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Over 100 workers rallied in Auckland at 7.30am to protest Telecom’s plans to force workers to become dependent contractors.
Representatives from several other unions, including Unite, the Amalgamated Workers Union, the NDU and Service and Food Workers Union joined the picket line.
Wednesday, 26 August 2009 6:00 – 7:30 ClubSpace, Floor 3, Student Union Building, Auckland University
Fred Hampton was the leader of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party. “The Murder of Fred Hampton” depicts his brutal murder orchestrated by the Chicago police and the FBI, its subsequent investigation and also documents his activities in organizing the Chapter, his public speeches, and the food and medical programs he founded for children during the last eighteen months of his life.
The Middle East is of vital strategic importance to the United States and Israel plays an important part in the grand imperialist plan. When discussing U.S foreign policy in relation to Israel and the Middle East people like to speak of the almighty Jewish lobby groups and how they manipulate and control the U.S government. Chomsky writes in his book Fateful Triangle; “Reference to Jewish influence over politics and opinion seriously under estimates the scope of the so-called ‘support for Israel’” “No pressure group will dominate access to public opinion or maintain consistent influence over policy-making unless its aims are close to those of elite elements with real power” “America’s relationship to Israel ‘has been determined primarily by the changing role that Israel occupied in the context of America’s changing conceptions of its political-strategic interests in the Middle East.’”
This same principle applies to the election of a new President in the United States, which if you are to believe the rhetoric and the propaganda, can mean real “change” not only in America but around the world. The very idea that the nature of U.S imperialism and the political-strategic interests that shape foreign policy (and have been built upon over many years of war, bloodshed and clandestine politics) could be altered by the election of one capitalist President over another shows a lack of any real analysis of the true nature of U.S imperialism and its so called democracy. Obama himself provided a fascinating insight into this when recently he stated that “support for Israel in this country goes beyond party”. Continue reading “US Imperialism and the Israeli war machine”
On August the 6th, Korean workers concluded their occupation of a car plant in Pyongtaek. For 77 days, these workers resisted attacks by scabs and police officers, demanding their right to jobs. Now as the state takes them on in court, they’re asking for continued solidarity from international workers.
The Workers Party is organising a picket outside the Korean embassy:
WELLINGTON
ASB Tower, 2 Hunter St
Thursday 13th August, noon
Unite union has launched a campaign in workplaces and communities for a national referendum on the issue of a $15 minimum wage. In this early stage of the campaign, Workers Party activists and other leftists are hitting the streets and public events to help gather the signatures to force the referendum. Here are some interesting comments, reports, and examples from the campaign on the ground.
Continue reading “Campaigning for living wage reform – ground reports”
John Edmundson
The Spark July 2009
The sub-prime crisis and credit crisis have finally brought an end to the “good times”. As trade has slowed down, unemployment has begun to rise and in some countries, large scale demonstrations have occurred in anger against the collapse of the economy and the attacks on workers that have followed.
If workers do not fight back, the recovery when it comes will leave workers worse off than before. As always, workers’ wages and working conditions will be cut in response to the recession and unemployment. Continue reading “Working class resistance and the economy”
Workers Party-PFLP solidarity blog
Campaign to free Ahmad Sa’adat
“This is your court and you possess the force to celebrate the trial and convict me on the basis of your lists of accusations, the public one and the secret one, and you can dictate a sentence prepared by the political and security apparatuses that are behind this trial. But I too possess a will obtained from the justice of our cause and the determination of our people to reject any decision from this ‘kangaroo court’…” -Ahmad Sa’adat
Currently there are over 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners being held in Israeli jails. This number is increasing daily as IDF Military Incursions and searches in the West Bank total over 500 separate incidents and 300 arrests each month, mainly targeting political ideology. This is not an unusual part of Palestinian political life and has been a crucial part of the Zionist strategy to eliminate political opposition to the state of Israel. An example of this can be seen when examining the political life of the current General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP); Ahmad Sa’adat. Between the years of 1967, when Sa’adat joined the PFLP led Palestine Student Union, and 2002 when he was abducted by the IDF from a jail in Jericho, Sa’adat had been arrested 9 times and jailed for close to ten years for his involvement in the PFLP.
Ahmad Sa‘adat, General Secretary of the PFLP, was arrested again on the 15th of January 2002 by the Palestinian General Intelligence Service. He was then transferred to Force 17 (the Palestinian Presidential bodyguard), and held after that in President Arafat’s compound in connection with the killing of the Israeli Minister of Tourism, Rehavam Ze‘evi, on 17 October 2001. The PFLP claimed responsibility for the killing, although Ahmad Sa‘adat was not formally charged with any recognisable criminal offence. This assassination was a response to the killing of Abu Ali Mustafa, General Secretary of the PFLP, who was killed in a targeted assassination by two rockets fired from an Israeli helicopter as he sat at his desk in Ramallah on August 27, 2001.
