In the next issue of The Spark we’ll have an article about the Hobbit dispute. In the meantime, here are some comments from The Spark and Workers Party discussion groups over the past week.
The Hobbit union witch hunt continues apace, now with the threat of new anti worker laws. We used to get stick for launching big strikes, now we get it for threats that don’t get carried through.
I think Equity was too quick to hitch a ride on international union muscle, underestimating the opposition, insufficient preparation and also not considering the reaction of the tech workers and other workers who might be affected.
Hindsight is always easy and I don’t rush to blame Equity. On a smaller scale I’ve made similar hasty union moves and come to grief. The actors union had good intentions to redress a hell of a lot of injustice – injustice which still stands.
Continue reading “The Hobbit union witch hunt”
Mates & Lovers: interview with Ronald Trifero Nelson
Chris Brickell’s book Mates and Lovers: A History of Gay New Zealand sheds light on a part of our history previously confined to closets and court records, detailing the history of male homosexuality in this country since the 19th Century. Spark journalist Ian Anderson speaks to Ronald Trifero Nelson, who has adapted this book for the theatre.
To start with, what do you set out to do when you make theatre?
Well it’s an old Fabian idea, to entertain and educate.
Continue reading “Mates & Lovers: interview with Ronald Trifero Nelson”
Filipino progressive leaders to tour NZ Oct/Nov
JUSTICE AND LIBERATION: THE ROAD TO PEACE –
Luis Jalandoni is the International Representative of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF, www.ndfp.net), a post that he has held since 1977, and since 1994 he has been the Chairperson of the NDF’s Negotiating Panel for peace talks with the Government of the Philippines. The NDF is the coalition of several underground groups, including the Communist Party of the Philippines and its New People’s Army, which has been waging a war of liberation throughout the Philippines for more than 40 years, making it one of the longest running armed struggles in the world.
The country desperately needs peace with justice and security, so resolving this people’s war is central to that. Luis will be accompanied by his wife Coni Ledesma, who will also be speaking. She is a member of the NDF Negotiating Panel for peace talks; and is the International Spokesperson of MAKIBAKA, a revolutionary women’s group which belongs to the NDF. Luis and Coni are both veteran leading figures in the Philippine revolutionary Left. He was a Catholic priest in the 1960s and she was a nun. Both were founders of Christians for National Liberation, a member group of the NDF. Continue reading “Filipino progressive leaders to tour NZ Oct/Nov”
Free Ahmad Sa'adat
“Ahmad Sa’adat is the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. One of nearly 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners, he has been sentenced to thirty years in Israeli prisons for a range of “security-related” political offenses. These charges include membership in a prohibited organization (the PFLP, of which Sa’adat is General Secretary), holding a post in a prohibited organization, and incitement, for a speech Sa’adat made following the Israeli assassination of his predecessor, Abu Ali Mustafa, in August 2001.
Sa’adat is a prisoner of conscience, targeted for imprisonment because of his political activity and in his capacity as a Palestinian leader. The systematic assassination, imprisonment and detention of Palestinian political leaders has long been a policy of the Israeli state, as reflected in the imprisonment of Sa’adat and over 20 other members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, including Marwan Barghouthi, as well as the nearly 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners, targeted for their involvement in and commitment to the struggle for the liberation of their land and people. “http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org/bg.html
There is an international campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat, with actions timed to coincide with court appearances schedule October 5-15.
In New Zealand supporters of the campaign are holding stalls, protests and film showings in New Zealand. We’ll be posting dates for these events shortly.
It's the right thing to do
Excerpted from the Spark discussion list
http://groups.google.com/group/thespark-discussion
grant_brookes wrote:
So are demands that no-one else supports “better” than ones thatachieve reforms within the framework of capitalism? Where’s the logic in that, unless the purpose of campaigning around “radical” demands is to brand a group, for recruiting purposes?
Don Franks replied:
Are political demands really like garments in a department store, selected by individuals in the hope of creating a particular image?
The first political demand I was really conscious of was Stop the war in Vietnam.
There was a time in New Zealand when that was “a demand that no-one else supported”, apart from, like, a couple of communists and a clergyman.
By the time I got involved a lot of the hardest work had already been done and some solidarity had been built up against the current.
