GPJA #462 (2 of 2): Post Budget Picket of John Key 11am Friday / International news and analysis

WHAT’S ON IN AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

Friday, May 17, 11am, Outside Vector Arena, Mahuhu Cres, Auckland City
Post-Budget Picket of John Key: All friends who strongly oppose National’s ongoing war on the poor via its cruel welfare reforms, attacks on workers and total lack of any commitment to decent job creation are invited to join us in picketing John Key when he gives his Post-Budget address to the Trans-Tasman Business Circle. This Friday at 11am. Join us to call on Decent Job Creation, a Living Wage, and a Universal Basic Income. Look forward to seeing you there.

Saturday, May 18, 6.30pm, St Matthews Church, 187 Federal Street (Corner of Hobson & Wellesley Street), Auckland
The interfaith Prayer Vigil for Peace in Sri Lanka will take place:

Sunday, May 19, 1pm Piha Surf Club, 15 Seaview Rd, Piha. Located in the Piha Domain, the entrance is near the Lagoon.
Protect Our Beaches, Stop Deep Sea Drilling! Auckland Campaign Launch: The National Government has recently announced plans to allow deep sea drilling off the West Coast of Auckland. Just imagine an oil spill washing up on our iconic West Coast beaches like Piha. If we had a leak from a deep sea oil rig, the damage to our environment, economy and reputation would be catastrophic. On Sunday, the Green Party will launch a new campaign to protect our beaches from deep sea drilling and we’d love for you to be involved. Please join our speakers Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei, Gareth Hughes MP & special guests, current NZ Surfing champion Mischa Davis & Kiwi rowing legend Rob Hamill. We will not stand by and let the Government take this risk with our beaches and we hope you won’t either. http://www.facebook.com/events/367115153399059/

Sunday, May 19, 2pm, Maritime Museum, Corner of Hobson Street and Quay Street, Viaduct Auckland
Te Roopu Wahine Toko I Te Ora Māori Women’s Welfare League Ngākau Atawhai Branch proudly presents WAI 262 & FRIENDS URGENT FUNDRAISER. “Honouring our Tipuna on what they began & securing the future for our Tamariki”. We are fundraising to support two delegates Maanu Paul & Hema Broad to attend the Global Indigenous Preparatory Conference 2013, Norway for the UN World Indigenous Conference on Indigenous People 2014 tinabarclay or text/phone 027 698 5899. Account name: NGAKAU ATAWHAI – MWWL Account number: 38-9009-0163157-01

Monday, May 20, 7.30pm, Peace Palace, 22 Emily Place, Auckland.
Screening the second of our series of short films from the ‘Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream’ Symposium from the Pachamamma Alliance. ‘How did we get Here?’. For more information go to Come even if you missed the first part! Free/ Koha. The third part will screen Monday, 17th June

Tuesday, May 21, 10am, “The Parlour”, Pitt Street Methodist Church, 78 Pitt Street, (just off K Rd), Auckland
Gambling Laws Not for Sale! A Community Leaders Forum: Support Metiria Turei, Denise Roche & community leaders as they speak about why the Government’s convention centre for pokies deal with SkyCity should not go ahead. Sign & share the Green Party’s online petition opposing the Government’s convention centre for pokies deal with SkyCity at http://www.greens.org.nz/gambling/gambling-laws-not-sale Download the hard copy petition opposing the Government’s convention centre for pokies deal with SkyCity from http://www.greens.org.nz/petitions/gambling-laws-not-sale and start collecting signatures. Completed forms can be sent to Denise Roche MP, Freepost Parliament, Private Bag 18888, Parliament Buildings, Wellington 6160.

