Socialist Aotearoa
Thursday, January 25, 2018
Labour are celebrating? They've done virtually nothing but the boss is hapu!
Jan 2018 is coming to and end, which will be 84 days after Labour and the Greens and NZF got married. Haven't we all being patient?
With all of their hullaballoo of pre-election promises of “I’ma gunnah” do this, “We gunnah” do that ….the opposition & competing parties were in hyper-drive with coming up with counter offers to the NZ public with bullshit commitments to build 200,000 Houses! More roads of “Significance”, “Lower Taxes” or trying out a bit of comedy with; how the poor are better off being less poor! And slogans of how ‘Hard Working’ NZ’ers are much better off, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah!
Thank fuck, ‘we’ didn't buy it this time around …. But? What did we get?
Well we didn't get to see these two return to parliament.
Mana-Maori party marriage was more like a “fling”, a marriage of convenience or, could it have been an “arranged” marriage?
The Maori party's divorce papers hadn’t yet come through from the Nat’s but they went ahead and hooked up with Hone! Aue! Another three way!
As for the Greens & NZF. They were having to fight for their survival as their pockets were getting picked by their potential suitor party(s) in the next Government.
The new Labour Government got to have first pick due to an old mange dog named Winston Peters. He savoured the moment for a few short weeks before announcing his choice to form a government with which was Labour who then brought along the Greens to make up the numbers.
Then they all managed to make it to December without any major drama’s domestic or internationally. The Christmas holiday break had come & they went to ground.
A “run for cover” I think you could call it. Regroup to figure out what to do now, now that they are in government after 9 long years sitting on the opposition benches. Maybe the reality is sinking in? The ‘shock’ that they’ll have to do some work instead of throwing eggs!?
So what's changed? Nothing!
We still have a Housing Crisis! Oh no that's fallen off the radar!
People are ‘still’ Homeless and ‘if’ they’re not living in their cars or sleeping on a park bench. They’re racking up a massive debt living in flea infested motels costing $140,000.00 per day! Also getting harassed by case managers from WINZ to find accommodation and a job!
The MSD/WINZ Ceo has still got a job! FFS!
I don't think much of Camel suckit-u- pollonie. She said when questioned about this in early December that she, “will take direction from her senior managers ….”WTF!
It's a simple fix. Sack the prick & don't hire anymore parasitic pricks from any of the christian organisations! Methodists, Presbyterians, and other churchie fucks.
What else? Oooh ooh! Phil the “Son of a Gun” Twyfords slogan pre-election was, “I’ma gunnah Build 100,000 Houses! 10,000 per year over 10 years!
Now this was an ‘un-committed’ pre-election build number, which now turns out to be 2000 State houses & let the private sector housing market take care of the rest. Now, with a revised projected forecast of no more than 8500 houses built in the first year and then we'll see? This figure includes the 2000 state houses! Also, he’s responsible for Transport and shovelling his mate Auckland Mayor Phil Goff bucket loads of money via AT & other roading projects.
Oooh ooh! Beneficiaries will get an increase in their “Accommodation” supplement! Whoop de doo!
Currently, if you are lucky you might be able to get $125.00/wk which is the maximum based on which region you live in.
Average rent nationally is $470/wk. However, if you’re on a benefit, you are automatically placed at the back of the queue because renting from the private sector has now become a sport. Its a bidding “War.”
Migrants and especially the group of migrant students that the Migrant Student Association are supporting. The Labour party minister & associates have gone quiet, paying lip service and doing fuck all else. Time for a kicking I reckon comrades!
Arrh what else? Parental Leave!
Who gets Hapu!
Call me a cynic but for fuck sake! I did write on our SA facebook page back in Nov/December that “Little Ms Colgate” will get hapu mid-term and have a baby which will win Labour a second term. I guess Clarke & Jacinda couldn't wait that long! So now, every time the shit is about to hit the fan, guess what's going to happen? Little bubba pickies!
