$8.50 an hour is 'good news'?   From March 24, the minimum wage for workers over 18 will rise from $8 to $8.50 an hour. Workers 16 to 17 will go from $6.40 to $6.80 an hour. Over 30,000 workers will be affected by these changes. Some of them will be parents of the one third of New Zealand children presently growing up in poverty. After their rise next month they will remain in a wretched situation. What are unions doing about this? ------------------ Union democracy and war   Where are the unions in the anti-war movement? ------------------ World Social Forum (report from Porto Alegre) Chris Harman and Chris Nineham ------------------ The European Social Forum, which took place in Italy in November last year, concluded with a one million-strong demonstration against capitalism and war. ------------------ Anti-war movement on the march around the world   The anti-war movement in the United States took a giant leap forward last weekend. ------------------ 'The world system must be changed'   The significance of the Cairo Declaration was embodied in a recent speech to an anti-war conference in London by Ahmed Ben Bella. ------------------ An important conference took place in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, just before Christmas. Four hundred delegates from across the Arab world and beyond met to launch the International Campaign Against US Aggression on Iraq. The Egyptian government tried to ban the conference and the 1000-strong protest march that followed it. ------------------ Anti-war activists at Porto Alegre launched a global coalition. More than 1,000 people from more than 60 countries came to a day-long assembly to discuss organising a network. ------------------ Local lessons by David Colyer The movement against the Vietnam War in Aotearoa also has important lessons about the power of mass protest. ------------------ Resistance in Ramallah   by a World Social Conference delegate Some 400 delegates gathered in Ramallah on 27 December for the World Social Forum on Palestine. ------------------ US humiliated by its own GIs   The movement against the Vietnam War holds important lessons for anti-war activists today. The war was a stark reminder that powerful nations will use massive violence to further their interests. ------------------ Marxism and the oppressed Chris Trotter's Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture, entitled 'What's Left?' sparked a welcome debate on socialism in the pages of the Listener, which eventually printed the talk as an article. Chris defended the idea of a Left based on the working class, blaming the decline of the worker's movement and the Left on Leninists (such as Socialist Worker) and Maori and feminist separatists. This led one Listener correspondent to ask "can't I be a socialist and a feminist?" ------------------ Gun-loving criminals - Bowling for Columbine Dir: Michael Moore Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine is full of sharp, witty attacks on the absurdities and hypocrisies of the status quo, converging around the singular obsession of the US Right - gun ownership. ------------------ 'Job well done' for the West Grant Brookes Troops returning from East Timor will march through cities around New Zealand in February in a series of "welcome home parades"...while many New Zealand troops identified with Timorese struggle for freedom, the job they were sent to do is far from honourable. ------------------ What is to be done about Chris Trotter's Lenin?   I'd like to put in a word for Lenin following Chris Trotter's attack (SW Monthly Review, December)... ------------------ Editorial: George Bush is now threatening war on Iraq "in weeks, not months". ------------------ Jobs, not prisons   Crime in New Zealand is falling, but Labour plans to spend $400 million on a total of four new prisons. Prisons don't reduce crime. And the most dangerous people in society aren't locked up. ------------------ Support the Ngawha occupation   by Grant Brookes Resistance to a proposed new prison in Northland stepped up in early December when dozens of occupiers took over land adjoining the site. ------------------ GE cow lies expose corporate science   by Grant Brookes Revelations that state-owned research institute Agresearch misled the public over the purpose of a genetic experiment show why the moratorium on the release of GE organisms should stay. ------------------ How do we keep NZ GE free?   GE free activists from around Aotearoa gathered in Levin over the long weekend of January 18-20 at a strategy hui. ------------------       Who is Chavez? Hugo Chavez, who has won two democratic elections on a radical programme, is hugely popular among Venezuela's poor. He and his supporters speak of a "Bolivarian revolution" ------------------ Venezuela: workers fight bosses' strike   Efforts to oust Venezuela's popular Left-wing president, Hugo Chavez, were faltering as Socialist Worker Monthly Review went to press. ------------------ Rising NZ opposition New anti-war groups are springing up and protests are spreading beyond the main centres. ------------------

$8.50 an hour is 'good news'?   From March 24, the minimum wage for workers over 18 will rise from $8 to $8.50 an hour. Workers 16 to 17 will go from $6.40 to $6.80 an hour.   Over 30,000 workers will be affected by these changes.   Some of them will be parents of the one third of New Zealand children presently growing up in poverty.   After their rise next month they will remain in a wretched situation.   What are unions doing about this?   "Today's announcement that the minimum wage will rise to $8.50 is good news", said Council of Trade Unions (CTU) secretary Paul Goulter. He also praised the government for increasing the youth rate.   Although he observed that New Zealand wages are still too low, Goulter offered no ideas about getting them up.   Would Paul Goulter have described it as "good news" if his own salary package   had just been altered to $8.50 -or $6.80 - an hour?   One year ago Paul Goulter put out an almost identical media release welcoming news that the minimum wage was going up to $8 an hour. Since then, no combined union campaign against low pay has been organised by the CTU.   How much longer will the CTU keep playing the same stuck record instead of organising some serious action?   Only 3% of workers earning under $30,000 a year are unionised. That leaves nearly a quarter of a million employees outside the union movement.   Why should these low paid workers want to join a union movement that congratulates the government for flicking them a few stale crumbs?   The present Labour government is presiding over the division of New Zealand into two worlds. A little world of spoilt arrogant pigs and a big world of diseased, hungry, futureless children.   Unionists today need to recognise that Labour is part of the problem, that lower rates for young workers are not acceptable, and that isolated individual union efforts don't cut it anymore. Today there is a crying need for combined militant action of low paid workers.   Socialists have a particular responsibility to help build that struggle on the ground.   That vital political task has been neglected in recent years.   Socialists today need to become much more active inside the union movement - not in the union office.   Socialist action in unions means activists committing themselves long term to working and agitating on a large job site, where the real power is, at the point of production.

