Christchurch event: Neoliberalism, resistance and the far right

July 31, 2013 by

Stop-NeoliberalismA panel discussion on the rise of the far right, neoliberalism in Aotearoa and globally, and resistance to these forces. Organised by Anti-Racist Action (Christchurch).

Andrew Tait – International Socialist Organization Aotearoa (http://iso.org.nz/)
Paul Piesse – Co-founder of the Hobgoblin Network (http://www.hobgoblin.org.nz/)
Thomas Inwood – Anti-Racist Action (Christchurch)
Alistair Knewstubb – Port Hills Young Labour

5:30pm, Saturday August 3rd
Room Four, 336 St Asaph Street, Christchurch

[Facebook event]

Filed Under: Events

Government shifts responsibility for enforcing welfare reforms

July 30, 2013 by

welfare-reform-beneficiary-bashing

Polly Peek, Fightback (Christchurch).

Recently released details around how the government plans to see its latest round of welfare reforms carried out, show that the Ministry of Social Development is taking a hands off approach to the implantation of its controversial changes.

The most recent benefit reforms, which came into effect on the 15th of July, make a number of changes to the requirements on people receiving social welfare as well as a complete restructuring of benefit categories, which are now reduced to three benefits: Jobseeker Support, Sole Parent Support and a Supported Living Payment for people living with their own or a dependant’s disability.

People receiving support will now be required to: notify Work and Income if they or their partner plan to leave the country, have their children enrolled with a preschool, school and doctor, undergo pre-employment or pre-training drug testing, clear any outstanding arrest warrants, and reapply for support every year.

Where these new requirements are not met, people will lose their benefit for 13 weeks, or have this halved for the same period if they have dependent children. If someone is considered fit for work and turns down a “suitable” job, they will also face these cuts to their support.

There has been much controversy over this latest round of welfare reforms throughout the process of the changes being developed and upon their announcement, some of which has been covered in previous Fightback articles.

It has only been recently, however, that information has become available around some of the finer details of the legislation, particularly how private employment agencies and beneficiaries themselves will be made responsible for delivering some of the contentious requirements of the reforms. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Welfare

Racist “Pakeha Party” ignores history

July 29, 2013 by
Anti-racist action in Christchurch: http://www.flickr.com/photos/94331833@N06/

Anti-racist action in Christchurch, photo by popartyrights

Thomas Inwood, member of Fightback and Anti-Racist Action (Christchurch).

A Facebook page for “The Pakeha Party” caused a stir in early July, quickly gaining more ‘likes’ than any other political party in New Zealand. While the founder, David Ruck, admitted that the idea was initially a joke between friends, the torrent of interest has resulted in an attempt to build a real political party based on rhetoric of ‘equal rights’ for all New Zealanders. The Pakeha Party illustrates the profound ignorance of history within our society, as well as an underbelly of racism which have both  been emerging more frequently during the economic recession. While many have, quite rightly, pointed out that David Ruck is a complete buffoon, the popularity of his bigoted ‘joke’ highlights a dangerous ideological tendency.

Historical Illiteracy

Reading comments in the media, and made by Ruck via the Facebook page, it is clear that supporters of the message of ‘equal rights’ completely misunderstand a great deal of New Zealand’s colonial history, and race relations. The myth of a privileged Māori beneficiary living off the hard work of others is commonplace not just within misinformed racist circles, but has representation in mainstream media. The disgusting cartoon by Al Nisbet earlier this year is  a clear example of mainstream attacks on Māori living in poverty – and a perpetuation of the myths around beneficiaries in general.

