What Sir Paul really meant to say was...

(See Expats asked to pay off student loans 'to help Christchurch', an idea of Sir Peter Callahan)

Dear educated smart refugees from privatisation, we are so sorry we stole all of those public assets in the 1980's and '90's and flogged them off for cents in the dollar. We regret spending all the money we were paid in bribes by our new owners on flash houses and cars which are now ruined. We are heart-broken that we ruined organisations like the Ministry of Works and the New Zealand Railways apprenticeship schemes that delivered thousands of skilled tradespeople into our economy smoothly and cheaply, year after year. Now we are faced with having to attract thousands of engineers and tradespeople whilst competing against the market rate for these skills paid elsewhere in the world, a problem that our low wages resulting from undemocratic non-unionised job sites makes harder still. We thought we had built everything we would ever need, so all you working types and your families could just live in poverty or leave the country. Our leader John Key smiles nicely, but hasn't a clue about anything except asset stripping and fleecing the workers, the poor and the sick. We need you to pay for the rebuilding of our economy so we can carry on lording it over you and telling you what to think.

Please send us your money. We are desperate!

- by Peter de Waal

London: half a million march against cuts

Statement by British Socialist Workers Party

Over half a million people took to the streets of London on Saturday. They were marching against the Con-Dem [Conservative / Liberal Democrats coalition] government’s cuts. It was one of the biggest protests this country has ever seen.

2011 SOCIALIST WORKER NATIONAL CONFERENCE

 

Venue: Socialist Centre, 86 Princes Street, Onehunga, Auckland.

Friday 22 April

P U B L I C    M E E T I N G:

terminal 5

How Arab revolutions and unnatural disasters

fit with the five terminal crises of global capitalism

Speaker: Grant Morgan

7.00pm @ Socialist Centre, 86 Princes Street, 
Onehunga, Auckland.

Saturday 23 April

Conference start time: 9.00am

D R A F T   A G E N D A :

1. Theorising and popularising our analysis of capitalism’s terminal crisis

2. Broad ecosocialist network today, broad left party tomorrow

3. Election of new central committee

4. Tax Justice campaign

5. PUBLIC MEETING: Left unity in Aotearoa (4pm)

Public meeting open to all leftists on how we can progress greater left unity in New Zealand.

Evening social at the Socialist Centre. Shared food and drink.

If you would like to join Socialist Worker and attend our conference, please contact Vaughan Gunson, email socialist-worker@pl.net or phone 021-0415 082.

If you are going to attend one or both of the two public meetings open to all New Zealand leftists, please also contact Vaughan Gunson email socialist-worker@pl.net or phone 021-0415 082. Just so we can get an idea of numbers.

Updating Japan's Nuclear Disaster

by Stephen Lendman
from Countercurrents.org
27 March 2011

Japan's March 11 earthquake/tsunami-caused nuclear disaster affects millions of people regionally and throughout the Northern Hemisphere. But you'd never know it from most major media reports, downplaying an unfolding catastrophe.

In fact, distinguished experts like Helen Caldicott long ago warned of inevitable nuclear disasters, especially in seismically active areas. On May 23, 2004, The Japan Times contributor Leuren Moret headlined, "Japan's deadly game of nuclear roulette," saying:

"Of all the places in all the world no one in their right mind would build scores of nuclear power plants, Japan would be pretty near the top of the list."

"Japan sits on top of four tectonic plates....and is one of the most tectonically active regions of the world. (There) is almost no geologic setting in the world more dangerous for nuclear power than Japan."

Why We Revolt

When and how does the moment come when people stop believing in the power that has ruled them? When and how do ordinary people discover their own power?

by Rebecca Solnit

Yes! Magazine

A protester in Cairo during the uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak.

Photo by Kodak Afga

Revolution is as unpredictable as an earthquake and as beautiful as spring. Its coming is always a surprise, but its nature should not be.

Revolution is a phase, a mood, like spring, and just as spring has its buds and showers, so revolution has its ebullience, its bravery, its hope, and its solidarity. Some of these things pass. The women of Cairo do not move as freely in public as they did during those few precious weeks when the old rules were suspended and everything was different. But the old Egypt is gone and Egyptians’ sense of themselves—and our sense of them—is forever changed.

No revolution vanishes without effect. The Prague Spring of 1968 was brutally crushed, but 21 years later when a second wave of revolution liberated Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubcek, who had been the reformist Secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, returned to give heart to the people from a balcony overlooking Wenceslas Square: "The government is telling us that the street is not the place for things to be solved, but I say the street was and is the place. The voice of the street must be heard."

