school children, mainly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
But as NZEI has explained very well, these are the kids who'll be worst off under a national standards regime. "Not all children come to school equal", says the union. A child may have strengths in many areas, but not in literacy and numeracy – which are the only subjects to be tested. Labelling them as failures because they can't do these tests will damage their motivation to learn.
The exam results will also be used – officially or unofficially – to rank schools. Richer, more mobile families will gravitate even more to the "elite" schools. The rest of us will be left with struggling, underfunded schools.
The pressure on teachers to get good test results will inevitably force some to neglect a child's broader needs for learning and development. And the pressure will be passed on to the kids, too. It will no longer be OK for them to progress at their own rate.
Not surprisingly, with so much riding on the results, similar schemes overseas have seen widespread cheating and are now being abandoned.
The government has been unable to counter these arguments from the union. But national standards aren't really about helping poor achievers, anyway. The real reason for introducing national standards is to control teachers.
Teachers are a difficult group for the government to manage. Not only are they highly unionised, well educated professionals, who work with a degree of autonomy in the classroom, their immediate bosses (principals) are former classroom teachers and union members, too.
Above the principals are the boards of trustees. Managers and businesspeople tend to dominate on school boards. Even so, board members are elected from the school community, and in lower and mid-decile schools the boards, too, have ties to the working class.
The government wants tighter control over teachers in order to dictate what is taught to the next generation of workers. It's no coincidence that national standards are focusing only on literacy and numeracy, and not on skills like critical thinking or developing self-esteem and a sense of self-worth (part of the current health curriculum). National standards are about serving the interests of employers by creating a productive, obedient workforce.
The most insidious aspect of all is the effect that "national standards" will have on the ethos of cooperation and on working class values like solidarity which are nurtured in many primary schools.
The tests will pit children against their peers from a very young age, in competition for the good grades. Each school will likewise be in competition with all other schools for places higher up the public league table.
NZEI president Frances Nelson told the rally at parliament, "Huge concern exists over whether this is politically driven, rather than being a policy in the best interests of children and their learning."
National standards, ultimately, are about corroding cooperation and nurturing the anti-human, competitive values underpinning capitalism.
But as Frances Nelson said, "As professionals, we have both a right and an obligation to challenge an educational policy that has no evidence that it will work".
“We did meet with minister Anne Tolley just a little while ago. We gave her a list of all of the schools that have signed up to trial the standards.
A cheer went up when she added, “We also indicated there are a number of schools who weren’t interested in trialling the standards at all, because they intend to boycott.”
With this level of industrial strength and community support, there's no need to heed Trevor Mallard's suggestion to settle for "some kind of compromise" that leaves National's agenda largely intact.
Teachers have comprehensively beaten the National government before, through a community-backed campaign of industrial action. In 1991, National introduced a policy of "bulk funding" for schools. It aimed to divide and weaken teachers by breaking up their national collective agreement, and to make schools more reliant on fundraising and less on government money.
For the next seven years, primary and secondary teachers took action, including nationwide strikes and dozens of wildcat strikes. Foreshadowing today's talk of boycotts, both primary and secondary teachers boycotted the introduction of the government's new curriculum. Many of these actions were in defiance of National's anti-union laws.
When National was finally voted out, eight years later, there were still only 17 percent of schools signed up to bulk funding. The policy was dropped. Teachers held onto their national collective - the only major group to do so. This later aided other unionists to regain national agreements for themselves.
Building up to a huge campaign of boycotts against national standards is what's needed now. Primary teachers are due to enter bargaining for their collective employment agreement soon, making industrial action over both pay and national standards a possibility.
But to have the confidence to win, teachers will need strong public support. The next phase of the campaign will focus on the public petition, 21,000 signatures and growing. Download it here and get collecting!
Thursday, 8 April 2010
Water: ‘When Federated Farmers asks, the Government listens’
by Pat O’Dea
Wondering what is behind the sacking of the Canterbury Regional Council over the control of Canterbury’s water resources? When Federated Farmers ask, the Government listens.
New Zealand’s biggest business pressure group put out their wish list in early February. Since then the Government has been ticking the boxes one by one.
Wondering what is behind the sacking of the Canterbury Regional Council over the control of Canterbury’s water resources? When Federated Farmers ask, the Government listens.
New Zealand’s biggest business pressure group put out their wish list in early February. Since then the Government has been ticking the boxes one by one.
Wednesday, 7 April 2010
Bolivia creates a new opportunity for climate talks that failed at Copenhagen
Bolivia’s UN ambassador Pablo Solon-Romero during a press conference.