Union democracy and war   Where are the unions in the anti-war movement?   Auckland's anti-war Global Peace and Justice Action Committee complained:   "The absence of the CTU [Council of Trade Unions] voice has been evident and even commented on by some speakers."   In fact the CTU leaders voice has been raised on the matter of the war, but it's been saying the wrong things to the wrong people.   The most recent (November 2002) CTU resolution on the war gives uncritical support to UN Security Council resolutions against Iraq, demanding "pressure on the Iraqi regime to destroy weapons of mass destruction."   No such concern is expressed about the huge number of US weapons currently mobilised for mass destruction.   Like the NZ government, the NZCTU opposes "unilateral declaration of war with Iraq.   That formulation not only ignores the continuous US bombing inflicted on Iraq.   The word "unilateral" is a deliberate out for the CTU if the US invasion is contrived under the banner of the UN.   The CTU do say affiliates should "Support and participate in any rallies and community activities against the war."   But they're not taking that message out to the membership in any serious way.   Instead of organising workers against the war, CTU leaders main action to date has been to send a little delegation to the US embassy, delivering a letter echoing NZ government policy.   Why does CTU policy tail after the government instead of siding with public opinion - which is increasingly anti America's war?   The answer lies in the CTU strategy of partnership with employers and government. As can be seen in almost any of their press releases, our leading union body has long gambled all its chips on cooperating with the government in the hope that it will retain legislation allowing unions to exist.   If you can't stand up to the bosses on everyday issues, you'll fall over on the big issues too.   Part of this problem is too few union leaders making too many decisions on their own. A meeting of the tiny CTU National Affiliates Council created the No   vember resolution, when some anti-war unionists were absent.   The remedy is more input from below, like passing anti-war motions on our jobs.   The latest resolution of the Alliance Party offers a good lead:   "That this conference completely rejects any New Zealand participation in the planned war against Iraq, whether UN sanctioned or not. The Alliance commits itself to organising mass opposition to this war and opposing all forms of racism and xenophobia. We further call for the immediate withdrawal of military forces from Afghanistan and the Gulf."   Unionists can also write, or personally visit the offices of the CTU demanding political, organisational and financial support for the anti-war movement.

World Social Forum Chris Harman and Chris Nineham (report from Porto Alegre)   Two things formed the background to last weekend's World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil.   One was the threat of a devastating war against Iraq within weeks.   The other was the swing to the left in Latin America, expressed in the victory of left wing candidates in presidential elections in Brazil and Ecuador, and in the failure of the coup attempt against Hugo Chavez's government in Venezuela.   Both themes were present in the big demonstration of 140,000 that marked the opening of the forum, and many of the discussions over the next four days.   The culmination of the forum came when 18,000 people crowded into the Gigantinho Stadium to listen to Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy speak about "resistance to empire".   Chomsky talked about how those who liked to think of themselves as "the masters of the universe" were damaging people's lives:   "We have been talking about life after capitalism. It would be better to say life, because there is not going to be any unless we do something about capitalism."   He exposed the hypocrisy of Bush and Blair and called on people to oppose their war against Iraq.   Arundhati Roy roused the whole stadium to applause as she denounced the way the world's rulers were destroying people's lives, their cultures and their environment in the search for profits.   She said, "Resistance to empire - or, to call it by its proper name, imperialism - is growing."   The whole audience rose to their feet as she ended, "We are many. They are few. They need us much more than we need them."   Everyone felt all the issues debated over the previous four days had been brought together, and they left the stadium inspired to fight against the horrors George Bush has in store for us.

The European Social Forum, which took place in Italy in November last year, concluded with a one million-strong demonstration against capitalism and war.   The Florence demonstration marks the high point of the global movement against war. It represented a coming together of an incredibly diverse array of organisations and individuals.   Participants put out the call for February 15 day of action against.   The driving force of the European anti-war movement is Britain.   George Bush's key ally in Europe, Tony Blair, is under intense pressure to drop his hardline support for war on Iraq.   He faces revolt from within his ruling Labour Party, and also in the form of mass civil unrest.   In September last year 400,000 marched through central London. The size and  breadth of the anti-war movement has given confidence to others to take action.   Early in January this year 15 railworkers in Scotland refused to move a freight train carrying ammunition for use by the British military in Iraq.   It was a political protest over the threat to attack Iraq, said one of the workers involved. It was a sign that as individuals and workers we were not prepared to be part of a murderous war, a conscientious objection to helping kill Iraqi civilians.   The railworkers action was backed by their official union leadership.   Dock workers in Genoa, Italy, inspired by the action in Scotland, are considering bans on loading ships transporting supplies to the Persian Gulf for the war.   Protests took place across the continent last weekendthe largest were in Ireland and Sweden.

Anti-war movement on the march around the world   The anti-war movement in the United States took a giant leap forward last weekend. On Saturday 18 January, as many as 500,000 marched in Washington and upwards of 150,000 took part in San Francisco.   Rami El-amine, of Socialist Worker Monthly Review's sister publication, Left Turn, reports from the Washington demonstration.   "Today has been pretty amazing. We're still trying to get estimates on the numbers - the demonstrations were so big.   "The demonstration in Washington was a giant step forward on the last major demonstration in October -qualitatively and quantitatively. We have managed to involve much wider sections of the population in the movement.   "On the platform today we had Jesse Jackson, numerous actors, former attorney-general Ramsey Clark.   "John Conyers, a black Democratic congressman from Michigan, also spoke.   "There was a labour contingent numbering in the hundreds. It consisted of a delegation of SEIU hospitality union members from New York, as well as Teamsters.   "Left Turn was involved in co-ordinating a feeder march in defence of immigrant rights, in response to the government's racist attacks on Muslims and Arabs."   Opinion polls indicate support for war has dropped dramatically in the United States. Only 28% support Bush taking action without the sanction of the United Nations.   Significantly, trade unions are beginning to become involved in anti-war activity. The impetus for this is occurring mostly at a local level.   Four hundred members of the Chicago Teamsters Local 705 met and discussed the war. They voted overwhelmingly in support of anti-war resolution.   This local action has pressured union leaderships into taking a position on the war. More than 100 organisers and officials met in Chicago on 11 January, and voted to set up US Labor Against the War.   The declaration from the conference pointed out that:   "The war is a pretext for attacks on labour, civil, immigrant and human rights at home".   It also said that "Bush's drive for war serves as a cover and distraction for the sinking economy, corporate corruption and layoffs...   "The billions of dollars being spent to   stage and execute this war are being taken away from our schools, hospitals, housing and social security."   This is a big break from the days of Vietnam, when most unions supported the war effort.

