New Zealand Today: Man Sleeps in Car after Heart Op
The Dominion Post reports that a Porirua man had a heart operation and shortly afterwards, with no housing available, had to sleep in his car for a several days. This is part of the newspaper article: Rodwell Ama, 42, was born and bred in Porirua. He had worked in the same job at Moore Wilson’s […]
Labour try to outdo National from the right
Labour has once again tried to out-do the National Party from the right – this time with calls for tighter immigration restrictions. Labour’s recent attacks on immigration should be worrying to people on the left. It seems a strange perversion of the ideals of equality that people should want to put up walls and prevent […]
The Easy Rider Tragedy and Capitalist Justice
Harry Johnson, a Socialist Review reader, writes on the very different outcomes of the Easy Rider tragedy and the Pike River disaster in the courts. The Easy Rider sank in the Foveaux Strait in 2012 after being hit by a rogue wave. One child and seven men, including the skipper, Rewai Karetai, drowned. Faced with this […]
Modi: Behind the Mask
Sajeev Kumar, a Socialist Review reader, offers his thoughts on the recent elections in India: Saffron is the colour of hindutva, but for quite some time, it is also the colour of death or shivering fear for the religious minorities of India. For some of them, it is the colour that made their life colourless, it […]
A triumph for the right in India
WITH A substantial victory in India’s national elections, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party) and its crown prince, Narendra Modi, are set to form a national government without the need for any coalition partners. Winning a total of 282 seats in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of India’s parliament), the BJP soundly […]
Protesting National’s Budget 2014
Students, workers, beneficiaries and activists gathered outside the Skycity Convention Centre to protest against the National government’s budget and its continuing war on the poor. Over 150 people turned out to voice their anger at National’s rule for the rich and the damage already done by the government. Chants such as ‘stop the war on […]
Victory! Patricia Grace Stops the Government Taking Maori Land
The government has been defeated by the author Patricia Grace in the Environment Court and, seeing the writing on the wall, the government will not appeal. Patricia Grace owns part of a block of Maori Freehold Land in Waikanae that was once in a Maori village and is full of significance. The government tried to […]
Peace, Power & Politics at Dunedin’s Readers’ and Writers’ Festival
Maire Leadbeater, peace activist and historian, spoke about her recently published book Peace, Power and Politics: How New Zealand became nuclear free (OUP 2013). Although the talk was one of just two politically oriented events of the festival, it was well attended and inspired a thoughtful series of questions and comments. Maire Leadbeater is an […]
Synthetic Highs – is a ban the solution?
Drug use harms communities and destroys the lives of people who become addicted to them. Drug addiction is a waste of human potential. So it’s understandable that many people – including Mana Party activists – have been campaigning hard to ban synthetics. They can see the damage cannabis abuse does already, and they see the […]
Anzac Day: Against the Carnival of Reaction
On Anzac Day 1967, at the height of New Zealand involvement in the ‘American War’ in Vietnam, with New Zealand troops taking part in the suppression of the Vietnamese struggle for national liberation, members of the Progressive Youth Movement in Christchurch tried to lay a wreath following the dawn service in memory of those killed […]