More disturbing are the many calls from white New Zealanders to discard the Treaty of Waitangi and ‘let bygones be bygones’. This is perhaps one of the most fundamental misunderstandings, reinforced by a kind of abstracted liberalism based around ‘individual’ rights and responsibilities. The argument is familiar enough: that “Pākehā now should not be paying for the crimes of our ancestors”. The separation of who is ‘guilty’ for particular wrongs in the past from any repercussions over time must be challenged. What supporters of Ruck’s message ignore are the ways that violations of the Treaty (illegal land seizure etc.) by The Crown have created a fundamentally unequal society. All workers are dispossessed, but indigenous people experience dispossession in the extreme within colonial societies. Ancestral land which sustained families for generations were enclosed, carved up, and sold – often illegally or in a fraudulent manner. Naturally, this forced Māori into poverty in rural communities while the collective wealth of the nation circulated through predominately white hands. Revenue from these injustices, and the labour of the working class, built New Zealand largely in the image of Europe. Institutions with European ‘sensibilities’ were seen as normal and Māori struggling to integrate into these systems were punished.

In the mid 20th century a migration from rural communities by Māori into urban centres took place. Māori were slotted in always at the lowest rung of the working class within urban environments. Māori integrated, often discouraging children to learn their own language so as to better fit in within the white, European-centered schooling system. Māori were being incorporated into European society, but effectively as an underclass. Urbanization largely destroyed widespread understanding of Kaupapa, and over the following decades Te Reo was in serious jeopardy  of becoming extinct. This loss of cultural identity is still being grappled with today. The Pakeha Party are likely informed by the generation of white New Zealand who remember this era as the “good old days” when race and The Treaty were ignored. As Morgan Godfrey pointed out recently, New Zealand’s egalitarian myth does allow Māori (and everyone else) to participate, so long as they assimilate. “There’s no room for Māori participating as Māori.”. The message of ‘equal rights’ from The Pakeha Party would effectively see a reverse of Māori initiatives which attempt to allow Māori full participation in society as Māori.

Those who find Ruck’s message resonating with them seem to misunderstand that the crimes and injustices of the past have created and reinforced the inequity of the present. Māori are over represented in prisons, have poorer health outcomes and die younger, are in more dangerous and lower paid jobs; all related to systemic poverty and institutionalized racism that has built up over decades. Treaty settlements and  Māori specific social development schemes are  trying to correct very real wrongs that not only disenfranchised Māori, but inversely allowed for the over-privilege of Pākehā in New Zealand. What Malcolm X said of America rings no less true with the meagre Treaty reparations being made now for past crimes:

“If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress. Progress is healing the wound, and America hasn’t even begun to pull out the knife.”

Reparations, progress; these  ideas are ongoing. Even in supposedly progressive journalism around the Pakeha Party it is often pointed out that the Waitangi Tribunal is two years off finishing up all settlement claims, as though in two years New Zealand will finally have racial harmony once more. The harm done in the past has shaped the present and will continue to shape the future regardless of Treaty settlement processes. The ongoing struggle with racial oppression cannot be overcome under capitalism, but cannot be reduced simply to questions of class. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Racism

Government expanding surveillance powers

July 24, 2013 by
Waihopai spy base

Waihopai spy base

By Byron Clark, Fightback Christchurch member.

Public protests against the GCSB bill will take place around the country on July 27th.

[Auckland event] [Hamilton event] [Wellington event]

 

[Nelson event] [Waihopi Spybase event]

 

[Christchurch event] [Dunedin event]

The spectacle of Kim Dotcom going face to face with John Key to make a submission on the Government Communications Security Bureau [GCSB] and Related Legislation Amendment Bill received huge media attention, but little has been said on the content of the bill. In part that is because the bill actually contains very little.

In the years following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, New Zealand passed a raft of laws with the supposed goal of combating terrorism. Legislation governing surveillance by the GCSB dates from that era. The present bill will amend the Government Communications Security Bureau Act 2003, removing the word ‘foreign’ from a number of places, and changing the definition of a foreign organization from “an unincorporated body of persons consisting exclusively of foreign organisations or foreign persons that carry on activities wholly outside New Zealand:” to “an unincorporated body of persons consisting principally of foreign organisations or foreign persons that carry on activities wholly outside New Zealand:”

The purpose of these changes appears to be giving the GCSB powers to spy on New Zealanders previously reserved for spying on foreigners. Typically domestic spying has been the role of the Security Intelligence Service (SIS)  or the police, though the GCSB has been involved in spying in 88 cases since 2003.