'The world system must be changed'   The significance of the Cairo Declaration was embodied in a recent speech to an anti-war conference in London by Ahmed Ben Bella.   Ben Bella is the president of the International Campaign Against US Aggression. He was a leader of the Algerian liberation struggle and the first president of independent Algeria in the 1960s.     I am 86 years old. I spent 24 years in a French prison. But I liberated my country.   I was appointed president of the international movement launched at the Cairo conference in December.   Organisations from the South and the North met together to organise common actions to fight against the global system of capital.   The world system must be changed. It has had its time.   There are 400 multinational corporations who control the majority of the world's wealth.   Bush's policies reflect the interests of these corporations. He is attacking Iraq because of these interests -they include oil.   General Motors has four times as much wealth as a country like Egypt with 70 million inhabitants.   The 84 richest people in the world have an income greater than that of China.   There is terror in the world. It is that of Mr Bush. There are 35 million people who die of hunger every year.   The South -Africa - is totally devastated. We in the South are not responsible for this. The global system is responsible.   Poverty is endemic in the South and it is spreading to the North. Here, and in France, there is too much poverty.   In the North the movement which is fighting back gives you hope.   This movement is very important. I was in Florence - there is hope today, especially among the young.

An important conference took place in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, just before Christmas.  Four hundred delegates from across the Arab world and beyond met to launch the International Campaign Against US Aggression on Iraq.   The Egyptian government tried to ban the conference and the 1000-strong protest march that followed it. One activist who handed out leaflets to publicise the protest was arrested and tortured.   Both events went ahead, and gained extensive media coverage throughout the region.   The conference issued the Cairo Declaration against globalisation and war. Below is an extract: "We reaffirm our resolve to stand in solidarity with the people of Iraq and Palestine, recognising that war and aggression against them is but part of a US project of global domination and subjugation.   "That solidarity is integral to the internationalist struggle against neo-liberal globalisation.   "The Cairo meeting is not an isolated event, but an extension of a protracted international struggle against imperialism, from Seattle and Genoa to Lisbon and Florence, to Cordoba and Cairo.   "Capitalist globalisation and US hegemony prioritise the interest of monopolistic capitalist circles above those of the people, including Europeans and US citizens.   "They also integrate the economies of different countries into a single global capitalist economic system under conditions which undermine social development and adversely affect the situation of women, child health, education and social services for the elderly. In addition poverty and unemployment increase.   "We declare our total opposition to war on Iraq and our resolve to continue the struggle against US policies of global domination. We strongly believe in the urgency of mobilising against these policies."     "The Cairo conference against war on Iraq and in solidarity with Palestine represents the launching of an international popular movement that creates effective mechanisms for confronting policies of aggression."   The significance of the Cairo Declaration is twofold.   Firstly, it represents a co-ordinated attempt to build a movement against war in the Middle East -a movement that is linked to the movement in the West.   This approach has already paid off. Last weekend tens of thousands took part in simultaneous demonstrations took place in Egypt, Syria and Beirut. There were also protests in Pakistan, a key ally of the US.   Secondly, the declaration links opposition to war with opposition to capitalist globalisation.   A recurring theme of the Cairo conference was drawing links between the economic dominance of the major corporations and the drive to war.

Anti-war activists at Porto Alegre launched a global coalition.   More than 1,000 people from more than 60 countries came to a day-long assembly to discuss organising a network.   Everyone who spoke agreed that the campaign against war on Iraq was of crucial importance.   Activists from the US, Brazil, Palestine, India, Portugal and almost every other corner of the world committed themselves to organising anti-war activity on 15 February.   Speakers from the US all agreed that their movement was already bigger than the anti Vietnam War campaign in the late 1960s.   One said, "This is the most important and powerful social movement in the US for decades-and it is growing in strength daily."   Hundreds of Latin American delegates applauded speakers who said a global campaign against war on Iraq was crucial to weakening imperialism in their continent.   There was tremendous excitement in the hall. We all recognised we were building something unprecedented, something with huge potential.   One delegate summed up the feeling when she said a successful global movement against the war would be a blow to the dictatorship of the IMF and the World Bank.   Hundreds of delegates from scores of organisations signed up to an international e-mail list, and a group of video activists started organising a global video link for the demonstrations on 15 February.   Slogans about global resistance were becoming real in front of our eyes.

Local lessons   by David Colyer   The movement against the Vietnam War in Aotearoa also has important lessons about the power of mass protest.   Per head of population, more people joined the anti-war protests in this country than in anywhere else in the West.   In the United States and Australia young men were conscripted and sent to fight in Vietnam. But there was no conscription here. The National government was forced to refuse US demands for more troops.   Labour Party MPs had supported National's decision to send troops, but when they became the government, late in 1972 they withdrew the last New Zealand soldiers.   The largest protests were the nationwide "mobes" (mobilisations) of 1970, '71 and '72. These saw up to 35,000 march in cities around the country.   Today activists are discussing the best way to build an effective mass movement, many think it is time for anti-war groups around Aotearoa to coordinate a national mobilisation.   It is worth considering how the mobes were organised 30 years ago.   The mobes were planned months in advance. Many smaller activities: teach-ins, stunts, leaflet stalls and meetings, were coordinated to build up to the big event.

Resistance in Ramallah   by a World Social Conference delegate   Some 400 delegates gathered in Ramallah on 27 December for the World Social Forum on Palestine.   Encircled by Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints, Ramallah feels distant from Bethlehem and Jerusalem, let alone the world beyond the West Bank.   Yet for all their physical isolation, Palestinians know that they are at the eye of a global storm. The colours of the Palestinian flag can be seen on anti-war and anti-capitalist protests the world over.   The Ramallah forum was proposed by Palestinian organisations and held in partnership with the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil.   Debates throughout the conference showed both the hunger for new ideas and the frustration of political life under occupation and curfew.   Randa Sinioria from the human rights organisation Al Haq gave a detailed presentation on Israel's violations of UN resolutions.   But for some in the audience, trying to enforce respect for international conventions seemed like a lost cause.   "International laws are tools of the great powers," argued one Palestinian delegate. "They are applied to Iraq, but not to Israel."   "No one ever talks about Israel's weapons of mass destruction," said another.   Palestinian and international speakers called for a massive mobilisation to stop war on Iraq.