Will there ever be any politics happening in NZ in the near or foreseeable future?
NZF’s “ Jonesy!” Fuck! He’s spent the one billion dollar Regional Investment Fund 2.8 times already!
Well we all know how responsible he is with the “company” credit card aye?
The Greens.
The poor widdle greenies! Well, they don't like darkies & the kids snuck off with keys to the car and crashed it a few times. Chloe moaning how difficult it is to decide how to spend her $160k salary and the other new MP Golriz, gets caught out trying to trade a new national holiday for support to legislation for ‘waka’ jumping the green party has already agreed to.
They’re in the shit by moving from the left, to now where its fuck’n crowded in/on the centre right of the political spectrum which is where all of the political parties are in, in parliament. 2020 isn’t looking good for the Greens.
The left side of the spectrum is like open ‘space’. Vacuous, a void, barren, nothingness!
What a fuck’n disgrace!
Why has NZ got into this mess? Bryan Bruce’s video, “Who owns NZ Now” raises some serious concerns.
There’s articles galore are coming out regularly about NZ’s richest including NZ’s richest man increasing his wealth by two billion dollars and on the next page, a beneficiary getting declined for a food grant for fuck sake!
Also in today's Herald, oxfams’ article stating the wealthy 1% in NZ own 28% of the country’s wealth. The trickle up theory isn't a theory.
Who gets subsidised in NZ? NZ business owners & corporates, international & home grown. These subsidies are huge. 2016/2017 June/July NZ Government Appropriations. More than $11b in subsidies going to multinational corporations as well as local businesses, such as for eg; Training providers (Pte’s) to WINZ for beneficiaries; $732m for this period alone! Oh no! Don't give it to the beneficiary who is liable for the debt created by this ‘subsidy’, give it to the PTE!
Once the course is finished, you're outta there! Its your fault if you cant find a job! You didn’t LOOK hard enough! Back on the Bene & getting sanctioned and harassed by your friendly understanding case manager(s).
Poor farmers! Fuck me! Don't buy another $500k tractor you fuck!
My favourite one is the $2.3b subsidy to build the Ultra fast Broadband network for your favourite internet provider, who then bills you every month to use the network infrastructure that you paid for, for them to use! It was originally only going to cost NZ taxpayers $1.8bn but the contractors, Leyton’s, Fletchers ect …. Paid Out $600m to their shareholders in the first year and went back to the government minister and said that they didn't have enough funds to continue with the work so he gave them another $700m to carry on!
The list of parasites is long but, you can guess how the richest 1% in NZ gets to own nearly 30% of the countries wealth.
Giddy up! 2018 has started & we’re still catching up on the last governments 9 years of misguided neoliberalism and mismanagement. Is this Labour Government any different? So far, same shit, just a different day.
Denny SA
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Can we save Capitalism or should we save the world?
For many capitalists, the problem is an image problem or perhaps a more substantial problem to do with endless restructuring & staff reductions, outsourcing, commoditisation, price competition driving down wages, declining innovation and slow profit growth. Others think capitalism is under siege – with social problems de-legitimising business i.e. businesses have lost their ‘social contract to operate’ leading to social unrest and popular movements against capitalism.
However, capitalists tend to suggest a tweeking of capitalism is required rather than a wholesale system change: i.e. there is simply a need to re-invent capitalism. At least four of these “re-inventions” are currently blossoming in the NZ context:
Shared Value - which proposes to transform social problems relevant to the corporation into business opportunities, thereby contributing to the solving of critical societal challenges while simultaneously driving greater profitability. Lion Nathan are strong proponents of Shared Value, led by their parent company in Japan.
Conscious Capitalism - which proposes that the free market capitalism is a powerful system for social cooperation and human progress; and seeks to build on the core foundations of capitalism such as voluntary exchange, competition, freedom to trade and the rule of law, by adding elements like trust, compassion, collaboration and value creation. Starbucks and Patagonia are proponents of Conscious Capitalism.