Photograph: Paulo Filgueiras/UN Photo
By Pablo Solón Romero
In the aftermath of the Copenhagen climate conference, those who defended the widely condemned outcome tended to talk about it as a “step in the right direction”. This was always a tendentious argument, given that tackling climate change cannot be addressed by half measures. We can’t make compromises with nature.
Bolivia, however, believed that Copenhagen marked a backwards step, undoing the work built on since the climate talks in Kyoto. That is why, against strong pressure from industrialised countries, we and other developing nations refused to sign the Copenhagen Accord and why we are hosting an international meeting on climate change in Cochabamba, Bolivia, from April 19 to 22, 2010. In the words of the Tuvalu negotiator, we were not prepared to “betray our people for 30 pieces of silver”.
Monday, 5 April 2010
GST off healthy food: a broad campaign is the right thing to do
by Vaughan Gunson
Gordon Campbell, editor of the online magazine Werewolf, has written an invaluable article, Do the Right Thing, that completely knocks the stuffing out of all the arguments against taking GST off food.
Campbell’s well researched and timely article draws on the Australian experience – where there's no GST on basic food – to destroy the chimerical argument that it’s too hard to exempt food from GST. In Australia, current computer technology makes the exemption process easy.
In December last year, the Australian Taxation Office released a computer package that makes it quite simple for a lot of businesses to manage the food exemptions. The same technology could be adapted for New Zealand. The supposed difficulty has been one of the main excuses used by defenders of across-the-board GST, including the leadership of both National and Labour. But there are options available which would overcome any major inconvenience for retailers.
Campbell also highlights the results of a research project released in March this year by the Wellington School of Medicine, which confirmed that price decisively determined people’s food choices at the supermarket. Despite education on healthy foods, when it came to loading up the trolley, people went for the cheaper options, even if they were less healthy. From the study, the conclusion of Professor Tony Blakely is that price intervention works in encouraging people to choose healthier food. The research gives support to Maori Party MP Rahui Katene’s private members' bill to remove GST from healthy food.
As Campbell correctly points out, what makes GST on food an immediate issue is the government’s plan to increase GST to 15% and lower income tax. That shift, Campbell says, “will leave more money in the pockets of the relatively well off, and place a heavier burden on workers on low incomes, and on beneficiaries. That’s because those on benefits and the working poor have less discretionary income, and spend a higher proportion of their income on basics, such as food.” The poor will be worse off from the proposed tax changes, while the rich will get the benefits.
And this is the crux of the debate, it’s not about degrees of difficultly or “tax anomalies”, it’s about where you stand on tax justice for grassroots people. As Campbell asks: “why not do something so easy, so readily manageable by business, so justifiable on grounds of social justice, and so likely to deliver practical health benefits to the community?”
The answer for the National government – and the Labour leadership also, who are refusing so far to budge – is that removing GST from food would undermine a central pillar of neo-liberalism. GST is a regressive tax that has strong support within corporate, banking and government circles.
Removing GST from food would be a decisive step towards shifting the tax burden off grassroots people. At the same time it would de-legitimise the tax in the eyes of many people.
We know the call to remove GST off food is popular. In 2008, a small group of activists from RAM-Residents Action Movement collected nearly 30,000 signatures in a matter of months. Opinion polls and everyday conversations point to continued opposition to our food being taxed.
With food prices rising dramatically, and many global experts predicting further sharp increases in 2010, the cost of food for grassroots people will be major issue, which will bubble into the media and become a political issue. We can expect any re-launch of the GST off food campaign to be met with widespread support.
Rahui Katene's private member's bill to remove GST from healthy food will have the best chance of getting the support it needs from MPs – particularly Labour MPs – if there's a high profile campaign outside of parliament. That campaign could include a number of organisations and groups working together.
In 2008, RAM's GST-off-food campaign received support from the Maori Party, Grey Power and individual trade unions. Today, a number of other groups outside of parliament, like the Alliance, Child Poverty Action, Socialist Aotearoa, Global Peace and Justice Auckland, the Workers Party, and the NZ Council of Trade Unions, have positions which are critical of GST. This common ground would suggest there’s potential for a broad coalition in support of removing GST from healthy food. A broad coalition, if achieved, would provide the necessary capacity to mount a serious campaign in support of Rahui Katene's private members' bill.
Campaigning for GST off healthy food would require any coalition to raise tax alternatives to address the prospective government revenue loss. A frontrunner would have to be a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) or Robin Hood Tax, as it's been recently named by a popular campaign in Britain.