Other subtle changes are repealing the current definitions of the terms ‘computer system’ and ‘network’, replacing them with the catch-all term ‘information infrastructure’ defined as “electromagnetic emissions, communications systems and networks, information technology systems and networks, and any communications carried on, contained in, or relating to those emissions, systems, or networks”. This provides scope for data collection from the wider range of communications devices now available (smartphones for example).

One that that remains undefined is the phrase “national security”. What all this amounts to is a law that gives the GCSB scope to spy on anyone, inside or outside the country, in a wide range of communications so long as they are seen to pose a risk to the “national security” of New Zealand. Given that the law, even before the current amendment, explicitly introduces the idea of threats to “economic well being” it would be entirely possible to define planning industrial action, such as a strike, as justification for spying.

Its worth noting in this instance that state surveillance of unions is not a hypothetical. Back in 2008 it came to light that Unite was being spied on, not by the GCSB but by the police Special Investigation Group (SIG). In their submission on the amendment bill, the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) have pointed out that reasons for surveillance such as ‘preventing activities aimed at undermining values that underpin New Zealand society’ provides a scope “wide enough to capture nearly any activity or discussion with a political motive.”

That the bill will erode the right to privacy is almost a given, of greater concern is that there is little recourse when remaining privacy rights are stepped on. When questioned by Radio New Zealand following the revelation of British and American surveillance programmes by whistleblower Edward Snowden, Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff said the commission does not have specific jurisdiction to monitor the GCSB. At that time she also stated it was not clear how the American programme PRISM might affect New Zealanders. It has since come to light, via Snowdens leaked documents, that the GCSB shared information with the American National Security Agency (NSA). [Read more…]

Filed Under: Civil Liberties

Cornel West: “President Obama is a global George Zimmerman”

July 24, 2013 by

Transcript of an interview on Democracy Now [video here]

AMY GOODMAN: In the aftermath of the Zimmerman verdict and the mass protests around the country, we turn right now to Dr. Cornel West, professor at Union Theological Seminary, author of numerous books, co-host of the radio show Smiley & West with Tavis Smiley. Together, they wrote the book The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto, among Cornel West’s other books.

Professor Cornel West—

CORNEL WEST: Yes, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: President Obama surprised not only the press room at the White House, but the nation, I think, on Friday, in his first public remarks following the George Zimmerman acquittal. What are your thoughts?

CORNEL WEST: Well, the first thing, I think we have to acknowledge that President Obama has very little moral authority at this point, because we know anybody who tries to rationalize the killing of innocent peoples, a criminal—George Zimmerman is a criminal—but President Obama is a global George Zimmerman, because he tries to rationalize the killing of innocent children, 221 so far, in the name of self-defense, so that there’s actually parallels here. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Imperialism, Racism

Millenial generation: Casualisation and resistance

July 23, 2013 by

millenials boomers

Ian Anderson, Fightback.

Middle-brow sections of the capitalist press have criticised ‘millenials’ in recent months, and millenials in turn have responded through blogs and other media. Also termed Generation Y, the ‘millenial’ generation broadly covers people born between 1980 and 2000 – “teenagers and twenty-somethings.”

In May, Time Magazine ran a cover story describing millenials as the “Me Me Me generation.”  Author Joel Stein was quick to distinguish himself from previous generations of crotchety, anti-youth reactionaries through an appeal to science; “I am about to do what old people have done throughout history: call those younger than me lazy, entitled, selfish and shallow. But I have studies! I have statistics! I have quotes from respected academics! Unlike my parents, my grandparents and my great-grandparents, I have proof.”