US humiliated by its own GIs   The movement against the Vietnam War holds important lessons for anti-war activists today. The war was a stark reminder that powerful nations will use massive violence to further their interests.   But it is not often realised that there was more to the resistance than the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people or mass student demonstrations in the West.   Wars can open up class divisions inside the imperialist power, paving the way for mass action from below.   Three weeks before marines arrived in Vietnam, the US student movement against the war began.   In March 1965, 3000 students turned up to a teach-in at the University of Michigan, starting a wave of teach-ins at over 100 universities.   Then 25,000 marched on Washington on 17 April. This was the first of a series of demonstrations that peaked at 500,000 in number.   From the start opposition to the war was strongest among poorer and less educated Americans - those who would have to fight and die.   In 1966, 27% of those with college education favoured withdrawal, as opposed to 41% of those with only an eighth grade education.   To these people the class basis of the war was much more obvious.   The US went into Vietnam to make the world safe for American business. It also had the effect of strengthening anti-communist sentiment, which had been used to victimise union militants and socialists at home.   Anti-communism was one of the reasons there was so little opposition to the Korean War.   But in the intervening years the civil rights movement had legitimised dissent.   Many people, black and white, had joined the movement expecting their government to deliver equality.   Instead they learned that American society was systematically racist, that politicians in both major parties lied, and that the only way to change society was to demonstrate.   When the Vietnam War came along many civil rights activists made the connection between the war and racism at home.   Leading black activist Stokely Carmichael said that the draft (conscription) was "white people sending black people to make war on yellow people in order to defend the land they stole from red people".   Blacks began to move beyond the non-violence preached by Martin Luther King and civil rights advocates in the Democratic Party.   They pushed King to speak out against the war.   In 1968 King said he couldn't ever raise his voice "against the violence of the oppressed without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government."   This statement terrified the generals, who feared conscripting blacks because their refusal to fight might spread to white soldiers.   In 1965 blacks accounted for almost a quarter of combat deaths. By 1972 this figure was down to just 7.6%.   It didn't stop anti-war sentiment infecting the working class as a whole, however.   The GIs in Vietnam were working class men ordered to crush a revolt of poor peasants, and they knew this.   Young soldiers came back saying that the only people worth respecting were the enemy.   The strength of Vietnamese resistance pushed the US Army to force soldiers to take part in increasingly brutal or dangerous acts.   Soldiers would refuse to comply with insane orders from officers who didn't have to risk combat or kill civilians. Some even "fragged" gung-ho officers, killing them by throwing fragmentation grenades into their bunkers.   The anti-war movement within the armed forces began with a few radicals. A small group of Trotskyists produced Vietnam GI, a paper with a print run of 15,000 and a mailing list of 3000 in Vietnam.   Most of the opposition in the army was from people not aligned to any party.   Throughout the course of the war no fewer than 245 anti-war papers were circulated within the armed forces.   In the end it was a tidal wave of opposition by ordinary soldiers that forced the US ruling class to concede defeat.   While George Bush is yet to commit troops on the same scale as Vietnam, everyone opposed to his "war on terror" can draw inspiration from the revolt from within that humiliated the world's most powerful nation.(From Socialist Worker Australia)

Marxism and the oppressed   Chris Trotter's Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture, entitled 'What's Left?' sparked a welcome debate on socialism in the pages of the Listener, which eventually printed the talk as an article. Chris defended the idea of a Left based on the working class, blaming the decline of the worker's movement and the Left on Leninists (such as Socialist Worker) and Maori and feminist separatists. This led one Listener correspondent to ask "can't I be a socialist and a feminist?"   This article by Canadian socialist Abbie Bakan outlines a Marxist view on the links between class exploitation and the oppression of women and minorities.   ----------   The anti-globalization movement has inspired a new sense of unity in the struggle against all forms of injustice.   But there have been many debates about how progressive movements can stay united when racism, sexism and homophobia are rampant.   How can the left ensure that there is a consistent challenge to oppression?   It was often assumed that Marx and Engels were only concerned about economic exploitation, and theories of oppression were often reduced to this.   But in fact the lessons of the Marxist tradition in fighting oppression are extremely useful for anti-capitalist activists today.   Marx and Engels distinguished three different forms of human relationships that are unequal: alienation, exploitation, and oppression.   All of these processes interact, but they are not the same.   And they don't operate in the same way.   Alienation refers to the general distance of humanity from the real potential of the humankind.   All who live in class society, the period Marx referred to as the pre-history of humanity, suffer from alienation.   Marx challenged the notion that human suffering was natural, the inevitable will of God, or something outside the realm of human action.   Alienation is not counterposed to other forms of human suffering, but is expressed within them.   As long as humanity has not achieved its full potential - in a post-class society motivated by the satisfaction of human need - alienation will continue.   Exploitation, as distinct from alienation, is a strictly material relationship.   It is measurable by the extraction of surplus.   Surplus product is generated from human labour as it transforms nature into objects for human use.   Capitalist exploitation depends on the division of the productive system into two great classes: a capitalist class that owns and controls the means of production, the means to produce all the goods of the society; and a working class that owns nothing but its ability to labour.   Marx saw the working class as the most collective labouring class in human history, and the "gravedigger of capitalism."   The mass assertion of the collective humanity of the working class had the potential, through revolution from below, to take control of the products of human labour and build a world based on the satisfaction of human need.   Marx's understanding of socialism was that it was the self-emancipation of the working class.   But the objective potential of the working class, and its subjective unity as a class, were seen by Marx and Engels as two different things.   Capitalism can produce a working class "in itself"; but only through conscious struggle is the working class produced "for itself."      Oppression serves to divide and weaken the working class, offsetting the tendency for class unity, for the development of a class for itself.   Oppression includes both ideological and material elements, and it crosses class lines.   It is also very historically specific.   Oppression intensifies the ability of certain sections of the ruling class to rule effectively, and therefore sometimes is used against other sections of the ruling class with whom it is in competition.   But more importantly, oppression serves to weaken and divide the working class.   Marx and Engels studied how specific forms of oppression weakened and divided the working class and worked in the interests of the ruling class.   Over and over again, they stressed that oppression held back the ability of the working class, both the oppressed and oppressor sections, to resist capitalist rule.   Oppression is part of how the ruling class rules, a part of the "superstructure" of society.   Though exploitation draws workers together, workers were also placed in a relationship of competition to one another - pitted against each other to hold back a sense of unity against their common exploiter.   Forms of oppression that predated capitalism - such as women's oppression and anti-Semitism - were important tools in the strategies of early capitalist ruling classes.   New forms of oppression were also developed as capitalism expanded, including modern racism with the slave trade, immigration controls as national borders were erected, and gay and lesbian oppression to prop up the private nuclear family.   By presenting a false, ideological mechanism of identifying with the ruling class, through oppression one section of the exploited is wooed into believing that they are privileged over another.   That sense of privilege can be and often is propped up by a limited material advantages.   But these material advantages are only relative to the intensified oppression of other groups of workers.   And the advantages themselves are always partial and temporary.   They are not drawn from the exploitation of a surplus, but from a division cultivated by the exploiter to encourage competition among workers within the same class.   From a Marxist perspective, ideas like racism, sexism, anti-gay bigotry, national chauvinism, religious chauvinism, etc., are all features, of how the capitalist class articulates its ideological hegemony, its dominance, over the society as a whole.