Capitalism 3.0 – which proposes a revolution in management thinking focused on "delighting customers" and redefining managerial roles, coordination mechanisms, values and communications so that everyone and everything in the corporation is oriented towards accomplishing this goal. It proposes starting from what would delight the client and focusing the entire organization on that goal. Amazon and Salesforce are said to be leaders in Capitalism 3.0.
Eco-Capitalism / Green Capitalism – which proposes that capital exists in nature as "natural capital" and market-based government policy instruments can be used to resolve environmental problems. Basically, despite the global social and ecological crisis, the capitalist system can continue to expand by changing to a new ‘sustainable’ or ‘green capitalism’, bringing the efficiency of the market to bear on nature and its reproduction. Green Capitalism tends to put the onus of solving environmental problems on changing individual life styles. The Green Party is a proponent of Green Capitalism.
The appeal of all four systems is that they do not challenge the fundamental political and economic systems we have. They provide a nonthreatening re-invention of capitalism palatable to many political and business leaders, as well as the mainstream public.
However, re-invented capitalist ideologies have four main flaws in common:
They continue to assert that endless growth can occur in a finite ecological system i.e. that capitalism can find a way to profit from the problems created by capitalism. They assume that by profiting from addressing planetary destruction, inequality and social disfunction we can somehow solve these problems. By seeking to cherry pick profitable solutions they simply create a few islands of change within a sea of issues.
They tend to ignore the trade-offs that are required between social, environmental and economic goals unless a profit can be identified. In particular, social and environmental problems caused by the corporate are simply ignored. For example, in a recent forum discussing Shared Value, Lion Nathan was asked the question of how they could say they were following a Shared Value ideology when their product (alcohol) caused such harm. Their response was there was nothing they could do about that so they would ignore it and focus on areas they could find value.
They presume compliance with legislation and ethical standards, while ignoring substantial evidence of widespread non-compliance. Basically, if you pretend it’s not happening you don’t need to factor it into your ideology. Non-compliance and unethical business behaviour are ‘messy’ to try to account for. It’s simply easier to ignore this element than to ensure corporations pay their fair share of taxes, halt environmental harm caused by their activities and respect international labour standards.
They continue to incorrectly define the corporate role in society. A fundamental flaw in capitalism is that corporations are not responsible to society. Re-invented capitalism is still capitalism – with all the same focus on profit, corporate self-interest and the tensions between capital and labour; and between capital and the environment. Re-invented capitalism does not provide us with new insight into the systematic nature of many social and environmental problems; but instead ignores the basic understanding that what is needed to avoid environmental collapse and significant human tragedy is a contraction in global use of resources.
Re-inventing capitalism is truly the equivalent to shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. Maximizing profit and saving the planet are inherently in conflict and cannot be systematically aligned.
Proponents of re-invented capitalist ideologies point to the reduced ozone hole over Antarctica as an example of how capitalist measures have been successful in addressing an environmental issue. By incentivising the use of non-ozone depleting products, they claim, the ozone problem has been solved. However, this example conveniently forgets the solution required an unprecedented global regulatory intervention, against industry lobbying, and the environmental improvement has taken 20 years and counting.
Addressing the even more complex social and environmental problems we currently face will require a rapid, substantial and immediate global regulatory response in the hope that in 20-30 years we may again see an improvement in the situation. This despite substantive corporate opposition to such global regulatory change – corporate opposition which is considerably stronger than in the mid 1990’s when the ozone layer was addressed.
We no longer have the luxury of incremental change or tinkering around the edges. In order to address the scale and urgency of our social and environmental problems, we need to systematically subordinate the pursuit of profit. We need to abandon capitalism.
There is no capitalist solution to our ecological crisis.
Either we save capitalism or we save the humans. We can’t save both.
