What if the “former” Soviet Union had “talent spotted” a young radical named Barack Obama? What if the Soviets/Russia had used their minions in the Communist Party USA and the Democratic Party, to smooth Obama’s career path? What if America’s greatest enemy had made America’s worst ever President? If that had indeed happened, would President [...]
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The Highlander Reasearch and Education Center is an iconic institution of the American Left According to their website The Highlander Center is a residential popular education and research organization based on a 106-acre farm in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, twenty-five miles east of Knoxville, Tennessee. Since 1932, Highlander has gathered workers, grassroots [...]
Please bear with me. The next series of posts may seem a bit obscure. It’ll all make sense in the end.
By the mid ’90s, Sue Bradford was firmly committed to a new project. This was “People’s Network”, the culmination of her earlier “Building Our Own Futures” project. Established in late 1994, the People’s Network linked a wide range of individuals and groups from all over the country and published a regular magazine “Common Ground”. Organisations [...]
Keith Ng of On Point has posted an excellent interview with a lawyer on the admissibility of prior convictions or evidence of past wrongdoing in court. View the whole post here Under what circumstances are prior convictions inadmissible as evidence?Evidence of prior bad acts, whether they resulted in conviction or not, are generally inadmissible. Your [...]
UN Rapporteur, Rodolfo Stavenhagen has released his report on the state of indigenous (Maori) people in NZ. According to the Green Party’s FrogBlog, “Helen Clark has already called it “unbalanced”… It recommends, among other things, that the Treaty of Waitangi should be constitutionally entrenched, and that the Foreshore and Seabed Act should be repealed or [...]
I think by now most of us know about the suppressed evidence in the Louise Nicholas rape trial. Yesterday a group of Wellington women distributed 1200 leaflets exposing the suppressed information. One of the them was Grace Millar, from the UNITE union. I don’t often agree with socialists like Grace Millar, however I admire her [...]
Excerpts from Green Left Weekly April 5th 2006 It had been touch and go for this six-day World Social Forum, postponed from January because of the devastating earthquake last October. But in the end, more than 35,000 people attended — mostly Pakistanis but also activists from 59 other countries… Farooq Tariq, the general secretary of [...]
From Green Left Weekly, 5th April 2006 The fourth Cairo Conference took place on March 23-26 under the theme “With the resistance in Palestine and Iraq against globalisation, imperialism and Zionism. Those attending the conference included the International Socialist Tendency, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the Red Alliance in the Netherlands, Palestine solidarity activists from Canada [...]
According to Scoop 14 March 2006 Twenty-two members of the Green Party, walked into Happy Valley for the weekend to show their support to members of the indefinite occupation. The Save Happy Valley Coalition is grateful for the support shown by members of the Green Party and is pleased to be able to share interest [...]
According to today’s Sunday Star-Times State-owned coal company Solid Energy has admitted hiring private investigators to spy on environmental activists protesting against a proposed West Coast mine. Solid Energy chief executive Don Elder said the company had a contract with Thompson and Clark Investigations Ltd, a private investigations firm specialising in providing security to the [...]
From Rodney’s Blog Remember the Herald’s Rambo Hide story? It fuelled a lot of fury about a politician being photographed holding a gun—at a gun show of all places. I was back at the Henderson Gun Show yesterday and met the fellow who took the picture. He said the Herald paid him $1200 for it. [...]
In a guest lecture at the University of Texas School of Law on March 8, FBI Supervisory Senior Resident Agent G Charles Rasner listed Indymedia, Food Not Bombs and the Communist Party of Texas as “terrorist watch” cause groups in Austin. Rasner gave a presentation entitled “Counter-Terrorism Efforts in Texas” to a US law and [...]
From the Communist Party of Australia’s “The Guardian” 29 March, 2006 Communist Party of Australia President Hannah Middleton and Central Committee member Denis Doherty have been honoured with one of Australia’s most distinguished peace awards. The Sydney Peace Foundation has previously honoured outstanding international activists such as Indian author Arundhati Roy, Palestinian peace campaigner Dr [...]
This is an issue that has long bugged me. I have no legal training so I’d appreciate any comments from lawyers or law students who could correct or confirm my understanding. Once “patterns based evidence” was admissible in our law courts. Now it usually isn’t. To illustrate; say a man was on trial for burglary [...]