Stein cited statistics that ‘millenials’ have a higher rate of narcissism than previous generations. These statistics are disputed. However, some generational trends are harder to dispute; millenials are less likely to own property, more likely to live with their parents, more likely to be politically cynical than previous generations.

In liberal US paper The Nation, student Emily Crockett noted the most “glaring omission” from Stein’s Time magazine rant; the declining economic conditions faced by millenials compared with their parents.  In fact, Crockett noted that the closest Stein came to acknowledging “low-income youth” consisted of a mocking jab about “ghetto-fabulous lifestyles.”

More recently in Australian women’s publication Daily Life, columnist Daniel Stacey argued that the casualisation of work in recent decades has forced millenials to adapt their behaviour; “The fundamental error here is to mistake the adaptive behaviours of a new generation for the cause behind labour market changes.” Stacey argued that much of this adaptive behaviour, particularly disloyalty to companies, is a form of individual resistance. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Workers in Struggle

PRISM, Tempora and the case of Edward Snowden

July 20, 2013 by

Byron Clark, Fightback.

The past few years have seen the US led “war on terror” morph from a bloody ground war in Iraq and Afghanistan to something resembling a Hollywood techno-thriller. Three years after soldier Bradley Manning was arrested for leaking an enormous trove of classified documents via Wikileaks, another whistle-blower has revealed that American and British intelligence agencies have been engaged in large scale surveillance programmes.

Edward Snowden was a technical contractor for the American National Security Administration (NSA) before he felt he could not continue the work he was doing in good conscience. After taking leave from his employment and flying for Hawai’i to Hong Kong, he revealed details of the PRISM and Tempora programmes “to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.” The leaked information was published by The Guardian and the Washington Post.

The NSA programme PRISM began in 2007 with the passing of the Protect America Act, which removed the requirement for a warrant when collecting data on foreign intelligence targets “reasonably believed” to be outside of the United States, and made it legal to collect data on American citizens communicating with people outside the US who were under investigation.

The operation collected metadata, meaning data such as the time an email was sent, who it was to and from, as well as the file size of the email, but not the actual contents of the message. This data was collected from a number of different communications technologies facilitated by internet services that are household names, such as Google, Facebook and Skype, although these companies were not knowingly complicit in the programme.

Snowden has described aspects of the data collection as “dangerous” and “criminal” under US law, but has also pointed out that focusing on the illegal surveillance of Americans is “a distraction from the power and danger of this system.” Adding that “Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it’s only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%.”

A similar programme in the UK, Tempora, has been in operating since 2011 and shared information with the NSA. The data collected by Tempora is of a much greater scope than the data collected by PRISM, it includes recordings of telephone calls, the content of email messages, Facebook entries and the peoples personal internet use history. Tempora was orchestrated by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) who Snowden has described as “worse than the US”. “Tempora is the first ‘I save everything’ approach (‘full take’) in the intelligence world. It sucks in all data, no matter what it is, and which rights are violated by it”

While PRISM surveillance required the already loose criteria of suspicion, Tempora made no distinction between innocent people or targeted suspects when gathering data. CGHQ lawyers said it would be impossible to list the total number of people targeted because “this would be an infinite list which we couldn’t manage”.

While any data passing though the UK or US (which most internet communications do) could have been spied on, regardless of what country it originated from, the intelligence agencies in Canada, Australia and New Zealand- via the Government Security Communications Bureau (GCSB) facility at Waihopai near Blenheim – have been sharing information with the NSA. This revelation has fuelled opposition to a bill currently going through parliament that would give more powers to the GCSB.

On June 14, US federal prosecutors filed a sealed complaint, which was made public on June 21, charging Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defence information, and wilful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorized person; the latter two allegations are under the Espionage Act.

Unable to return to the United States Snowden has been offered asylum by a number of South American nations. When the Obama administration threatened to revoke a trade agreement if the country granted Snowden asylum, Ecuador cancelled the pact themselves. In addition the nation’s Communications Secretary, Fernando Alvarado, announced US$23 million in Ecuadoran aid to the US to provide “human rights training to combat torture, illegal executions and attacks on people’s privacy.”