A Robin Hood Tax targets the banks and the mega-wealthy. Following the global financial implosion, and the role played by the banks and other financial speculators, the time is right to popularise a tax which hits the most hated global purveyors of greed and exploitation. There's already support among a number of grassroots organisations for a Financial Transaction Tax, many of the same ones that oppose GST. So the potential for cooperation exists.
Initiating a broad campaign to remove GST from healthy food would be an important step towards achieving tax justice for grassroots New Zealanders. In recent months there’s been significant cooperation around Unite’s $15ph minimum wage petition, which has been encouraging. A campaign to remove GST from healthy food would deliver similar tangible benefits to grassroots people and also mount a political challenge to neo-liberalism, especially if combined with advocacy of a Robin Hood Tax that targets the banks and other financial speculators. It’s time to do the right thing and join together in a broad campaign that could spark a wider grassroots political resurgence.
It’s interesting that in the comments to Gordon Campbell’s article, two people who support removing GST from food ask very similar questions. Duncan Graham asks: “[W]here’s the political will to push this proposal?... When are we going to get a party with the energy to really run with an issue, particularly one with such widespread benefits?”
And Liz asks: “When are we going to get a viable opposition party that will push for things like this, strongly and loudly?” Something else for us to think about.
Vaughan Gunson is the national chair of Socialist Worker-New Zealand and the campaign manager for Bad Banks. To contact Vaughan email svpl(at)xtra.co.nz or ph/txt 021-0415 082.
See also Hey, Labour MPs, why not support GST off food?
Gordon Campbell, editor of the online magazine Werewolf, has written an invaluable article, Do the Right Thing, that completely knocks the stuffing out of all the arguments against taking GST off food.
Campbell’s well researched and timely article draws on the Australian experience – where there's no GST on basic food – to destroy the chimerical argument that it’s too hard to exempt food from GST. In Australia, current computer technology makes the exemption process easy.
In December last year, the Australian Taxation Office released a computer package that makes it quite simple for a lot of businesses to manage the food exemptions. The same technology could be adapted for New Zealand. The supposed difficulty has been one of the main excuses used by defenders of across-the-board GST, including the leadership of both National and Labour. But there are options available which would overcome any major inconvenience for retailers.
Campbell also highlights the results of a research project released in March this year by the Wellington School of Medicine, which confirmed that price decisively determined people’s food choices at the supermarket. Despite education on healthy foods, when it came to loading up the trolley, people went for the cheaper options, even if they were less healthy. From the study, the conclusion of Professor Tony Blakely is that price intervention works in encouraging people to choose healthier food. The research gives support to Maori Party MP Rahui Katene’s private members' bill to remove GST from healthy food.
As Campbell correctly points out, what makes GST on food an immediate issue is the government’s plan to increase GST to 15% and lower income tax. That shift, Campbell says, “will leave more money in the pockets of the relatively well off, and place a heavier burden on workers on low incomes, and on beneficiaries. That’s because those on benefits and the working poor have less discretionary income, and spend a higher proportion of their income on basics, such as food.” The poor will be worse off from the proposed tax changes, while the rich will get the benefits.
And this is the crux of the debate, it’s not about degrees of difficultly or “tax anomalies”, it’s about where you stand on tax justice for grassroots people. As Campbell asks: “why not do something so easy, so readily manageable by business, so justifiable on grounds of social justice, and so likely to deliver practical health benefits to the community?”
The answer for the National government – and the Labour leadership also, who are refusing so far to budge – is that removing GST from food would undermine a central pillar of neo-liberalism. GST is a regressive tax that has strong support within corporate, banking and government circles.
Removing GST from food would be a decisive step towards shifting the tax burden off grassroots people. At the same time it would de-legitimise the tax in the eyes of many people.
We know the call to remove GST off food is popular. In 2008, a small group of activists from RAM-Residents Action Movement collected nearly 30,000 signatures in a matter of months. Opinion polls and everyday conversations point to continued opposition to our food being taxed.
With food prices rising dramatically, and many global experts predicting further sharp increases in 2010, the cost of food for grassroots people will be major issue, which will bubble into the media and become a political issue. We can expect any re-launch of the GST off food campaign to be met with widespread support.
Rahui Katene's private member's bill to remove GST from healthy food will have the best chance of getting the support it needs from MPs – particularly Labour MPs – if there's a high profile campaign outside of parliament. That campaign could include a number of organisations and groups working together.
