Grid of posts 2×3

  • Breadline wages contributed to Muliaga tragedy

    – Daphna Whitmore The Muliaga inquiry doesn’t seem to be factoring in the role of the terrible pay that the family were trying to survive on. Below is the press release that Unite issued shortly after Mrs Muliaga’s death (her husband worked at a hotel that Unite organises). The Herald accused me of trying to… Read more

  • Tranz Rail buyback: why they did it

    – John Edmundson On May 5 this year the Government announced that it had completed negotiations with Toll Holdings to repurchase the rail and ferry business sold by the Bolger National government in 1993. For some, this has been seen as a great blow against the post-1984 neoliberal onslaught, characterised by a string of restructuring… Read more

  • People vote for change in Tonga, Zimbabwe and Nepal

    – Alastair Reith In the past month or so, elections took place in three very different countries, far away from one another, with distinctly different languages, cultures and histories. These countries did have some things in common. All were all poor, third-world countries, whose people live in poverty and oppression, and they all voted against… Read more

  • Imperialism and the Burmese Cyclone

    It’s a quandary for the western left: the same countries that have invaded Iraq and visited much suffering on many other poor countries now want to do good in Cyclone-ravaged Myanmar/Burma. Has US and British imperialism suddenly become a force for good? Don’t be fooled, says John Moore, who argues that we need to question… Read more

  • A handful of rice

    Japan is about to send 20,000 tonnes of rice to five African countries, according to a report in the May 23rd Dominion Post. This contribution to help ease the global food crisis sounds generous. In fact, Japan’s present stockpile of surplus rice amounts to 2.23 million tonnes. Japan’s donation to Africa is less than one… Read more

  • The budget – funded by workers, controlled by the bosses

    Jared Phillips reviews some aspects of the 2008 budget and the response to it from a Marxist perspective The qualification threshold for the top tax bracket has changed from $60,000 to $80,000, which provides some relief for the middle class,which is where Labour draws its support from. The media has seized on the fact that… Read more