But when exactly do the abuses that have been tolerated for so long become intolerable? When does the fear evaporate and the rage generate action that produces joy?

 

GP&JA: protest at US consulate, 2pm Saturday

By Mike Treen
Global Peace & Justice Auckland Spokesperson

The bombing of Libya by the US, France and Britain has nothing to do with the plight of the people living under a brutal dictatorship.

The people of Libya are simply a convenient fig leaf for an attempt to reimpose control over the region by their former colonial masters.

Every military intervention by the US and its allies in recent decades has started as an alleged “humanitarian intervention to stop a brutal regime oppressing its people”. Yet every one of these interventions – from Somalia to Yugoslavia and Afghanistan to Iraq – has ended up in disasters for their own people with the death toll in the millions. The client regimes that were established are in all cases led by corrupt local warlords whose only distinguishing feature is that they are happy to sell of the resources of their peoples to their imperial masters.

Mark Steel: It’s Blair I feel really sorry for

By Mark Steel

Isn’t it marvelous that all these governments are determined to do "something" about Colonel Gaddafi? For example Hillary Clinton said she supported military action once the Arab League – made up of countries such as Bahrain, Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia – backed the air strikes. And it is encouraging that the policy of not tolerating a dictator has the backing of so many dictators.

Some people might suggest that one way King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, for example, might reduce the number of Arab dictators, would be to stop being an Arab dictator, but that’s because they don't understand how complicated these things can be.

Thinking About Reactions to Libya and Each Other

By Michael Albert

Thought One

Good, insightful people can have conflicting views about Libya, the Mideast, and North Africa, and the UN and U.S. role there.

Rather than flinging verbal daggers at one another until irretrievable splits permanently part us, can we disagree but also hear others and realize we may not be right? Can we even find a way to pursue the logic of our views, differences and all, in a shared agenda?

Rally For Christchurch

Linwood Park
Saturday April 2
1 pm

This event, created by Action for Christchurch East, is for residents who want to get involved in the Christchurch recovery and want to help build local community networks. We’re tired of being talked to by politicians who leave us feeling that our concerns and opinions do not count.

First Security strike against low pay

Union members at First Security took strike action on April 19 in support of 15 members from the company’s patrols division who were earlier locked out by the company after a two-hour strike for decent pay. 

Unite organisers joined staff picketing the company’s Mt Wellington head office. Representatives from the Amalgamated Workers Union and the National Distribution Union also attended to show their solidarity. 

Non-union staff and management who turned up for work found the exit was blocked by a placard-covered car which mysteriously appeared outside. The picketers were not intimidated by management claims that their action was illegal and calling the police. After discussion with organisers, management agreed to lift the lockout and to meet with Unite for further talks on wages. 

First Security guards begin on $13.52 per hour. The company was offering a three percent increase which would bring them to just $13.93. (The minimum wage is $13.00 from 1 April) Patrol staff want a minimum rate of $14.50 per hour which has been refused by the company. First Security is owned by Dutch multinational ISS. 

According to Unite organiser Barry Sutherland, “Already the pay rates for patrol staff at First Security are the lowest in Auckland. Many of the staff are migrant workers who are fearful of their employment and more easily cowed to accept low pay and long hours of work.” 

After the success of Saturday’s picket, these workers will not be so easily intimidated in future.

Attack on Libya aims to reassert Western dominance

By David

The Western powers now bombing Libyan are protecting their easy access to Libyan, Saudi and Gulf oil and their overall control of the Arab World, which they have dominated since Britain and France carved up the Turkish-dominated Ottoman Empire after World War One (1914-18).

The rise of Arab Nationalism after World War Two threatened Western control, but with the help of Israel (formed by Jewish settlers in what had been Palestine in 1948), the US was able to reassert Western control.

Now the structure of imperial domination has taken a huge hit from the uprisings, particularly the fall of Mubarak in Egypt. The US and its allies know they must do something to ensure that whatever new order emerges it will still be under their control.

That easy bit, for them, is backing the Saudi / Kuwaiti / UAE invasion of Bahrain, to ensure the revolution is crushed there and does not spread. The kings of Saudi Arabia and of the smaller Gulf states have been important US allies for decades, providing cheap oil, military bases and political support within the Arab world. For any of these regimens to fall to democracy would be a huge set back for the US.

