World and NZ economy: as good as it gets under capitalism

March 1, 2008 by

John Edmundson and Philip Ferguson

In late 2006. IMF chief economist Raghuram Rajan declared, “The global economic expansion has been stronger in this period than at any time since the early 1970s.” Yet barely a year later, media reports are regularly speculating about upcoming economic disasters.

Recent economic woes in the United States have impacted on the global economy, as the US remains by far the largest economy in the world. However, problems in the United States – of which the state of subprime mortgages is a classic case (see below) – indicate deeper problems in the world economy.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Economics

Afghanistan, East Timor and the failure of “humanitarian” military intervention

March 1, 2008 by

Tim Bowron

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

-Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

Since Labour took office in 1999, New Zealand military forces have been deployed overseas on a scale not seen since the time of the Vietnam War. Unusually, though, this renewed outburst of militarism has been greeted by many sections of the New Zealand left not with protest and bitter denunciation but instead with widespread approval.

Unlike the conflicts in Vietnam or Korea, we are told that the current Western military interventions in countries such as Afghanistan and East Timor are not missions of imperial aggrandisement and aggression, but instead are all about “humanitarian reconstruction” and multilateral action in accordance with international law.

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Filed Under: Asia, Middle East Tagged With: , ,

The first Black president? Barack Obama: The talk and the walk

March 1, 2008 by

Don Franks

“The presidential nomination of the Republican Party is up for grabs among a motley collection of mean-spirited law-and-order fanatics, anti-immigrant bigots and warmongers,” commented the US Socialist Worker of January 11. “This is the consequence of the crisis of the Bush administration – mired in Iraq, distrusted for its shredding of the Constitution and responsible for the steadily worsening mess of an economy.”

Socialist Worker argued that ” voters’ desire to see political change has become the undisputed theme of the 2008 US presidential elections”.

As this article is being written, the frontrunner for the Democratic Party nomination and possibly the US presidency is black Illinois senator Barack Obama.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Elections, United States

Women’s liberation: time for a new movement?

March 1, 2008 by

To mark the 100th International Working Women’s Day (March 8), a women’s liberation activist of the 70s, Jill Brasell, reflects on progress since then.

Ask a young woman today what she thinks about women’s liberation, and she’s likely to say either “What’s that?” or “We don’t need that any more – we’re liberated now.”

She wouldn’t be alone in thinking that having a woman prime minister, and several other women in high positions, proves that there are no longer any barriers holding women back, in New Zealand anyway.

But let’s go back for a minute to the early days of the women’s liberation movement, the “second wave” of feminism that had such a huge impact on society throughout the western world in the early 70s. The goals of the movement seemed clear enough, and achievable.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Women

March industrial news roundup

March 1, 2008 by

In this month’s roundup:

Brackenridge workers step up their action

ASTE members to strike again 

AA workers reject offer 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Workers in Struggle
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