Gun-loving criminals - Bowling for Columbine Dir: Michael Moore Reviewed by Andrew Stone   A spokesman for Lockheed Martin is lost for words. The biggest employer in Littleton, Colorado cannot explain why two students at the local Columbine high school massacred their own classmates.   But his condemnation of violence rings hollow - for Lockheed Martin is an arms manufacturer, and behind the spokesman sits a deadly US missile.   Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine is full of sharp, witty attacks on the absurdities and hypocrisies of the status quo, converging around the singular obsession of the US Right - gun ownership   Bowling for Columbine is not essentially an argument for gun control.   Sure, the Michigan militia, which proclaims gun ownership a civic duty, is effectively ridiculed. They don't exactly make the job difficult - a real estate agent crawls around in fatigues while another boasts about the sexist calendar he's produced.   But Moore argues there is a far deeper problem - a culture of fear and barely-concealed racism nurtured by the media.   In one particularly engaging scene a barrage of news reports on black "suspects" is pasted over the quickening thump of a heartbeat.   Even a report on invading bees takes on a racialised tone, as we are told that "Africanised" bees are naturally more aggressive than friendly, European bees.   In a period when violent crime fell by a fifth, coverage of it rose by 600% - and the subtext of the fearmongering is that black people pose the danger.   As the National Rifle Association's Charlton Heston lets slip while trying to explain gun crime, it's a question of "ethnicity".   Moore challenges the director of the TV programme Cops to produce a show that tackles white-collar criminals rather than reinforcing stereotypes about poor people.   He admits that he wouldn't know how to make such a show an attractive proposition for the networks. Moore's rebuttal - mocked-up credits for the Corporate Cops - is worth the entry price alone.   The film is energetic and full of memorable twists. One highlight is a South Park style history of the US (a recurring motif is white Americans shooting people).   Moore's gift is managing to move from commenting on tragedies such as Columbine to using humour to illustrate the absurdity of, for example, the hysteria that gripped US schools after the shooting.   In this climate a child is expelled for playing cops and robbers with a paper gun, and another for waving a biscuit at a teacher.   When six year old Kayla Rolland was shot by a (black) boy in her first grade class there was a venomous reaction whipped up.   Rather than throw his hands up at an inexplicable horror, the best that many liberal commentators can offer against a conservative witch-hunt, Moore traces a story of grinding, destructive poverty.   The boy's single parent mother, coerced by a welfare-to-work scheme to travel 80 miles by bus to do two jobs for a pittance, was still unable to pay her rent. Forced to leave her son with his uncle in a crack house, it was there that he found the pistol.   The leading corporate fans of welfare-to-work? Step forward, Lockheed Martin.   Which brings us to US foreign policy. The day of the Columbine shooting was also notable for being the heaviest day of bombardment of the former Yugoslavia.  Clinton came on screen to proclaim his regret at the deaths of the former but not, of course, of the latter.   In homage to such breathtaking double standards, Moore provides a montage of 50 years of US imperialism, accompanied by Louis Armstrong's breezy "What a Wonderful World".   If you haven't seen Bowling for Columbine yet, it's not too late. Although sadly limited to Rialto and art-house cinemas, it's having a long run - testimony to the the film itself and to the growing audience questioning "evildoing" in America.

'Job well done' for the West Grant Brookes   Troops returning from East Timor will march through cities around New Zealand in February in a series of "welcome home parades".   The government and military top brass say the parades are to honour a "job well done".   In reality, the sight of soldiers marching up the street in starched dress uniform as brass bands play is intended to bolster pro-military sentiment and weaken opposition to war.   And while many New Zealand troops identified with Timorese struggle for freedom, the job they were sent to do is far from honourable.   Sadly, some in the anti-war movement have been caught up in the patriotic fever.   The Manawatu Peace Group called off their march on the international day of action, because February 15 coincided with the military parade in Palmerston North.   "New Zealand soldiers are brilliant peacekeepers", said peace activist Aileen Davies. "It's the New Zealand Army that trains them so well."   In the wake of the decision, the group's opposition to war also weakened. Aileen said a march would still take place another day, but "none of the placards and banners will mention war".   In December, defence minister Mark Burton told personnel returning early that the job of the military had been "protecting democratic rights".   The frigate Te Kaha was first into Dili in 1999. It was in the region already, on its way to enforce the sanctions on Iraq which had killed over 500,000 children.   The departure of regular soldiers to East Timor was delayed because they were needed to suppress protests against the APEC summit in Auckland.   New Zealand doesn't have two sets of armed forces - one dedicated to upholding peace and democracy, and another that tramples them for Western corporate interests. We have just one military with a single agenda.   As acclaimed journalist John Pilger warned in 1999, "the real agenda for the UN 'peacekeeping force' is to ensure that East Timor, while nominally independent, remains under the sway of Jakarta and Western business interests."   Today, there's no independence for the impoverished majority in East Timor.   On the back of military control of the island, New Zealand and Australian companies have taken control of the huge offshore oil fields in the Timor Sea.   Don't believe the hype. Troops were sent to Timor for the same reason they're going to Iraq - to do a job for the West.