The hard decision was deciding what to do in Libya. When he first came to power 1969 Gaddafi was inspired by the Arab nationalism and Chinese Maoism. But the nationalists had already been defeated by Israel in the Six Day War of 1967, after which it occupied Gaza and the West Bank, as well as large parts of Syria and Egypt.

Like Syria, Libya remained independent from the US, but anti-imperialist and socialist rhetoric masked brutal dictatorships. Over the last ten years Gaddafi has made his peace with the West, but he is not dependent on them, and therefore not a reliable ally.

Waging war, nominally in support of, and at the request of, the rebels is a golden opportunity for the West to relegitimise military attacks in the Middle East after the disasters of Afghanistan and Iraq. It also offers the possibility of a new government dependant on Western support controlling either part or all of Libya and its oil. Most importantly, it allows the West to assert some control in this vital part of the world.

Bad To Worse In Japan

A major nuclear meltdown could spread radiation around the world and make cities uninhabitable forever. Humanity is truly dicing with death.

by Stephen Lendman
from Countercurrents.org
20 March 2011

It bears repeating. Government, industry, and major media reports downplay and deny Japan's unprecedented nuclear disaster, potentially able to kill millions now living and in future generations painfully.

Nuclear power is a real life Andromeda Strain. If uncontrollably unleashed, it's potentially able to destroy life worldwide under a worse case scenario.

In his latest article, nuclear expert Harvey Wasserman said "the most devastating thing about (Fukushima) is not what's happening there now. It's that until all the world's reactors are shut, even worse is virtually certain to happen again. All too soon." Fukushima, in fact, may be the nuclear nightmare he suggests.

Globally, 450 reactors operate, including 104 aging American ones, many with bad safety records caused by cost-cutting and shoddy maintenance. Poorly regulated, they're ticking time bombs, accidents waiting to happen, many plagued by near-meltdown misses.

Stop the War UK: UN Declares War on Libya

1) STOP THE WAR STATEMENT: UN DECLARATION OF WAR ON LIBYA

A new war has been declared in the Middle East. With the bloody and failing
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan still in place, the USA, Britain and France
are now committed to an escalating armed intervention in Libya.

The decision to attack Libya and impose regime change – for that is what the
UN resolution means – may have been authorised by the Security Council. But
it was instigated by the despots of the Arab League, desperate to secure deeper
western involvement in the region to save them from their own peoples. And it
will be implemented by the same powers which have wreaked such mayhem
throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds over the last ten years and longer.

The imposition of a “no-fly zone”, air attacks on Libyan defences and
Gaddaffi’s troops, and naval bombardments will not bring peace to Libya nor a
resolution to the conflict there. 

They will, however, cost more civilian lives and they will set Britain and the
world on an escalator of military intervention which risks ending up with an
occupation of at least part of Libya.

While few people are admirers of the Gaadaffi regime, the experience of Iraq
underlines the dangerous futility of trying to impose “regime change” from
without. It also reminds us that genuine democracy and freedom cannot grow from
aerial bombardment and foreign occupation.

Attacking Libya and sponsoring the Gulf oligarchies’ invasion of Bahrain to
prop up the threatened monarchy there – under the noses of the US fifth fleet
- are of a piece. They represent a concerted effort by the western powers to
first control and then bring to a halt the Arab revolutions, leaving the
essentials of imperial power in the Middle East in place.

David Cameron’s decision to place Britain in the vanguard of efforts to
topple the Gaddafi regime is dictated by the same considerations which led Tony
Blair and Gordon Brown to embrace that same regime – a desire to maintain
BP’s profitable access to Libyan oil.

Stop the War believes that there should be no external military intervention in
Libya. In supporting the Arab revolutions, we believe that these will be
strangled, not supported, by western military action.

We call on the British government to keep its hands off the Middle East and
demand that it refrain from all involvement in military action in Libya or
elsewhere in the region. We urge the anti-war movement to campaign throughout
the country to arrest and reverse this slide to war and British participation
in it.

Revolutionary Hope and Change Across the 'Arab World'

By Gilbert Achcar

and Ali Mustafa
Source: New Socialist

Gilbert Achcar is a Lebanese writer, socialist, and antiwar activist. He is also a professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, and author most recently of The Arabs and the Holocaust: the Arab-Israeli War of Narratives. In this interview, he discusses the significance of the ongoing revolutionary wave of mass protests occurring across the Middle East with one of the New Socialist webzine editors Ali Mustafa.

This Is An Arab 1848. But US Hegemony Is Only Dented

With western-backed despots being turfed out politics has changed for ever. So just how far can the revolution spread?