A petition was presented to the Palestinian High Court of Justice in Gaza calling for the immediate release of Ahmad Sa‘adat. This caused the High Court of Justice to request that the PA General Intelligence Service bring evidence against him. The Intelligence Service failed to do so and on the 3rd of June 2002 the High Court ordered the immediate release of Ahmad Sa‘adat as he had never been charged or brought before a judge.
The government has made a deal with fast food giant McDonalds that will see young people receiving the unemployment benefit sent to jobs at McDonalds restaurants, and have their training subsidised by the taxpayer. Every beneficiary McDonald’s hires will get the company up to $16,000- the equivalent of about 8 months wages for a McDonalds worker.
Giving people low paying casualised jobs is not the solution to unemployment. This is not a scheme to help the unemployed, it is corporate welfare for a large corporation. As if paying minimum wage wasn’t enough for them, McDonalds gets the state subsidising its wage bill, and WINZ acting as its HR department – McDonalds has an annual staff turn over rate of over 100% because of its low wages and horrendous working conditions.
Come to the picket, let the government know we want REAL JOBS, NOT McJOBS and SOCIAL WELFARE NOT CORPORATE WELFARE
1pm, Wednesday (the 15th) outside WINZ High St, Christchurch Central
Organised by the Workers Rights Campaign.
Contact Byron byroncclark@gmail.com
by John Edmundson
What is going on in Iran? The recent outbreak of massive demonstrations and subsequent repression by the Iranian state, in particular the Basij militias, has left many people confused. For all of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s faults, he has stood up to US imperialism over the years, refusing to bow to hypocritical US and international pressure over Iran’s nuclear programme. He has established close links with progressive governments in Latin America. Perhaps most importantly, he has stood firm on support for the right of the Palestinian people to fight for their homeland. And now he has become the subject of huge demonstrations, accusing him of rigging this month’s presidential elections, which he won with a landslide vote of over sixty percent.
Supporters of the Iranian regime, both within Iran and around the world, have accused the demonstrators, who have adopted green as the symbol of their movement, of manipulation by Western interests, the same interests who sponsored the other “colour revolutions”, such as the orange revolution in Ukraine and the rose revolution in Georgia. Certainly there is no doubt that the same Western interests that orchestrated those “revolutions” in Eastern Europe would like nothing better than the demise of the Iranian revolution and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They would like nothing better than the replacement of the current theocratic state by a pliable pro-Western leadership that would open up Iran to world capitalism and give imperialism (and Israel) a free rein in the Middle East. So what should the left make of the latest developments? Are we watching the latest case of a CIA engineered “colour revolution”, intended to roll back thirty years of Iranian revolution; are we seeing a new and genuine revolution of the Iranian working class and peasantry; or are we seeing something else?
On Sunday June 28th, President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was awoken by the sound of soldiers kicking in the door of the presidential residence. He was abducted, still dressed in his pyjamas, and bundled into a waiting vehicle. The soldiers took him and put him on a flight to Costa Rica. With Zelaya out of the way, his opponents set about justifying their actions and attempting to establish control over the country.
Manuel Zelaya was a strange target for a rightist putsch. A wealthy banker and rancher, he was the preferred candidate of the Liberal Party which, along with the more conservative National Party, formed the political establishment in Honduras, a country which has been ruled by a mix of military dictatorships and right wing governments of the elite; what Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would call the oligarchs. The ruling classes in Honduras was comfortable with his election. Throughout the 1980s, the country had been turned into an armed camp for Reagan’s war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Decades of death squad operations and a stifling political environment had ensured that the left in Honduras was extremely weak. But conditions in Honduras are extremely hard for the poor. It is one of the poorest countries in the Americas; like many Central American countries, its main source of income is income repatriated from workers overseas. The life expectancy is only 66.2 years and literacy languishes at 76.2%. Approximately seventy percent of the population live beneath the poverty line.
After being elected, Zelaya began to shift away from traditional Honduran politics. He raised the ire of his own party by raising the minimum wage by sixty percent. He welcomed Cuban doctors into the country to work amongst the poor majority and applied to join, and was accepted into ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. This put him beyond the pale for the oligarchy in Honduras, including in his own party. Zelaya became an obstacle to business as usual. Continue reading “Coup in Honduras”