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Around 1000 people demonstrated against the invasion of Gaza in Auckland today.
The crowd chanted loudly all the way down Queen Street in one of the most spirited demonstrations in years. They rallied outside the US consulate and hurled a sea of shoes.
The people then marched back up Queen Street calling for a boycott of Israel, an end to the occupation and denouncing Israel and the United States.
Click here to read an article from the August 2007 issue of The Spark giving some background to the current conflict in Gaza.
The Workers Party of New Zealand sends warm greetings to the Communist Party of the Philippines, on its 40th anniversary.
The CPP has led the struggle against feudalism, capitalism and imperialism in the Philippines for four decades. Having withstood the Marcos dictatorship through to the current brutal regime of Arroyo, the CPP has been sustained through its deep roots among the masses. When many other communist parties around the world collapsed in the 1990s, the CPP carried on the struggle, constantly reassessing itself and further developing its strengths.
The CPP’s commitment to internationalism has given confidence to many organisations and individuals in the struggle for world revolution.
We hope that 2009 will bring much success to the comrades in the Philippines.
In solidarity
Workers Party of New Zealand
Philip Ferguson in a talk given in 2004 looks at the underlying forces driving world capitalism today.
In Capital, Marx notes that at a certain point of development the capitalist system itself, in particular the property form, becomes an obstacle to the further development of the production forces and even to the further development of capitalism itself. The chief barrier to capital turns out to be capital itself. At this point capital attempts to escape the limitations of its own natural laws of motion and find new ways of operating. This indicates that capitalism has reached the end of the road, and socialism is required.
In its own perverse way, capital begins to establish what Lenin called ‘transitional forms’ – forms which indicate that the means of production are trying to go beyond capitalism to a new form of society. Of course, they cannot, as long as capitalist property forms constrain them and the capitalist class holds political power. However they can last for a long time in the absence of a revolutionary challenge. As Lenin noted, there are no hopeless situations for capitalism in economic terms. In fact, in Imperialism, Lenin suggested that the imperialist epoch, the highest and final stage of capitalism, could last “for a fairly long period” if what he called the “opportunist abscess” in world politics, namely social democracy, was not decisively defeated.
The Spark December 2008 – January 2009
Since the office was first introduced in 1789, the President of the United States has been the leading figurehead in American capitalism, imperialism and exploitation. It is impressive that for the first time in 219 years, in a country that only roughly 40 years ago institutionalised segregation and only roughly 140 years ago still practised slavery, a black face is now at the top. But that does not change what the US presidency represents. Continue reading “Obama: “Change” – to what, and who for?”
-Mike Kay
The Green Party has caused some controversy recently by releasing its Population Policy for New Zealand just prior to the election. The Greens estimate the maximum population that Aotearoa can sustain at 5.7 million. In order that we do not exceed this figure, they propose policies including: “initiatives to raise awareness amongst parents and potential parents regarding the issue of sustainable global population levels.”
They also propose to “regularly review NZ’s immigration policy to ensure that we are retaining capacity to absorb climate change refugees and returning NZ citizens.”
It seems strange that the Greens should have made this an issue in a country that is sparsely populated with an ageing population. But in today’s political discourse, “sustainability” is becoming an essential green veneer to reactionary measures such as immigration controls and restricting working class people’s consumption.
Armistice Day in 2004 saw the Return of the Unknown Soldier
SQUIRE HELEN
(From The Spark, November 2004)
The Dominion Post (November 2004) reminded us that Prime Minister Helen Clark is also minister for arts, culture and heritage. Under that subhead, the paper carried an article by the multi-minister; “reflecting on our maturing sense of national identity”. To Helen Clark,” our maturing sense ” is a preoccupation with selectively remembered mass murder.
The first half of her article was a gushing sentimental rehash of the Unknown Warrior commemorations, concluding:
“More than 80 years elapsed from the time Prime Minister William Massey first explored the idea of a New Zealand Tomb of the Unknown Warrior to the day we welcomed home a young man whose life was cut short by war.”
Helen Clark writes as though the poor bastard had somehow been resurrected. No young man “was welcomed home” last November the 11th. The youth and prospects of the anonymous victim died the day imperialism butchered him in the mud of France.
The only thing Helen Clark welcomed in Wellington last Armistice day was a whitewash of capitalist history.
Right: Laura Bush greets NZ troops in Afghanistan June 2008
“Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl,” opines the protagonist of T
he Other Hand. The pound coin has many advantages, not least of which is its effortless mobility:
“A girl like me gets stopped at immigration, but a pound can leap the turnstiles, and dodge the tackles of those big men with their uniform caps, and jump straight into a waiting airport taxi. Where to, sir? Western civilisation, my good man, and make it snappy.”
Little Bee is a Nigerian girl fleeing men armed with machetes and men armed with official powers. Sarah is a suburban career woman juggling a young son who refuses to take off his Batman suit with an extramarital affair with a Home Office functionary, Lawrence. Their lives are thrown together in an unlikely way, forcing them to confront themselves and the society they live in.
Continue reading “Book review: The Other Hand by Chris Cleave (Sceptre)”
– Tim Bowron
Since 2002 when details of Iran’s nuclear program first came to light there has been much talk on the part of Western politicians and journalists about the need to prevent the regime from developing uranium enrichment and other technology that could potentially be used in military applications.
As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), under which all nations are guaranteed the right to enrich uranium to a level needed to make fuel for nuclear power, Iran is obliged to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA). However for the first 18 years of existence Iran’s nuclear program remained a secret and no IAEA inspections were carried out, a fact which more than any other has caused the Iranian regime to be viewed as untrustworthy by the West.
What most Western commentators fail to understand is that Iran might have had a very good reason for not openly declaring the existence of its nuclear program, when you consider the fate of the nuclear reactor at Osiraq in neighbouring Iraq which was completely obliterated without warning by the Israeli air-force in 1981 – in accordance with Israel’s policy of preventing any Muslim nation from acquiring nuclear capability, however peaceful. Indeed, as one of Israel’s own leading military historians, Martin van Creveld put it: “Obviously, we don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons and I don’t know if they’re developing them, but if they’re not developing them, they’re crazy.”
Torab Saleth, a leading activist in the Iranian Workers Left Unity current and a prominent figure in the British-based Hands Off the People of Iran (HOPI) campaign, was recently interviewed by Philip Ferguson of the Workers Party.
Philip Ferguson: Could you tell us a bit about Workers Left Unity – how it came into existence and what work it does?
Torab Saleth: Workers Left Unity was formed in exile in the early 1990s, as one of the earliest responses to the crisis of the Iranian left (following its decimation in the early 80s at the hands of the counter-revolutionary theocratic regime). WLU is an independent organisation based on individual membership and an agreed minimum uniting all radical socialist currents cooperating towards a new regroupment of the socialist left. We come from many different traditions, principally from backgrounds in the Fedayeen minority and in Iranian Maoism and Trotskyism.
Continue reading “Iranian socialist: “Capitalism is causing these wars””