By Tariq Ali

Source: The Gaurdian

Friday, February 25, 2011

Revolutionary murals on the walls of newly established toilet facilities for protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square. Photograph: Ben Curtis/AP

Auckland: Solidarity with Bahrain’s revolution -- Saudi Troops Out!

The peaceful protestors at the Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain have again been slaughtered. A month ago, it was by their own Government. Now, it is with the support of foreign Saudi troops.

On Saturday 19th at 2pm, we will gather in Aotea Square, to listen to members of the Bahraini Community and their supporters, before we march to the Saudi Consulate.

Saudi Troops Out.
Down with the Bahraini Junta.
Power to the People
Victory to the Bahraini Revolution.

more info at- http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=188981107789270

Public letter from Bahraini protesters to Barack Obama

From  jadaliyya.com

[This is a public letter addressed to US President Barack Obama from by protesters in Bahrain under the name “Movement of 14 February.” The letter was circulated on March 15, 2011]

Mr President,

You certainly know about the Saudi and other gulf troops arriving to Bahrain to aid the government in clamping down the peaceful protesters. If you can find any legal, logical or ethical justification for this intervention, can you find any justification as well to them forming thugs attacking peaceful Bahrainis in their own homes and villages, killing them with live rounds, intimidating women and children in these areas, and boasting themselves with a "claimed" American green light!!

Mr President, having listened to your addresses in many occasions, we find it difficult to believe that you and the United States could stand by in such an inhumane and resentful situation that Bahrainis are witnessing today, for the simple sin of peacefully claiming civic, political and human rights. We urge you Mr. President to take a position that will be remembered by your own people as well as the Bahraini people and all peoples in this miserable region of the world.

We ask for a clear and firm stance from the US administration towards the ill-intentioned, arrogant and murderous actions of the Bahraini regime with the help of neighboring Gulf regimes.

This is the outcry of peaceful Bahraini protesters, and we heartily hope that it will meet your wise and just support.


Movement of 14 February

Zimbabwe treason trialists released on bail

By Ken Olende
from Socialist Worker UK

A Zimbabwean judge yesterday released on bail the six socialists facing the death penalty for watching a video on the Middle East uprisings.

The judge said that the state's case might collapse as it was "not a strong one".

The release is a major step forward—since their arrest the six have been tortured, denied medical care, held in solitary confinement and forced to work.

Pressure from an international solidarity campaign has been vital in influencing Robert Mugabe's repressive government. The bail is $2,000 US dollars for each of the accused, so their supporters have had to put forward $12,000. Please keep giving to the campaign.

The strict bail terms also demand the accused reside at certain defined addresses and report to the police three times a week.

Originally 45 people were arrested when police surrounded a meeting organised by the International Socialist Organisation on 19 February. The police stormed the meeting in Zimbabwe's capital Harare after they had watched a video about the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, and were holding a discussion. Of these 39 were later released without charge.

Zimbabwe: People who make dictators tremble

By  Sherry Wolf

First published at Sherry Talks Back.

 

The regime of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is intent on putting six socialists on trial for their lives--on charges of treason that carry a death sentence.

THE SLIGHT, soft-spoken woman now enduring beatings and medical abuse in Zimbabwe's Chikurubi Maximum Security prison arrived at my doorstep more than a decade ago with a severe limp.

Tafadzwa Antonater Choto (age 36), one of the six Zimbabwean activists facing charges of treason, is being tortured and facing a potential death sentence for the "crime" of organizing a viewing and discussion of video footage of the Egyptian revolution in Harare on February 19, 2011.

John Minto: Critical Decisions Ahead for Hone Harawira

from scoop.co.nz
15 March 2011

The poll results from Maori Televisions’ Native Affairs programme last night showing a third of Maori voters would consider voting for a Hone Harawira-led political party should not be a surprise to anyone.

Neither should it be surprising that on key issues Hone Harawira is driving (jobs, the rise in GST, tax cuts for the wealthy, and the sale of state-owned enterprises), a large majority of Maori voters are in tune with what he is saying.

It’s ironic that the foreshore and seabed is no longer such a dominant Maori concern. It was the raison-d’être of the Maori Party which was formed following the 15,000 strong hikoi to parliament in 2004, led of course by Hone Harawira, but is now being left behind by the bread and butter issues of everyday struggle.

In reality the foreshore and seabed was a lightning rod for other issues, most notably huge disaffection with government policies which saw working New Zealanders and their families fall further behind in the first five years of the last Labour government.