System Change not Climate Change
Lavinia SA
Saturday, January 13, 2018
History of the Russian Revolution
Just reading Trotsky’s the history of the Russian Revolution. A large book with huge detail and amazing insight into the psychology and treachery of the counter revolutionary forces, and of course western industrialist interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, surprise, surprise
.
What I find fascinating is the similarity between this and the normal workings of a so-called democracy in an imperialist world with all the usual lies and treachery. While the workings and treachery are nothing new, it gives a great insight and understanding into how it all works and a great education for people interested in changing the world order and achieving a real people’s democracy.
While reading it I took time out to read a small Socialist Aotearoa pamphlet called ‘In Defence of October’. This was a debate between four historians on whether Leninism led to Stalinism. An interesting debate with a lot of good points made in it, but by the end there seemed to be one glaring omission – and I think this is true in general about the debate on this subject worldwide – and that is:
Did western industrialist interference in the revolution lead to Stalinism? Did Churchillism lead to Stalinism? Did Churchillism lead to Hitler? Did it lead to Franco? Did it lead to Mussolini? Did it lead to the Greek generals? Did it lead to Pinochet? Did it lead to Pol Pot?
The list goes on and on. I could list about 50 countries where the US alone has been instrumental in installing horrible dictators, which ultimately has led to the fucked up capitalist world we live in now, with its perpetual wars, starvation poverty, persecution, real threat of climate disaster and nuclear war.
While the academics argue about the deck chairs on the titanic.
The question really should be: if western industrial countries had kept their blood stained hands out of Russia’s revolution, would Leninism have led to a utopian world socialism? And I think the answer would be, quite likely.
Sometimes I think these academics lack imagination or empathy. They don’t seem to be able to fully comprehend the situation Lenin found himself in after the revolution and after the civil war. They don’t seem to be able to comprehend the magnitude of being invaded by the most powerful countries in the world, and the devastating effect of this on the revolution and on socialism. They seem to think that Lenin could just make socialism out of the remnants of the people left – basically a bunch of illiterate peasants with no idea of socialism, the ruling class, and their hangers-on who had already proved the level of their treachery, treason and butchery.
Doug SA
.
What I find fascinating is the similarity between this and the normal workings of a so-called democracy in an imperialist world with all the usual lies and treachery. While the workings and treachery are nothing new, it gives a great insight and understanding into how it all works and a great education for people interested in changing the world order and achieving a real people’s democracy.
While reading it I took time out to read a small Socialist Aotearoa pamphlet called ‘In Defence of October’. This was a debate between four historians on whether Leninism led to Stalinism. An interesting debate with a lot of good points made in it, but by the end there seemed to be one glaring omission – and I think this is true in general about the debate on this subject worldwide – and that is:
Did western industrialist interference in the revolution lead to Stalinism? Did Churchillism lead to Stalinism? Did Churchillism lead to Hitler? Did it lead to Franco? Did it lead to Mussolini? Did it lead to the Greek generals? Did it lead to Pinochet? Did it lead to Pol Pot?
The list goes on and on. I could list about 50 countries where the US alone has been instrumental in installing horrible dictators, which ultimately has led to the fucked up capitalist world we live in now, with its perpetual wars, starvation poverty, persecution, real threat of climate disaster and nuclear war.
While the academics argue about the deck chairs on the titanic.
The question really should be: if western industrial countries had kept their blood stained hands out of Russia’s revolution, would Leninism have led to a utopian world socialism? And I think the answer would be, quite likely.
Sometimes I think these academics lack imagination or empathy. They don’t seem to be able to fully comprehend the situation Lenin found himself in after the revolution and after the civil war. They don’t seem to be able to comprehend the magnitude of being invaded by the most powerful countries in the world, and the devastating effect of this on the revolution and on socialism. They seem to think that Lenin could just make socialism out of the remnants of the people left – basically a bunch of illiterate peasants with no idea of socialism, the ruling class, and their hangers-on who had already proved the level of their treachery, treason and butchery.
Doug SA
Friday, December 08, 2017
Migrant Workers Fight Back.
