Imperial hypocrisy to justify an assault
EVIDENCE OF a horrific chemical weapons attack by the Syrian regime against civilians has revived liberal calls for “humanitarian” intervention by the U.S. military–despite the U.S. armed forces’ own recent record of mass death and destruction in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. For example, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote that President Barack Obama should “punish […]
Film Review: Spirit of ’45
The Spirit of ’45 was a movie centred around the political atmosphere in Britain after World War Two. With the victory over Hitler, British workers felt empowered, and felt they deserved more than the poverty of old Britain. They chose to kick out Churchill and elect Labour for the first time and implemented its radical […]
Goodbye Mr Shearer, and good riddance
So David Shearer has given up. Good. The Shearer leadership of the Labour Party has been an unmitigated disaster, or a slow-motion train wreck, as former Labour chairman Mike Williams colourfully put it. When the leadership election took place in December 2011 the Labour Party membership wanted David Cunliffe to head the party, but they […]
GCSB bill passes – Resistance continues
The GCSB bill has passed. This is a big deal. In the past, activists sometimes like the idea of the secret police taking an interest in our work. In a career that is effectively public service with no official recognition, an oversized SIS dossier can be flattering. But that relaxed attitude to surveillance belongs in […]
Free Teina Pora now!
When Pora was 17, in 1994, he was arrested by police in Otara and held in custody and questioned for over four days without a lawyer. The police got him to confess to a brutal rape and murder. He was charged and convicted despite the fact that he could not identify what the victim looked […]
New Zealand Imperialism in the Pacific
Sixty years ago, on the 17th of August 1953, Hector Larsen, the resident commissioner of Niue, was murdered. Larsen’s rule over the people of Niue – he had been commissioner for a decade at his death – was “by most accounts,” as a Radio New Zealand documentary from 2009 puts it, “not just paternalistic but […]
Neoliberalism, resistance and the rise of the Far Right
Andrew Tait gave this talk to a forum on ‘Neoliberalism, Resistance and the Rise of the Far Right’ on behalf of the International Socialists in Christchurch on 3rd August. Ki te whare e tu nei, tena koeKi te marae e takoto nei, tena koeKi te takata whenua, Ngati Wheke, Koukourarata, Onuku, Wairewa, Taumutu, tena koutou, […]
They’re stealing Bradley Manning’s life
Nicole Colson reports on the conviction of military whistle-blower Bradley Manning–and the chilling message it sends about political dissent in the “war on terror” era. MILITARY JUDGE Col. Denise Lind found Pfc. Bradley Manning guilty of almost every charge leveled against him for his role as a military whistle-blower–but not guilty of the most serious […]
Protesting the GCSB
Thousands of people in 11 different centres turned out to protest the extension of the power of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). That the protests drew such good numbers even though the demonstrations were called at short notice and were, in many centres, virtually unadvertised, is a sign of the depth of opposition. In […]
Statement from Egypt’s Revolutionary Socialists: Not in our name!
The Muslim Brotherhood was overthrown to deepen the revolution, not to support the regime. Whatever crimes the Brotherhood has committed against the people and against the Copts in defence of its power in the name of religion, we do not give army chief Al-Sisi our authority. We will not go into the streets on Friday offering […]