What is to be done about Chris Trotter's Lenin?   I'd like to put in a word for Lenin following Chris Trotter's attack (SW Monthly Review, December), the second those of us in Auckland have had to suffer in less than a month.   Lenin was bad-tempered, sure. He was testy, choleric, made alarming remarks about Beethoven's Appassionata and, like so many male political leaders of the Left, had a penchant for actresses.   But he was also searingly honest and practical. He tested his ideas and admitted his mistakes. He was aware that today's circumstances might make nonsense of yesterday's ideas.   In 1902, when the Russian Left was tiny, fragmented, and squabbling, Lenin, in one of his fits of bad temper, produced his pamphlet, What Is To Be Done.   It was about trying to get comrades to do things. We all know the problem. Some of us are the problem.   In the course of this pamphlet, with its finger-jabbing over-emphasis on organisation, Lenin said, "class consciousness can be brought to workers only from without, that is, only from outside the economic struggle".   This conclusion sprang from Lenin's argument that workers would inevitably shy away from revolutionary solutions to their problems, that their consciousness was a "trade-union consciousness" - of reforms, to be sought and negotiated.   Now Chris agrees with the argument but condemns the conclusion, slating Lenin for wanting to brow-beat the reluctant masses, for showing "the contempt of the middle-class intellectual for the preferences and insights of the unenlightened majority".   Well, maybe, in latter part, that's fair. But three years later Lenin had completely changed his mind.   Economic unrest had led to the sudden mass rising of 1905. It wasn't What Is To Be Done that Lenin was now writing, but The Reorganisation of the Party where he was stating, bluntly, "the working class is instinctively, spontaneously Social Democratic [revolutionary Bolshevik]".   He said he felt nine-tenths of current "elitist" Bolshevik Party members were bereft of ideas.   He called for "young forces" to be swept into the Party, he wanted "to co-opt [into the Party] any and every honest and energetic person", he wanted dozens of subcommittees of "young people" allowed "to write and publish leaflets without any red tape (there is no harm if they male a mistake)".   He wanted "to unite all people with revolutionary initiative and set them to work. Do not fear their lack of training, do not tremble at their lack of inexperience and lack of development."   These words weren't simply the result of Russia being in a revolutionary situation. They came from the fact that Lenin had seen the reality and potential of the working class in a mass strike.   A few years later in an article commemorating the 1905 general strike, he argued his new position through: "The very conditions of their lives make the workers capable of struggle and impels them to struggle.   "Capital collects the workers in great masses in big cities, uniting them, teaching them to act in unison. At every step they come face to face with their enemy - the capitalist class.   "In combat with this enemy the worker becomes a socialist, comes to realise the necessity of a complete abolition of all poverty and all oppression."   It is a neat idea of Chris' to couple Lenin with elitist, middle class purveyors of separatist ideology "burdening working people with the dreams of others".   But it's not true. Dean Parker, Auckland

Jobs, not prisons   Crime in New Zealand is falling, but Labour plans to spend $400 million on a total of four new prisons.   Prisons don't reduce crime. And the most dangerous people in society aren't locked up.   The number of offences reported to the police has fallen by 17% since 1996. Despite this, the Corrections Department plans to jail another 2,000 people by 2010. New Zealand already has the highest rate of imprisonment outside the United States.   Prisons are "universities of crime". Corrections admit that 86% of prisoners will offend again within five years of release.   Meanwhile the most dangerous man on the planet, George Bush, won't be jailed by the International Criminal Court for his crimes against humanity.   Killers like Keith Abbott, the police officer who shot dead Steven Wallace, and Derek Powell, who ran over Christine Clarke on a Lyttelton picket line, walk free.   New Zealand's corporate thieves who "avoided" paying billions in taxes remain at large, rewarded with government posts.   When the court of appeal finally ruled in 1999 that there was evidence of tax fraud in the Winebox inquiry, the Serious Fraud Office decided not to prosecute. Inland Revenue admitted the Winebox was "the tip of the iceberg".   The US billionaire caught smuggling drugs during the last Americas Cup had his charges dropped by police and his name suppressed by the judge.   Jails aren't built to lock up the real crooks. They're built to punish the people who are targeted by the police and sentenced by judges drawn from white, middle class backgrounds.   So over half the prison population are Maori. Three quarters of prisoners left school with no qualifications. Half were unemployed when they were arrested.   In America, the Chamber of Commerce has estimated that corporate crooks steal 40 times as much as everyday criminals.   Yet only 15 police officers, 0.2% of New Zealand's sworn force, are allocated to fraud squads investigating white collar crime.   Capitalism is a system of legalised theft and violence. Every week workers are underpaid by their bosses. There could be no company profits if everyone was paid for the full value of their work.   The proceeds of crime arising from stolen Maori land are not confiscated. War for oil is a normal part of world affairs.   Reducing crime - at the top as well as in the neighbourhoods - means challenging the profit-driven priorities of capitalism   The fall in reported crime in New Zealand since the mid 1990s mirrors the fall in unemployment, just as the rise in crime from the 1970s closely followed the rise of mass unemployment.   Northland has the poorest housing in the country. If they want to tackle crime, Labour should put the $400 million earmarked for prisons into training and job schemes - like building more state houses for Far North families - instead.