Wednesday, May 22, 12.30pm-1.30pm, N614 Epsom Campus.
A Conversation with Visiting Professor Nancy Jackson – Critical Studies in Education, University of Auckland. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear an important Canadian critical theorist and activist. Nancy’s bio below: “My own background is technically ‘critical sociology of education’ … but I have focussed my attention for 25 yrs on the adult sector. A lot of my work has focussed on questions around work/labour, especially questions about how work gets ‘framed’ by those who manage it and define it for education/training purposes, and whose interests prevail in all this. I have always promoted popular and participatory approaches to learning and indeed to research. For the past decade I have been doing critical work around the rise of adult literacy as the object of international policy making, and the resulting tensions with the world of practice, in both community and workplace contexts. I am a feminist, post-structuralist with marxist roots. I have been a labour, anti-racist, anti-colonial activist in community settings during all of my academic career. I am saddened by the ravages of neo-liberalism, both inside and outside of the academy. I started at the university in the heady days of the 1970’s activist movements; I have retired at the end of 2012, hoping to spend more time returning to activist pursuits.”

Wednesday, May 22, 7pm, Kinder House, 2 Ayr Street, Parnell (cnr Ayr St & Parnell Rd), Auckland
UNITED NATIONS ASSOCIATION OF NEW ZEALAND (INC) Presentation by Mr Christopher Woodthorpe Director, United Nations Information Centre for Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. You are warmly invited to a talk by Mr Christopher Woodthorpe, from the UNIC based in Canberra, on Wednesday 22 May at Kinder House, 2 Ayr Street, Parnell (cnr Ayr St & Parnell Rd). The presentation will begin at 7 pm and is entitled, ” The UN in our daily lives”

Friday, May 24, 6pm, Room WG 808, 8th floor, Sir Paul Reeves Building AUT City campus
To mark International Women’s Day for Peace & Disarmament 24 May WILPF is screening I Came to Testify. When the Balkans exploded into war in the 1990s, reports that tens of thousands of women were being systemati-cally raped as a tactic of ethnic cleansing captured the international spotlight. I Came to Testify is the moving story of how a group of 16 women who had been impris-oned by Serb-led forces in the Bosnian town of Foca broke history’s great silence – and stepped forward to take the witness stand in an international court of law. www.wilpf.org.nz

STATS OF THE WEEK

“The number one minimum wage employer in this country is Walmart. Where the CEO makes more in an hour than most of his employees will make in a year.” Robyn Pennacchia, Most minimum wage workers are adults who work for large corporations, Death and Taxes, May 10, 2013

QUOTES OF THE WEEK

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable.” : Howard Zinn – U.S. historian

“It is never right to do wrong or to requite wrong with wrong, or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return.” : Socrates 469 – 399 BC

“The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent”: Charles Eliot Norton

“He who dares not offend cannot be honest”: Thomas Paine

To change masters is not to be free: Jose Marti y Perez

 

FEATURES

Last week, Dr. Robert J. Lifton, the esteemed psychiatrist and author of many important books such as The Nazi Doctors, Hiroshima in America andDestroying the World to Save It, published a long, brilliant essay about the moral ramifications of drones. In “Ten Reflections on Drones” (Part One,Part Two), Lifton argues that we better start grappling with the effects of drones in our lives and get rid of them before they take us to entirely new levels of psychic numbing and global violence.

Countries must fix critical access to medicines flaws in Trans-Pacific Trade Pact http://www.msfaccess.org/about-us/media-room/press-releases/countries-must-fix-critical-access-medicines-flaws-trans-pacific

Leave no unwealthy child behind By Valerie Strauss: How does growing economic inequality affect student achievement? http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/07/leave-no-unwealthy-child-behind/

WORLD ECONOMIC CRISIS

How Austerity Kills http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/opinion/how-austerity-kills.html?hp&_r=0

Catastroika (2012) analyzes the shifting of state assets to private hands. http://nzagainstthecurrent.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/catastroika.html

European capitalism remains deep in the mire. http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/europe-deep-in-the-mire/

Greek protests against austerity

John Bellamy Foster’s Latest Attempt To Reconcile Marx and Kalecki http://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/john-bellamy-fosters-latest-attempt-to-reconcile-marx-and-kalecki/

