Fightback

Reprinted from Kasama.

I think what is posed in Medea Benjamin’s interview is a rather simple and important question: Can U.S. imperialism and its troops play a positive role in some circumstances?

The U.S. invades the remote and impoverished Afghanistan in 2001, topples the fragile regime of Taliban theocrats (which never consolidated countrywide power in the civil war). And now it is argued that the U.S. invaders “can’t” leave in an “irresponsible” way because the survival of a number of people (including women’s activists) would be in danger and because their withdrawal would most likely mean a return of the Taliban.

Should we carefully evaluate U.S. aggressions on a case-by-case basis? Is this U.S. military base good, and that one bad? Is this U.S. bombing helpful, and that one excessive? Is this U.S. nuclear threat helpful, and that one unfair? Is this U.S. drone doing good work, and that one intruding dangerously? Is this U.S. occupation shielding and promoting positive forces — while that U.S. occupation cultivates more negative puppets? Do we support U.S. domination until someone better comes along (who we approve of) to take their place?

Or does the U.S. military (globally and everywhere) represent a coherent means of imposing and enforcing a particular global order on humanity generally — an order that is rooted in horrific oppression and exploitation (including the widespread commodification of women as both workers and sexual slaves, and the traditional domestic servitude of literally billions of women and girls)

Continue reading “We Must Demand Complete and Immediate Withdrawal from Afghanistan”

Reprinted from the Capital Times. Organising meeting 5pm Wednesday, Collins Room, Student Union Building, Victoria University of Wellington.

ONCE upheld as the bastion of liberal thinking in Wellington, Victoria University is turning into a capitalist business, say past students.
Workers Party parliamentary aspirant and political activist Don Franks has had a long association with the university. He was a student in 1968, worked as a cleaner there during the 1990s, and was the event-coordinator for the Students’ Association for 18 months. He says it’s clear the university no longer tolerates political dissent, and the barring of two former students following a protest against fee rises recently is the clincher.

“Suddenly people are booted off the premises. Just about every student is pissed off about the fee rises. What I’ve observed is things tightening up in an ugly way,” Franks says.

He says this extends to the programmes the university offers – a dwindling number of “more liberal studies” and an increase in business related degrees.

Continue reading “An Exclusive Education”

Reprinted from the PFLP website. To help raise funds for the PFLP, click here.

The awarding of U.S. President Barack Obama with the Nobel Peace Prize is an absurdity that undermines any meaning or legitimacy of the prize, said a spokesperson for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine on October 9, 2009.

The PFLP spokesperson said that while there are numerous notorious recipients of the prize, including Henry Kissinger and Shimon Peres, both proud war criminals, the awarding of the prize to Obama, while he presides over two wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, threatens a new war against Iran, and continues to unreservedly support the occupation, subjugation and aggression against the Palestinian people, is a slap in the face to the people of the world struggling to throw off the chains of U.S. imperialism.

Continue reading “PFLP: Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is a mockery”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POYsl79ypNk]

Workers Party activists Heleyni Pratley and Joel Cosgrove have been trespassed from Victoria University for two years for participating in a student protest against University fee rises, some of them being of over 90%.  The student action was similar to fee-setting protests of the last few years; a small group in the Hunter building chamber holding signs and interjecting speakers.  At this year’s protest Joel threw a solitary egg which did not hit anyone.  Heleyni threw nothing and instead stood prominently holding a Workers Party banner calling for “free education from kindergarten to PhD”.  They and other activists cleaned up the eggshells before peacefully leaving the premises.

Joel has been trespassed for throwing an egg which he cleaned up afterwards.  Heleyni has been trespassed for nothing other than speaking her mind.  She is being publicly attacked by the university for exercising her democratic right to protest and express free speech.  She is being punished to make an example to anybody else, student or otherwise, who is considering standing up to an increasingly repressive university administration at Victoria.

Joel was initially trespassed over the phone by a man named Darryl, who refused to give his last name or any way of verifying his statement, although he later received trespass notices twice in his mail box.

Heleyni was met at her door by two men sent by the university, who demanded to know where Joel was.  When asked to leave, the two attempted to physically force their way into the property, against Heleyni’s repeated requests for them to go, causing her to feel so threatened that she felt she had to slam the door shut and lock it to protect herself from the threat of violence.  While this was happening they were yelling through the door in an abusive, aggressive manner that as she was Joel’s girlfriend she was also trespassed.  Escaping in a friend’s car, Heleyni was shadowed for sometime by the two men who followed her in a large, black SUV.

There is a clear pattern emerging of Victoria University administration’s opposition to basic democracy and free speech on campus and also political targeting of particular activists.  Earlier this year, for instance, Workers Party activist Ian Anderson was expelled for filming an anti-war protest on campus.

This extreme intolerance by university authorities of minimal student protest is unreasonable and unhealthy.  It needs to be resisted and halted.  Please join us in calling for the immediate lifting of all trespasses by Victoria University and an end to harrasment of all activists.

We’re asking for a practical hand of solidarity to be extended.  Please discuss this issue in your organization, move a motion of solidarity, make a press statement, write to the Victoria Vice Chancellor and sign our statement. For a copy of the statement, contact wgtnworkersparty@gmail.com

In light of attacks on activists by Victoria University, the Workers Party has recieved this solidarity statement from Georgina Morrison, co-convenor of the Young Greens. Click here for more information.

“Engaging in peaceful protest is a fundamental human right” (Helen Clark) and I’m disgusted at the excessive harshness shown by Victoria University’s actions.

New Zealand has a proud history of leaders who have stood up for their beliefs. Historical protests to keep New Zealand nuclear-free, homosexual law reform and women’s suffrage are but a few of those which have advanced New Zealand’s progressive thinking.

However, the university’s ongoing actions to persecute the rights of their students to protest and express free speech is draconian and a bullying tactic from an institution that has forgotten they exist instead of merely to create profits.

Victoria University should be ashamed that it has resorted to intimidating and threatening measures to bully citizens from their right to free speech.

The occupation of Vestas wind turbine factory on the normally conservative Isle of Wight (IoW) in Britain is an inspiration to all workers facing redundancy. Reprinted from workersliberty.org, here is the story so far…

28 April: After telling workers, in 2008, that they planned to re-fit the factories in 2009 to produce larger blades with a better production process, the Danish based multinational Vestas announces instead that it will close the IoW wind turbine blade factories, the only such factories in Britain.

15 June: Socialist activists from the group Workers’ Liberty arrive in the IoW to start leafleting and talking to workers about the Vestas factory closure and ways to resist it.

3 July: Anti-capitalist environmentalists from Workers’ Climate Action (WCA) and the local Trades Council call a public meeting to discuss campaigning against the closure of the Vestas factories. Continue reading “Vestas: Timeline of an occupation”