Support the Ngawha occupation by Grant Brookes   Resistance to a proposed new prison in Northland stepped up in early December when dozens of occupiers took over land adjoining the site.   The occupation follows a series of protests across the Far North last year and a three-day occupation in June, which ended when police stormed the site arresting 37 people, including local kuia and kaumatua (elders).   The government say they're building the prison in the interests of people in Northland, especially local Maori who will make up 80% of inmates. They say a jail in Northland will make it easier for families and whanau to visit their relatives.   Money is being thrown at the project. The price tag, originally $40 million, has now ballooned to $120 million.   Meanwhile, health minister Annette King has refused to find another $800,000 for after-hours surgery and maternity services at Kaitaia Hospital. From the end of February, family and whanau will face a three hour car journey to visit relatives in Whangarei Hospital.   The Corrections Department claim they are committed to "partnership" with local Maori. Yet the site they've chosen for the prison, Ngawha, is wahi tapu (a sacred place) for the local iwi, Nga Puhi.   Louana Chapman, spokesperson for the occupation group, told Socialist Worker Monthly Review that their goals were to "stop the desecration of our whenua tapu, protect and save Takauere our taniwha, maintain the mana of Nga Puhi".   "It's all about money and power. They took our land, now they're coming back to take our rights. This is an environmental issue. It's mass environmental destruction."   The occupation is set up beside the main access road. No earthmoving machinery has entered the site since December.   The strength of earlier protests forced police to withdraw the charges against the 37 arrested in June.   Corrections Department chief financial officer Richard Morris has admitted that resistance has already pushed back the proposed opening date from 2003 to 2004.   The occupiers have received support from Nga Puhi elders, indigenous people around the world, the Anglican church, socialists and the Green Party.   "Nandor's been a great supporter", said Louana. Now she wants him to "give Helen Clark the word - no more prisons!"   Construction is due to get under way this month. Stopping the diggers will require mobilising this widespread support into mass action.   "We want to gather the people", said Louana. "We believe our peaceful stand is going to win."

GE cow lies expose corporate science   by Grant Brookes   Revelations that state-owned research institute Agresearch misled the public over the purpose of a genetic experiment show why the moratorium on the release of GE organisms should stay.   Coming after last year's "Corngate" cover-up, they prove that corporations and government cannot be trusted to tell the truth.   Last May, Agresearch applied for permission to genetically engineer cows by adding human genes.   An opinion poll found 80% of people opposed the use of human genes in cattle. But Agresearch claimed the experiment was designed to produce new drugs and save lives.   Communications manager Frank Fernandez announced that "Agresearch plans to produce cows which express milk containing an array of therapeutic proteins, potentially of use in medical treatments which may counter a range of genetic and rare disorders."   Chief executive Keith Steel said "Agresearch is excited at the prospect of undertaking research which may one day help alleviate human suffering".   But when the results were published in a British scientific journal last month, it was "substantial economic gains" for dairy companies - not medicines - that were promised.   If the moratorium on commercial GE release is lifted, milk from genetically engineered cows like these could end up in your fridge.   ERMA, the government's GE safety watchdog, approved the human-cow experiment. They admitted there were risks - including risks of new diseases - in putting human genes in cattle.   But they echoed Agresearch's claim that the benefits, "primarily in the form of increased scientific knowledge", outweighed the risks.   Government appointments have stuffed ERMA with corporate leaders. To date, they've given the go-ahead to every genetic experiment put before them.   Labour claim that a key government strategy for science is to align research to "needs in the community".   But public funding for science was slashed by the last National government. Crown Research Institutes were pushed into partnerships with business.   Research was geared towards boosting profits for business backers, not serving ordinary people.   Labour has not reversed these cuts. Today, Agresearch gets nearly half its money from biotechnology corporations.   The GE cow experiments were funded by Scottish biotech company PPL Therapeutics. Agresearch's application to ERMA was supported by New Zealand's dairy multinational, Fonterra.   Agresearch opposed the current moratorium on the release of genetically engineered organisms because they needed to stay "attractive to investors".   As long as GE is driven by the needs of investors, rather than concern for people and the environment, we should keep it in the lab.

How do we keep NZ GE free?   GE free activists from around Aotearoa gathered in Levin over the long weekend of January 18-20 at a strategy hui.   The current moratorium banning commercial release of genetically engineered crops and animals is due to expire on October 29.   Despite this, mass opposition to GE remains - seen in the march of 10,000 people in Auckland less than three months ago.   Although the GE Free movement involves a wide range of groups, the Green Party is the most influential.   In the past, some leading Greens have steered activists away from organising mass protests and into legal channels like writing submissions.   Green MP Ian Ewen-Street represented the party at the hui. He explained why Labour plans to end the moratorium.   "The government has gone out of its way to appease corporate business interests", he said. "And the corporate sector is where the push for embracing GE emanates."   Labour is committed to a free trade deal with America, he added. Any deal would allow GE imports and GE releases here.   Ewen-Street said the way to stop GE now is for the movement to educate farmers. "My belief", he said, "is that if every farmer in New Zealand knew four simple facts, there would be no GE species ever released."   Leading activists have issued a barrage of media statements explaining the financial risks of GE agriculture to farmers and warning of lost export markets.   But Federated Farmers is the staunchest backer of genetic engineering in New Zealand. In November, they issued a veiled threat to release GE organisms illegally if they didn't get regulations "affordable to farmers and attractive to overseas investors".   Farmer support for GE - and for free trade with the US - isn't due to a lack of information about "corporate business interests".   Farmers are stakeholders in corporate business.   New Zealand's 13,000 dairy farmers are the shareholders of this country's biggest multinational corporation, Fonterra.     Their average income last year was $370,000.   The social group that with the power and the motivation to stop GE is not farmers, but ordinary working class people.   The hui also considered a strategy of direct action against GE crops. Activists have collected names of people willing to join a "Green Gloves" campaign under the motto, "You plant it, we pull it".   Steve Abel of the Auckland GE Free Coalition told last November's march that if GE plants were sown, thousands would converge to pull them up.   Mass civil disobedience by the "Green Gloves" could stop GE. But large numbers of ordinary people will only feel confident to defy the law if they see mass support on the streets.   The strategy hui discussed plans for a large mobilisation in Wellington later in the year and agreed to get involved in Mayday protests as a way of connecting with trade unions.   GE free activists should demand that the Green Party throw itself behind escalating protests in the build-up to a mass mobilisation, and then back large scale civil disobedience by the "Green Gloves" if Labour goes ahead and lifts the moratorium.