In 2008, RAM's GST-off-food campaign received support from the Maori Party, Grey Power and individual trade unions. Today, a number of other groups outside of parliament, like the Alliance, Child Poverty Action, Socialist Aotearoa, Global Peace and Justice Auckland, the Workers Party, and the NZ Council of Trade Unions, have positions which are critical of GST. This common ground would suggest there’s potential for a broad coalition in support of removing GST from healthy food. A broad coalition, if achieved, would provide the necessary capacity to mount a serious campaign in support of Rahui Katene's private members' bill.
Campaigning for GST off healthy food would require any coalition to raise tax alternatives to address the prospective government revenue loss. A frontrunner would have to be a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) or Robin Hood Tax, as it's been recently named by a popular campaign in Britain.
A Robin Hood Tax targets the banks and the mega-wealthy. Following the global financial implosion, and the role played by the banks and other financial speculators, the time is right to popularise a tax which hits the most hated global purveyors of greed and exploitation. There's already support among a number of grassroots organisations for a Financial Transaction Tax, many of the same ones that oppose GST. So the potential for cooperation exists.
Initiating a broad campaign to remove GST from healthy food would be an important step towards achieving tax justice for grassroots New Zealanders. In recent months there’s been significant cooperation around Unite’s $15ph minimum wage petition, which has been encouraging. A campaign to remove GST from healthy food would deliver similar tangible benefits to grassroots people and also mount a political challenge to neo-liberalism, especially if combined with advocacy of a Robin Hood Tax that targets the banks and other financial speculators. It’s time to do the right thing and join together in a broad campaign that could spark a wider grassroots political resurgence.
It’s interesting that in the comments to Gordon Campbell’s article, two people who support removing GST from food ask very similar questions. Duncan Graham asks: “[W]here’s the political will to push this proposal?... When are we going to get a party with the energy to really run with an issue, particularly one with such widespread benefits?”
And Liz asks: “When are we going to get a viable opposition party that will push for things like this, strongly and loudly?” Something else for us to think about.
Vaughan Gunson is the national chair of Socialist Worker-New Zealand and the campaign manager for Bad Banks. To contact Vaughan email svpl(at)xtra.co.nz or ph/txt 021-0415 082.
See also Hey, Labour MPs, why not support GST off food?
Sunday, 4 April 2010
The new ‘forgotten’ war
, author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, looks at how the U.S. war on Iraq continues to decimate the country.
A family of Iraqi refugees in Damascus (James Gordon)
The Western world that slaughtered Iraq and Iraqis, through 13 years of sanctions and seven years of occupation, is now turning its back on the victims. What has remained of Iraq is still being devastated by bombings, assassinations, corruption, millions of evictions and continued infrastructure destruction. Yet the world that caused all this is trying to draw a rosy picture of the situation in Iraq. -- Maki Al-Nazzal, Iraqi political analyst
AS AFGHANISTAN has taken center stage in the U.S. corporate media, with President Barack Obama announcing two major escalations of the war in recent months, the U.S. occupation of Iraq has fallen into the media shadows.
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Community action saves Mangere East post office
At the picket of the Mangere East Countdown store, community activist, Roger Fowler, receives unanimous support for a boycott and free shuttle service to a rival supermarket. Photo credit Manukau Courier.
When food giant Progressive Enterprises served an eviction notice on the Mangere East Post Office recently, they didn’t factor in the united outrage of the local community.
Progressive have a grand plan to demolish the Mangere East shops they own and build a bigger Countdown store on the site. Their four-weeks eviction notice on their neighbour was to be their first move.
When local residents found out, they called an urgent meeting at the community hall. Over 250 turned up to campaign to save their Post Office & Kiwibank, and set about organising a series of protest actions. Mangere MP Su’a William Sio, several city councillors, community & church leaders and the Mangere Community Board swung in behind the campaign. The walls of the shopping centre were plastered with well-read daily wall-newspapers with updates on the campaign. A community petition attracted over 6000 signatures.
Over 200 angry locals picketed the Countdown store and loudly endorsed a plan to boycott Countdown and run a free shoppers’ bus service to the rival Pak ‘N Save store in Mangere. The community centre offered their bus for a half-hourly free shuttle service.
After the rowdy lunchtime protest the Post Office manager received an email from Progressive bosses agreeing to drop the eviction notice, and offered a public apology and to meet with protest leaders. At that meeting the company also agreed to on-going consultations with the protesters regarding their development plans, and to offer the Post Office a prime position in the new Countdown store.
Progressive, is renowned for being arrogant & stubborn – remember their infamous lock out three years ago. But after just two weeks of concerted community protest action they were forced to back down.
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