Socialist media project based in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia
A group of activists from Aotearoa Climate Camp ’09 today blockaded the stock exchange in opposition to carbon trading, a scheme which allows finance capitalists to benefit from environmental degradation. Protestors chanted the slogan, “Resist! Resist! Fight the capitalists!”
Activists were detained by the police force, then released without charges.
Climate Change Leaflet attached.
The Ballad of Bantam Billy: The political life and times of Bill Perkins Jack Perkins
Review by Don Franks The Spark Dec 2009 – Jan 2010
My most entertaining and memorable read this year has been a self published family account titled “The Ballad of Bantam Billy”. The author is Jack Perkins, Bill Perkins’ son. “Bantam Billy” was the nickname Lancashire coal miners gave to a short statured young workmate who became – and remained for life- an uncompromising fighter for socialism. “ If dad sensed any challenge or disrespect for his beliefs he was instantly and fearlessly outspoken. There were never any beg-your-pardons in his outbursts. I remember a bus trip when some unsuspecting passenger slighted the Soviet Union. Dad’s volcanic response turned heads, including the driver’s who brought the crowded vehicle to a temporary halt while things calmed down.” [Read more…]
On December the 11th 1967, in the wake of the Arab 
defeat in the 6 day war, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was founded with the catch cry “Resistance until Victory”. On the 42nd anniversary of its founding the PFLP released a statement calling for an official announcement from the Palestinian Leadership to declare the “utter failure of the ‘negotiations’ and the entire Oslo process, the reliance on the United States and the so-called roadmap”. Recent opinion polls would indicate that this position is supported by over 70 percent of the population in the West Bank and Gaza, who believe that OSLO has either harmed, or made no difference to the Palestinian cause. A clear condemnation, from Palestinians, of over a decade of negotiation with the occupier.
Byron Clark The Spark December 2009
At the end of October parliament voted 69 to 53 to send the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill, which contains a number of proposed changes to ACC, to select committee. The National Party initially had trouble getting together the numbers, with ACT insisting the changes didn’t go far enough. Despite some initial concerns however, the Maori Party eventually fell into line, with the bizarre sounding justification, “We know that Maori have consistently had less access to ACC entitlements than other groups, under existing legislation. While this Bill would further restrict entitlements, we are particularly interested in hearing how the scheme may be altered to address the underlying bias to Maori.”
Many of the changes have already been met with strong public protest. New guidelines that would require sexual abuse victims to be diagnosed with a mental illness under the US Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Version 4 before they can receive counselling led to rallies in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, each attracting 200 people. A smaller protest also took place in Dunedin. [Read more…]
Text of the Workers Party leaflet for New Zealand Climate Camp 2010, by Ian Anderson.
This leaflet is for people who’ve figured out that climate change is happening, and that it’s driven in large part by industrial greenhouse gas emissions. If you’re here, you want to stop it in its tracks.
Despite the attempts of industrial capitalists to distort the flow of information, the findings of climatologists remain consistent. Since the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century, greenhouse gas emissions have rapidly increased, driving a long-term process of global warming.
Resources were sucked out of the countryside and the developing world to fuel economic growth, while workers were packed into polluted and cramped living spaces. This transformation continues to this day, as capitalists seek new blood and soil to develop; from Iraq to Mount Aspiring.
This leaves one central question: what is to be done? It is possible to match human and environmental need. We just have to figure out how.
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