Excerpts from a Reuters article By Simon Denyer 30.3.06 Rattled by a wave of Maoist attacks that have left hundreds dead, officials from 13 Indian states will meet on Friday to try to stem a rebellion that is menacing huge swathes of the country’s centre, east and south. The Maoist insurgency dates back 40 years [...]
I attended Rangiora High School from 1971 to 1975. In 1972 I was over the moon when the Kirk Labour government came to power. By my 5th form year,1973 I was a committed leftie, communist even. That was the year of the oil shock. I remember arguing with Chris Rowe that V8 cars should be [...]
From Green Left WeeklySocialist Vietnam and Venezuela, led by socialist President Hugo Chavez, have agreed to build a “strategic relationship” and to bring their economic relationships on a par with their already strong political links. The countries’ two-way trade in 2004 was only US$4.5 million. Vietnam National Assembly chairman Nguyen Van An led a delegation [...]
Expat ACT Goddess, Cathy Odgers has done an interesting guest post on Clint Heine’s Blog. Like most of us she wants Sir Roger Douglas and Rodney Hide to work more constructively together My formal disclosure is that I absolutely love both Rogerand Rodney. For entirely different reasons. I have nevermet two completely different, yet so [...]
After returning from working in an economic commission in Zimbabwe, Peter Harris was interviewed by the Public Service Association Journal of September 1980. He had this to say about Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe. “So far I think it has been managed very well and I think Mugabe is an enormously impressive person. He’s done very [...]
Peter Harris, the “left wing” half of the Harris/Hooten team canned from Radio NZ is an interesting character. The Listener of 14.4.01 described him as one of the inner circle of power in the Labour government. He served as an economic advisor to Minister of Finance, MichaelCullen from 1999 to 2003. In September 2003, Harris [...]
David Farrar’s Kiwiblog reported yesterday that Radio NZ has canned its only anti Government voice. This was the nine to noon politics segment with Matthew Hooton and Peter Harris. Harris, a former (and I think also does some current work for Labour) staffer for Cullen, and Hooton, who worked for National in the 90s, would [...]
As Pete Lusk will tell you, “on the edge” political activism often invites anonymous threats. I’ve had a few over the years, but by far the best happened in 1986. I’d been campaigning for a while against the Soviet use of prison labour to produce goods for export. NZ law forbade the import of prison [...]
According to the Dom Post of March 25th, West Coast Greenie, Peter Lusk is chucking in his spokesmanship of two groups because of threats and intimidation. Lusk has been the high profile spokesman of the Buller Conservation Group and the West Coast branch of Forest and Bird. He has also been active in the occupation [...]
Pip posted this on David Farrar’s Blog yesterday I am interested that the VP of ACT doesn’t think expropriating someone else’s property is any kind of an issue. Pip was referring to my cut and paste of some biographical notes on Radical Youth member, John Darroch. I lifted the segment, with slight editing, from Tearaway [...]
Excellent!!!!! From a Dom Post report on Rodney Hide’s speech to the weekend’s ACT conference. ACT would press for a flat 15 per cent tax rate and a Bill of Taxpayers’ Rights, which would hold per capita spending at present levels unless a referendum approved an increase
So far, Cristcthurch City Council’s plan to sell a part share in the Lyttelton Port Company to a subsidiary Hutchison-Whampoa has not gone smoothly. So far, several letters to the editor and blog posts have revealed Hutchison’s links to the Chinese Government and Peoples Liberation Army. Otago Port Company has swooped on Lyttelton Port Company [...]
From Alliance Party member, Joe Hendren’s Blog The Keep Our Port Public coalition (KOPP) is holding a public meeting in Christchurch opposing the sale of Lyttelton Port Company to Hutchison, a Hong Kong based multinational corporation. The sale represents the restart of the agenda to privatise publicly owned assets, and there are good indications the [...]
Excerpts from today’s issue of Aussie Marxist-Leninist paper Green Left Weekly. Article by Omar Hamed of Aotearoa Radical Youth. On March 20 in the heart of Auckland’s central business district, 1000 high school students who had walked out of school that morning rallied to demand an end to youth rates. The students were demonstrating the [...]
Part of the new ACT Board at yesterday’s ACT annual conference in Wellington. Standing Warren Jones, Helen Simpson, David Seymour, Garry Mallett (President), Mike Collins, Muriel Newman, Andrew Falloon, Yours Truly, Barbara Astill (Party Secretary) Seated Great leader, Rodney Hide, Helmswoman, Heather Roy