When I became part of the anti war movement the big marches were quite exciting and the Committee on Vietnam debates were always interesting, often quite dramatic. In between times it was a pleasant social thing to sit round and stuff leaflets into envelopes.
The bit I hated doing was wearing a CoV badge and thus getting into debates with some of the huge number of New Zealanders who supported the war and thought the Viet cong were coming down here to take over everything. I had limited knowledge of the details of the war and couldn’t argue very well and didn’t like the abuse and contempt I was sometimes subjected to. Quite often I would guiltily go down town without wearing a badge in order to have a quiet life. Continue reading “It's the right thing to do”
Hypocrisy, lying and double dealing and double standards
Excerpted from the Spark discussion list
http://groups.google.com/group/thespark-discussion
Is there any sanctimonious law and order or religious fanatic that doesn’t have a secret past full of transgressions? A lot of people will be asking this after the exposure of Act’s law’n’order heavy David Garrett.
Act is not a major political force or threat, and it really never has been – indeed, the fact that it needed to be founded indicated that the highwater mark of the Business Roundtable had passed. Nevertheless it’s great to see them hoist on the petard of their own sanctimonious hypocrisy. Continue reading “Hypocrisy, lying and double dealing and double standards”
Book review "The Laughing Policeman – my brilliant career in the New Zealand Police"
by Glenn Wood ( Shoal Bay Press)
reviewed by Don Franks
I noticed this book in an op shop. Its back cover blurbed: ” the hilarious account of Glenn’s adventures as a police cadet…a warm and funny book that will appeal to all New Zealanders”.
Harrumph I thought, but the first sentence – “I always wanted to be a marine biologist” – hooked me in, and the price was just a dollar. Any cop literature has got to be a risk, this time I got my dollar’s worth. Continue reading “Book review "The Laughing Policeman – my brilliant career in the New Zealand Police"”
Smash the anti-worker laws! public meeting, Hamilton
Wednesday September 22, 1pm
Waikato University, Student Union Building, @ Guru Fabians room
- Public meeting organised by Hamilton Left Initiative in response to new round of government attacks on working people.
- Come along, support or help build student involvement in upcoming union/workers actions.
- Speakers representing Greens on Campus, Unite on Campus, Workers Party on Campus, and Unions Waikato.
- Literature, discussion, action-making, debate, socialising, building, democratising.
For further details/enquiries email jared@unite.org.nz or phone on 029-4949-863
All welcome! Please forward to all relevant networks/individuals/lists.
Book Review: Encircled Lands: Te Urewera, 1820 – 1921 by Judith Binney (Bridget Williams Books, 2009)
Reviewed by Mike Kay
One of New Zealand’s leading contemporary historians, Judith Binney, has written a major study on the story of how the people of the Urewera came to be parted from their lands. This book deserves to be widely read. However, at over 600 pages long, it is unlikely to reach the audience that it merits. Therefore, I will attempt to summarise the narrative in this review, and then analyse it from a Marxist perspective.
Hapū of the Urewera take their name from Tuhoe-potiki, who was descended from the immigrant Toroa, leader of the Mataatua waka, and also the indigenous ancestors Toi and Potiki I. Continue reading “Book Review: Encircled Lands: Te Urewera, 1820 – 1921 by Judith Binney (Bridget Williams Books, 2009)”
THE MAORI IN PREHISTORY AND TODAY
By Ray Nunes
Published April 1999
The great unknown past of the Maori people,together with a view of Maori nationalism today
A pro-Mao, Marxist Leninist analysis
………………………………..
Introduction
by Daphna Whitmore
The following pamphlet by Ray Nunes is based on a reply to a former member of the now-defunct Communist Party of New Zealand (in which Ray Nunes earlier played a leading role) and whose letter contained criticisms of the standpoint of the Workers’ Party of New Zealand as published in the party’s monthly journal, The Spark of April 1994. At that time the Workers Party was a pro-Mao organisation.
In 2002 the Workers Party merged with Revolution Group and now identifies as a Marxist Party whose members hold a range of views about the role of Stalin, Mao and Trotsky. Continue reading “THE MAORI IN PREHISTORY AND TODAY”