Migrant workers are among the most vulnerable and exploited sections of the working class. The system and its laws conspire to put them in a position where they are easy targets, often too afraid to take on exploitative bosses for fear of losing even their meagre income. They are frequently used as slave labour, and it’s common for them to be bonded to a particular company for the duration of their visas. But recently a group of migrant workers in Tauranga showed how unity and direct action can give them strength, dignity and the resolve to stand up for their rights. Sunny Sehgal of the Migrant Workers Association tells the story, which came to his attention when he was approached by a worker in a liquor store
“The owner of the liquor shop had five other liquor shops across the North Island, paying workers below minimum wage, with no basic entitlements. These migrant workers had been used for a long time as slaves. They became friends and colleagues and planned among themselves, without the help of any union, that on the same day at the same time they would hand over the keys of the shops to the boss and not open the stores. They did this with no support. They walked off the job there and then. After this they hired a consultant to represent all of them to get their money back from the employer. In total, the six of them were owed around $400,000 (in under-payment, holiday pay etc). The consultant got a deal from the owner saying he would give them $10,000 each. The workers rejected the offer. Now the associate has sent a bill of $2000 each to every worker. So now they are even more in debt. They’ve turned to the Migrant Workers Association to take on their case.”
We salute these brave and principled workers for fighting for what is rightly theirs, and for calling an exploitative employer to account. We’ll keep you updated on developments in their case.
SA
Saturday, November 18, 2017
Bring Them Here
“In the West there was panic when the migrants multiplied on the highways. Men of property were terrified for their property. Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. Men who had never wanted anything very much saw the flare of want in the eyes of the migrants. And the mean of the towns and of the soft suburban country gathered to defend themselves; and they reassured themselves that they were good and the invaders bad, as a man must do before he fights. They said, Those goddamned Okies are dirty and ignorant. They’re degenerate, sexual maniacs. Those goddamned Okies are thieves. They’ll steal anything. They’ve got no sense of property rights.”
– John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Sex with underage girls. Rampant violence. Tables awash with gambling money. No, it’s not the latest Netflix blockbuster, but allegations against the 370 men detained on Manus Island. the claims.... some of them by Australian intelligence - are yet to be proven, or disproven, but it smacks of yet another outrage against vulnerable, desperate people whose only ‘crime’ is to have sought asylum and a safe haven. You can’t help but be sceptical of the claims. Smear campaigns against refugees is nothing new… but more of that in a moment. And the timing of the leak is suspect. If this behaviour was rife, how come it’s only just been revealed hot on the heels of PM Jacinda Ardern offering - to Australia’s immense displeasure - to resettle 150 of the men in New Zealand?
First up, who are these men? They are asylum seekers who arrived in Australia by boat from various strife-torn countries throughout the Middle East and Asia. In 2012, Australia began offshore processing of those seeking refuge on its shores under the rather chillingly named ‘Pacific Solution’. A washing-of-hands, more like, and certainly not a ‘solution’ for the refugees themselves. The policy was condemned from the start for its ad hoc nature, and for the removal of desperate people to facilities that were barely inhabitable, with unreliable water and power supplies, poor medical facilities, as well as the mental impact that remaining in limbo would have on a population already fleeing dire situations in their home countries.
Since July 2013, about 1500 people have been transferred to Manus, in Papua New Guinea, from Australia. As The Conversation reports, ‘The number of asylum seekers on Manus Island has slowly reduced over the years as people have either accepted packages to return to their country of origin, been deported from PNG, been resettled in the US or temporarily settled in PNG. Six others have died.” A war of attrition, designed to do anything but welcome these people to Australia, to do the decent thing and resettle them. The very act of shipping them to a detention centre suggests they have committed some crime. ‘Asylum seeker’ seems almost synonymous, in some minds, with ‘outlaw’.
