Women, Politics and Class: a Socialist Analysis for Aotearoa
Women face a contradiction. While equal pay for women and men working for the government became the law in 1960, it wasn’t until the Equal Pay Act passed in 1972 that equal pay between the sexes across the board became legal. The Domestic Purposes Benefit, providing state support to single parents, was introduced in 1973. […]
Egypt: the Next Phase in the Revolution
“WHAT HAPPENED on June 30 was, without the slightest doubt, the historic beginning of a new wave of the Egyptian revolution, the largest since January 2011. The number of people who demonstrated on that legendary day is estimated to exceed 17 million citizens, something unprecedented in history. The significance of this surpasses any participation by […]
Georg Lukács: the Actuality of the Revolution
“Historical materialism is the theory of the proletarian revolution.” This is how Georg Lukács opens his short book Lenin: a Study in the Unity of his Thought. Lukács was writing just as the peak of European revolutionary ferment had passed – his book was published in 1924 – and his message is clear. He restores […]
Demand Justice for Trayvon Martin
“Open season […] after a verdict like this”: that’s how Gary Younge describes the situation. “Let it be noted that on this day, Saturday 13 July 2013, it was still deemed legal in the US to chase and then shoot dead an unarmed young black man on his way home from the store because you […]
Egyptian Revolution: Freedom is in the hands of the people
A confrontation between Egyptian soldiers and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood calling for ousted President Mohamed Morsi to be returned to power left more than 50 demonstrators dead in the early morning hours of July 8, according to news reports. The killings come after a week of upheaval that started with perhaps the largest demonstration […]
‘Pakeha Party’ page: Racist backlash against the Mana movement
A Facebook page – The Pakeha Party – has been launched in response to the Mana Movement’s Maori housing policy announcement during the Ikaroa-Rawhiti by election. This is the second racist backlash in as many months, the first being the cartoon in the Marlborough Times attacking Mana’s ‘Feed the Kids’ campaign. The rhetoric of the ‘Pakeha Party’ contains the same […]
All of Egypt is Tahrir
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has been toppled at the hands of a military that was the backbone of the Hosni Mubarak regime before the dictator fell. Yet the mass celebrations of Morsi’s downfall in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and around the country represent the real face of this latest stage in the Egyptian revolution. Morsi’s ouster […]
To Nelson Mandela
Dear Madiba, I know this letter will reach you too late. Even as I write you might be passing away from us – to Jesus or your Xhosa tupuna or simply back to the warm earth of Africa, from which we all came. In some ways, like saints in the old days, dying brings you […]
Ikaroa-Rawhiti by election a step forward for Mana movement
The Labour Party leader, David Shearer, said Labour would terrorise their competition in the Ikaroa-Rawhiti by election. This comment isn’t suprising coming from Labour’s leadership, as they conducted the terror raids against Tuhoe and other activists in 2007 but, if anything, the opposite was true. Labour’s campaign was lacklustre and failed to connect with the […]
The revolution and the counterrevolution: Egypt 2013
June 30 may be remembered as another turning point for the Egyptian Revolution. Opponents of President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood will take to the streets on the one-year anniversary of Morsi’s first day in office to call on him to resign. The June 30 mobilizations are the culmination of the “Tamarod” (Rebellion) petition […]
