Eyewitness to the revolution in Nepal: Interview with Ben Peterson

April 1, 2010 by

By The Spark reporters

Ben Peterson

In 2009, Ben Peterson, a young Australian member of Socialist Alliance, spent four and a half months in Nepal, spending much of his time there with the Maoist revolutionaries and speaking to them about the revolutionary process taking place there. He had been reading everything he could find on the Nepali revolution while still in Australia but, frustrated by the lack of accurate information in the media, decided to go to Nepal to see and experience the revolution for himself.

This March Ben made a speaking tour of New Zealand in a visit organised by the Workers Party and Socialist Worker, with support from the Alliance in Christchurch and the International Socialist Organisation in Dunedin. The tour was organised to promote awareness of the revolutionary process in Nepal, especially as the revolution moves towards a critical phase there. We interviewed Ben at the beginning of the NZ speaking tour. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Nepal

Arundhati Roy on India’s revolutionaries

March 27, 2010 by
In February 2010, unannounced, Arundhati Roy decided to visit the forbidding and forbidden precincts of Central India’s Dandakaranya Forests, home to a melange of tribespeople many of whom have taken up arms to protect their people against state-backed marauders and exploiters. She recorded in considerable detail the first face-to-face journalistic “encounter” with armed guerrillas, their families and comrades, for which she combed the forests for weeks at personal risk.

 http://kasamaproject.org/

Filed Under: India

Strike rights threatened

March 27, 2010 by

Mike Kay

A Private Member’s Bill introduced by the National Party MP Tau Henare has been drawn from the ballot to be debated in Parliament. The Bill proposes to amend the Employment Relations Act as follows:

“A strike may not proceed under this Act, unless the question has been submitted to a secret ballot of those employees who are members of the union that would become parties to the strike if it proceeded.”

The Council of Trade Unions has announced its “support in principle” for the bill, “as it largely reflects current practice.”

The British experience may be of some use in analysing the effect of secret ballots. Over there, the law has required a secret ballot prior to strike action for nearly 30 years. I asked an official with the Postal section of the Communication Workers Union his opinion on the issue. This is his response: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Industrial Relations Legislation, National Party, Union movement, Work rights

PFLP Solidarity Campaign transfers funds to Palestinian Resistance

March 24, 2010 by

Press release  Date: 18/03/2010

Due to the generosity and support of progressive people in New Zealand for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestinian cause, the PFLP solidarity campaign are happy to announce the first transfer of funds. One Thousand NZ Dollars raised by the campaign has been received by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine for their use in whatever manner they deem most effective in resisting ongoing Israeli oppression, racism and military occupation.

Wellington March 2010 protesting imprisonment of PFLP leader

The majority of the money has been raised through the sale of “Resistance is not Terrorism” t-shirts throughout the country. A new t-shirt is being designed featuring Leila Khaled, PFLP activist and resistant fighter, and will be released at a nationwide launch on the anniversary of the creation of the Zionist state of Israel, known by Palestinians as the “Nakba”, or catastrophe, on May 15th. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Internationalism, Israel, Palestine

New WP pamphlet on Afghanistan

March 23, 2010 by

New Zealand’s involvement in the occupation of Afghanistan has been commonly perceived as a humanitarian role. John Edmundson demolishes that myth and looks at what the occupation is really about.

The Situation so far

On 10 August 2009, Prime Minister John Key announced that the SAS (Special Air Service) would return to Afghanistan. This announcement had been predicted for some time so came as no surprise. The troops are being deployed in three rotations over 18 months and the full deployment involves 70 soldiers over that time period. At the same time, over that 18 months the NZ Army’s Provincial Reconstruction Team – NZ’s major commitment to the war – are being gradually reduced and eventually withdrawn, their work to be replaced by civilian work on agriculture, health and education. But the SAS deployment may in fact last much longer. The war in Afghanistan is going badly for the US -led coalition and few military people or civilian analysts are prepared to go public with an estimate of how much longer it could go on. A time frame as short as 18 months seems unlikely and if the war continues for years, there will be further requests for extensions to the troop commitment. With the Obama administration massively expanding the war effort, not just through increased troop numbers in Afghanistan, but an increasing involvement in Pakistan also, the war could well drag on for years.  read more

Filed Under: Afghanistan, Imperialism, NZ Imperialism, Uncategorized
«Previous Page
Next Page»