LAND, LABOUR AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Mad Science: The Nuclear Power Experiment http://www.counterfire.org/index.php/articles/book-reviews/16455–mad-science-the-nuclear-power-experiment

Food fights against austerity: Disparate struggles in desperate times: how workers and farmers in Spain, New York, and Greece are challenging neoliberal austerity http://climateandcapitalism.com/2013/05/10/food-fights-against-austerity/

FRANCE

Huge march blasts austerity, demands democratic renewal http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/54059

PAKISTAN

Will New Pakistani Government Ban US Drone Strikes in Light of Court Ruling? http://www.juancole.com/2013/05/pakistani-government-strikes.html

PALESTINE

Palestinians Mark 65th Nakba Anniversary – Video Report – It commemorates the loss of Palestinian land because of the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34953.htm

Forced Displacement on Both Sides of the Green Line: Adalah captures the stories of two Palestinian villages, Al-Araqib and Susiya — one in Israel, one in the West Bank — that share a single story of struggle against forced displacement.

Palestinian Nakba: The Young Will Never Forget http://palestinechronicle.com/palestinian-nakba-the-young-will-never-forget-2/

SOUTH AFRICA

‘Prodigal daughters’ speak out http://terrybellwrites.com/2013/05/15/prodigal-daughters-speak-out/

Who is doing what — and whom — at Amplats? http://terrybellwrites.com/2013/05/13/who-is-doing-what-and-whom-at-amplats/

SYRIA

Syrians losing patience, confidence in revolution http://www.rgj.com/usatoday/article/2156021

Outrage at Syrian rebel shown ‘eating soldier’s heart’: The desecration and mutilation of a killed person is definitely a war crime,” Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, told the BBC. “This one particularly disturbing because of the sectarian nature of the language used by Abu Sakkar.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22519770

UK

Rise of the ‘clowns’: Ukip and British politics today http://www.counterfire.org/index.php/articles/analysis/16456-rise-of-the-clowns-ukip-and-british-politics-today

100 of UK’s richest people concealing billions in offshore tax havens http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/may/09/100-richest-uk-billions-offshore-tax-havens

Improving motherhood means reducing inequality, not just poverty http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/2013/05/improving-motherhood-means-reducing-inequality-not-just-poverty

Rule Britannia For Global Crimes By Finian Cunningham – With the full record of British criminality on display, this is a country that, far from lecturing others, should be made to hang its head in shame and remain silent. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34913.htm

USA

Robert Scheer, Obama Did It for the Money. With billionaire Penny Pritzker’s nomination as Commerce secretary, the two Cabinet positions that address the chicanery of the financial community will now likely be occupied by people who’ve engaged in this chicanery. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obama_did_it_for_the_money_20130507/

Where Has All the Money Gone? How Contractors Raked in $385 Billion to Build and Support Bases Abroad since 2001 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175699/tomgram%3A_david_vine%2C_baseworld_profiteering/

Sister Assata: This Is What American History Looks Like By Alice Walker – What is most distressing about the times we live in, in my view, is our ever accelerating tolerance for cruelty. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34959.htm

Bakersfield Police Beat Man To Death Then Confiscate Cell Phones From Surrounding Neighborhood – Video http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34947.htm

Guantanamo Bay prisoner: President Obama has ‘abandoned’ detainees: “I believe that President Obama must be unaware of the unbelievably inhumane conditions at the Guantanamo Bay prison, for otherwise he would surely do something to stop this torture,” Yemeni prisoner Musa’ab Omar Al Madhwani wrote in a federal court declaration this year. http://is.gd/QxLdk6

Fast Food Strikes Hitting Fifth City: Milwaukee http://www.thenation.com/blog/174335/fast-food-strikes-hitting-fifth-city-milwaukee

Ronald Reagan: Accessory to Genocide By Robert Parry – The conviction of Reagan’s old ally, ex-Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt, for genocide means “Ronnie” must face history’s judgment as an accessory to the crime. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34910.htm

VENEZUELA

Large May Day marches amid new labour law, minimum wage rise http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/53978

Maduro at May Day, Caracas