Snowden is also popular in his home country- with the people if not with the government- a national poll conducted by Quinnipiac University showed a majority (55%) of those polled supported Snowden as a “whistle blower” versus only 34% who saw his as a “traitor”. On July Fourth, the day the USA celebrates independence, protests against the PRISM program and in support of Snowden took place in major US cities around the theme of “Restore the Fourth” a reference to the fourth amendment to the constitution, which provided protection from unreasonable searches and seizure.

At the time of writing, Snowden has not accepted (at least not publically) an offer of asylum, claiming US officials are waging a campaign to prevent him from doing so. When Snowden was suspected to be on board the presidential jet carrying Bolivian president Evo Morales the plane was grounded in Austria when other European countries refused to allow the plane in their airspace.

“The scale of threatening behaviour is without precedent: never before in history have states conspired to force to the ground a sovereign president’s plane to effect a search for a political refugee.”

See also:

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Obama: Surveillance, Secrecy and State Terror

July 20, 2013 by

NSA hawk

Ciaran Doolin, Fightback.

Obama came to power in 2009 after a campaign replete with pledges to return the US to being a nation that respected the civil liberties of its citizens and the human rights of its enemies. Those who assessed Obama’s rhetoric as simply vacuous politicking have since been vindicated. Obama has dramatically expanded the Bush-era surveillance state (discussed in Prism, Tempora and the Case of Edward Snowden), aggressively defended government secrecy and prosecuted the War on Terror with elevated levels of ruthlessness.

Mass surveillance under Bush

The expansion of the state intelligence apparatus in the United States began rapidly after the attack on September 11 in 2001. The USA PATRIOT Act 2001 gave the President of the United States unprecedented power to impinge on the rights of both foreign and US citizens. Among many other draconian measures, the decision to use torture, referred to euphemistically by the Bush administration as “enhanced interrogation techniques”, was justified under the Patriot Act. In 2005 the New York Times published a series of stories detailing extensive surveillance of people within the US by the National Security Agency (NSA) that lacked Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrants. in 2007, under pressure from Congress, the public and the media, Bush returned the programme to the scrutiny of the FISA court, although in August of that year the Protect America Act (PAA) was passed which amended FISA removing warrant requirements for foreign targets “reasonably believed” to be outside the US. These amendments were reaffirmed the following year. The amendment act’s also immunised private organisations from prosecution for cooperating with the US government’s surveillance programs.

Obama escalates surveillance

The amendments to FISA opened the door for a next generation surveillance program – PRISM. The extent of the program was revealed last month by The Guardian who received extensive classified documentation from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The disclosures show that the NSA can unilaterally undertake “extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information” including email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP chats (such as Skype), file transfers, and social networking details. According to The Washington Post, NSA analysts search PRISM data using terms intended to identify suspicious communications by targets whom the analysts are at least 51% sure are not U.S. citizens. Such a low level of surety means that “unintentional” surveillance of US citizens has been extensive. In an interview Snowden summarized the scope of the disclosures, reporting that “in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT [signals intelligence] databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want.” Alongside PRISM is BLARNEY, a programme which gathers much of the metadata of internet streams for analysis. Metadata includes information about the time, author and IP address of created data.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Christchurch event: Mental health and Marxism

July 18, 2013 by

mental health and marxism

6pm, Sunday July 21st

WEA Rooms, 59 Gloucester St, Christchurch

[Facebook event]

Filed Under: Events

Wellington event: What is work? Wage labour, unpaid work and feminism

July 17, 2013 by

What is Work poster

A significant amount of unpaid work (housework, care for children, the sick and elderly) is performed mainly by women. Understanding unpaid work is necessary to both socialist and feminist organising.

Presented by Marika Pratley, Fightback member.

6pm, Wednesday July 24th

19 Tory St

[Facebook event]

Filed Under: Uncategorized
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