And then in October, the Manus detention centre was closed. Ever since, they’ve had limited food, water and power supplies. The men were offered relocation to premises that have been deemed unacceptable by both the refugees and humanitarian experts - not least for well-founded fear of attack by local townspeople. So the men have refused to budge from their current place. A case of better the hell you know, if ever there was one. The UN has said of the situation: “The abrupt ending of services and the closure of the regional processing centre needs to involve the people who have been in this regional processing centre for years in a very vulnerable state… It is really high time to bring an end to this unconscionable human suffering.”
Human suffering. To address human suffering, you do one of two things. You either take steps to end it. Or you somehow make those involved appear less than human. You accuse them of crimes that alienate them from sympathy.
As stated at the start, smear campaigns against refugees are hardly original. Just think back a couple of years to Germany, where it was claimed a ‘mob’ of asylum seekers assaulted women on one of Frankfurt’s main shopping streets during New Year celebrations. Leading German newspaper Bild was forced to apologise earlier this year for the the false allegations.
Again in Germany, a Muslim ‘mob’ was accused, falsely, of burning down the country’s oldest church.
In Hungary, migrants have been portrayed as a danger to society. A government-sponsored poster campaign on billboards around the country claimed sexual harassment of women has risen sharply across Europe since the beginning of the migrant crisis.
In 2015, Amnesty condemned UK foreign secretary Phil Hammond for his ‘shameful’ comments about migrants. Speaking during a visit to Singapore Hammond said those migrants arriving in Europe were undermining its “standard of living”.
He said Britain’s “number one priority” was to find a way to send back would-be asylum seekers to where they came from. He attacked the freedom of movement laws with the European Union and warned that in Calais, "there are large numbers of pretty desperate migrants marauding around the area".
Steve Symonds of Amnesty was rightly shocked, saying: "Rather than throwing up the drawbridge and talking about how Europe can 'protect' itself from migrants, Mr Hammond should be working with our EU partners to ensure that people don't drown in the Mediterranean or get crushed beneath lorries at Calais.”
This contempt for those genuinely seeking safe haven goes way back. Reel back to post-war Britain, when you’d think fleeing Jews would have been welcomed with open arms - and it’s a similar story. There was widespread intolerance by the media at the notion of accepting refugees. As Tony Kushner and Katharine Knox write in their book Refugees In an Age of Genocide, "Of all the groups in the 20th century, refugees from Nazism are now widely and popularly perceived as 'genuine', but at the time German, Austrian and Czechoslovakian Jews were treated with ambivalence and outright hostility as well as sympathy." Adds Kushner, "People feel that the country should maintain asylum for genuine asylum seekers, but they're always in the past, never today."
The fact is that capitalism creates wars, and dire poverty and fuels climate change, engendering the conditions that give rise to refugees in the first place. And then it closes or opens its borders to them as it suits. Capitalism has a long history of moving people around the globe, sometimes forcefully - aka slavery - to meet the needs of the system in its expansionary phases. And yet when the system is in crisis, and struggles to provide houses or feed ‘its own’, migrants are a convenient scapegoat for the ills that capitalism creates.
As socialists we say there should be no borders dividing workers. We should welcome all immigrants with open arms - and especially those who are fleeing war, genocide, terror, the loss of land thanks to climate change, poverty and political persecution. Workers are not pieces on a chessboard to be picked up and put down at will. These men on Manus, and all migrants/refugees/asylum seekers, are human beings with hopes and dreams just like the rest of us. Above all we should reject the notion that some refugees are somehow ‘unworthy’ of a place in our society.
Bring the Manus refugees here and let’s stop demonising migrants - both those wishing to come here and those already in our midst.
Maria SA
Manus Island- Refugees are Welcome in Aotearoa this Christmas
Rally at the Auckland Unitarian church
1A Ponsonby Road, Auckland
November 26th at 2:20pm
Sunday, October 01, 2017
Uprising in Catalonia
Catalonia’s independence referendum – outlawed by the Spanish state – has been taking place today, Sunday. As voting closed, activist David Karvala spoke to Socialist Aotearoa from outside a polling station in Barcelona
About 200 people were in front of my local polling station at 8pm as voting ended in the independence referendum. There was a countdown and huge cheer.
