Grid of posts 2×3

  • Stop the SAS return to Afghanistan

    Picket outside of the Court of Appeal, corner of Molesworth and Aitken St WELLINGTON  8AM – 9.30 AM The picket coincides with the Court of Appeal hearing for an anti-war protester convicted of burning the NZ flag at anti-war protest in 2007. It also coincides with the government’s announcement of the return of the SAS Read more

  • Pyeongtaek Factory Occupation, South Korea

    By Spark correspondents   Over one thousand South Korean factory workers are currently occupying the only Ssangyong Motor Company car manufacturing plant in the city of Pyeongtaek, near Seoul. The workers have been occupying the plant since May 22nd this year in response to the company announcing it would lay off over two thousand workers. Ssangyong Read more

  • National’s McJob Creation Scheme

    The Spark August 2009 Byron Clark The government has made a deal with fast food giant McDonald’s in which young people receiving the unemployment benefit will be sent to jobs in McDonald’s restaurants, and have their ‘training’ subsidised by the state. Every beneficiary McDonald’s hires will get the company up to $16,000 which is the Read more

  • Australia builds military capacity

    The Spark August 2009 Joel Cosgrove   Continuing a precedent followed over most of the last decade, the Australian government has increased the military budget well above inflation, with a 56% increase in the last seven years and 9% in the last year, to $25.66 billion dollars, with expectations that it will rise to $29.47 Read more

  • Recession scenarios

    Philip Ferguson In the past couple few weeks the Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard, prime minister John Key, and other commentators have been talking about the recession, or at least the worst of it, being over.   Bollard is a fairly level-headed and reasonably sophisticated bourgeois economist and Key is a fairly level-headed, reasonably sophisticated capitalist Read more

  • European election results – an overview

    Mike Kay The Spark July 2009 The March edition of The Spark carried a report of some inspiring class struggles by workers across Europe. Regrettably, that resistance has found very little political expression in the recent elections for the European Parliament. Support for far-right parties has surged, against a backdrop of the lowest ever turnout Read more