Some had been here since 5am. Others had stayed the night on Saturday. We then had to stay for hours more to protect the ballot boxes during the count. The result at our station was an 80 percent vote for independence. The turnout was 1,300 votes - impressive given the area and the police repression.
The paramilitary police brutally attacked a polling station just half a mile from here and all the ballot boxes were taken away. We are one of the few polling stations in the area that hasn’t been attacked.
The Catalan government released shocking footage of Spanish police attacking polling stations.
But the final images on its clip show people pushing back the riot cops. They show firefighters setting up a protective cordon for demonstrators—a decision they took collectively in an assembly.
The latest reports are that police attacks have injured 761 people with 128 of them hospitalised, including two serious cases.
There have been horror stories.
Police used tear gas in small polling station in a rural town. A village of 250 people was attacked by 60 or 70 paramilitary police.
Elsewhere the police targeted a woman with official responsibilities in the referendum. They dragged her down stone steps by her hair, touched her breasts, then broke the fingers of her hand one by one.
They shot a person at close range with a rubber bullet. He’s having emergency treatment and may lose an eye.
And then there are good stories.
In the county town of Tarrega around 1,000 people filled a square to protect the town hall as a single place for all remaining voters to vote. They had closed all other polling stations at 5pm.
Some of our contacts have sent videos of people voting in their towns.
One is from a town in the outskirts of Barcelona where many people speak Spanish, not Catalan, after migration from southern Spain in the 1960s.
The video shows an almost endless queue, right around the block, of people waiting to vote.
Beating
The Spanish police are beating the Spanish speaking workers towards support for independence.
Another contact in the small town of Pineda explained that a busload of police was sent in—but the people sent them away.
There have been urgent demonstrations elsewhere in the Spanish state showing solidarity against the repression.
Some 3,500 people took to the streets in Valencia. So did hundreds of people in Burgos—the civil war capital of former dictator General Franco.
It’s been an impressive day.
For a while this morning we had to wait to vote because the voting system was blocked for some time. People just got up to speak.
There were a couple of Scottish people here to support a referendum. A Polish woman sang a song in Polish that turned out to be a version of an anti-Franco song from the 1970s.
One of the most emotional things was when old people came to vote, sometimes with walking sticks or wheelchairs, and being cheered by everyone.
In the end it seems the police attacks only shut down a tiny minority of polling stations. The Spanish Interior Ministry said authorities had succeeded in closing down 92 of about 2,300 polling stations - or 4 percent.
But the count will depend on how many ballot boxes survive the evening.
We don’t know how many boxes will reach the stage of being counted. So the results are hard to predict and in some ways they aren’t the main thing.
Now the struggle has been massively intensified by the CCOO and UGT unions backing a general strike called for Tuesday of this week. Left unions such as the CGT had already called it - now the two main pro-independence movements have backed it too.
The main thing is that—in Barcelona neighbourhoods and even in small towns—people have come out on the street in their tens of thousands to defy the repression.
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From Catalonia to Aotearoa- the Struggle for Independence.
Socialist forum this Thursday 5th October 7pm
at Unite Union.
Denny Thompson, Ngati Paoa, and Diego Compa, talk about the struggles of Maori in Aotearoa and Catalans occupied by the Spanish State for Independence, and how the socialist movement should support and interact with struggles for national liberation.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1933176300338320/Friday, September 01, 2017
Joe Carolan at the International Union of Foodworkers Global Congress in Geneva
#mcStrike- the Battle moves to the centre
Unions and the rise of a New Left
Joe Carolan from Unite Union speaks to the relationship between fighting unions and the rise of a New Left at the International Union of Foodworkers Global Congress in Geneva #WeAreIUF #McStrike
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