Who is Chavez?   Hugo Chavez, who has won two democratic elections on a radical programme, is hugely popular among Venezuela's poor. He and his supporters speak of a "Bolivarian revolution" (after the 19th century nationalist hero Simon Bolivar).   In April 2002, sections of the army mounted a coup and arrested Chavez.   The US government immediately recognised the opposition leader put up by the generals to replace him.   But hundreds of thousands of poor people poured into the centre of the capital, Caracas, and caused key military commanders to switch sides, reinstating Chavez after three days.   In the aftermath Chavez made concessions to placate the opposition, and called for "national accord".   Chavez, puts his faith in the command structure of the army to keep him in power. He sees the mobilisation of the workers and the poor as providing a helping hand, not as a way of people taking the future into their own hands.   Yet all past experience shows that army officers can easily switch sides.   Chavez also continues to preach "constitutional" methods. But the Right wing dominated Supreme Court ruled that the organisers of April's coup could walk free (declaring, incredibly, that "there was not a coup").   It says the government has no right to prevent private owners shutting down industry. It has also declared unconstitutional provisions in Chavez's Law of Land which allows expropriation of large idle estates and distribution of those lands to poor farmers.   Chavez's government has done little to challenge the obscene concentrations of wealth in the hands of the rich.   As fisherman Tom's Blanca commented, "The big companies still hold economic power and have their people everywhere in the government. We support Chavez because he took our side, but we need action."(Adapted from Irish Socialist Worker, www.swp.ie)

Venezuela: workers fight bosses strike   Efforts to oust Venezuela's popular Left-wing president, Hugo Chavez, were faltering as Socialist Worker Monthly Review went to press.   At the beginning of December leaders of Fedecamaras, the country's main bosses' association, and corrupt union leader Carlos Ortega, head of the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV), had called a "general strike" to try to engineer a Right wing coup.   Mostly this involved employers simply locking up their businesses and declaring the workers on strike.   In Caracas buses, the metro and taxis continued to operate as usual. In the poor areas life went on as normal.   In mid December, with the "strike" crumbling, bosses of the state oil company PVDSA shut down the oil industry.   Venezuela is the world's fifth biggest oil producer. Oil accounts for 80% of its export earnings and half the nation's budget.   PVDSA managers were caught welding shut the gates of refineries to prevent production workers from entering. Fewer than 40% of the oil giant's workers heeded the strike call, largely technicians and administrative personnel.   PDVSA managers enjoy great privilege since the oil industry was nationalised in 1970. They hope for rich pickings from privatisation if Chavez is deposed.   But ordinary workers were far less enthusiastic about the strike. As Orlando Chirino told US socialist paper the Militant, "The workers are not behind this. The owners are the big capitalists, and like many bankers they have shut down. We are against them, and they are against us.   "Fedepetrol [the oil workers union], the electrical workers, Sidor that organises employees in steel and aluminum, the metro workers union in Caracas, and many others came out against the strike. The textile and auto plants run full shifts in Valencia, for example."   But PVDSA's managerial elite had the support of many white collar workers and of the captains of the tankers that load oil for export at the country's ports.   This enabled them to cripple supplies to other industries, despite the opposition of the manual workers' union to the stoppage.   A leader of an opposition party, Teodoro Petkoff, admitted, "This is, in reality, a stoppage of the middle and upper classes."   While the Right wing has organised large protests of their middle class supporters in the well-off eastern areas of Caracas, huge numbers of Venezuela's workers and poor people demonstrated against the attempt to overthrow Chavez.   An eye witness explained how workers began taking action themselves to smash the lockout. "Concentrations of people took place at the El Palito oil refinery in the state of Carabobo. One group of people were trying to enforce the stoppage, the other to end it.   "These succeeded in preventing the closure of the refinery and kept the petrol flowing. Many workers remained, keeping guard on the place for four or five days."   In the city of Guayana thousands of workers in steel and aluminium plants organised themselves to make a four-hour journey to the town of Anaco to enforce the delivery of gas to keep production going.   Anger at the torrent of lies from the media led to huge protests outside the private TV stations, with demands for them to come under the control of the masses.   Across the poor areas of Caracas, neighbourhood assemblies have been preparing to move hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets if the opposition tries to carry out its threat to seize control of the presidential palace.   Fear of provoking mass revolt led Venezuela's elite to partially call off their "general strike" at the start of February.   More anti-government demonstrations are threatened, but the slogan of the neighbourhood assemblies is, "If they carry through another 11 April" (the day the last coup occurred),"we will have another 13 April" (the day the workers and the poor smashed the coup).

Rising NZ opposition   New anti-war groups are springing up and protests are spreading beyond the main centres. The marches are getting bigger. The anti-war mood in New Zealand is growing. Opinion polls now reveal a whopping 92% of people opposed to New Zealand involvement in a unilateral US attack. And the growing numbers taking to the streets are rejecting the right of the United Nations to sanction war. January saw big protests in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Blenheim, Tauranga and elsewhere. This movement can make Helen Clark withdraw support for America's wars.

BLENHEIM - 'A sight rarely seen since 1981'   The local Marlborough Express said "it was a sight rarely seen in Blenheim since the days of the 1981 Springbok tour". More than 200 people took to the streets of Blenheim on January 25 to protest.   The anti-war march was organised by the Anti-Bases Campaign in conjunction with a weekend protest camp outside the nearby Waihopai spy base.   The protesters marched through the centre of town with banners and placards saying "Capitalism causes war", "No blood for oil!", "war won't stop terrorism" and "peace is possible".   Drivers tooted support as the march proceeded and wound down their windows to take leaflets.   The march ended in Seymour Square. Mike Treen from the Alliance told the rally that it makes no difference if the UN sanctions an attack, it's still an immoral war.   The Anti-Bases Campaign has organised protests against Waihopai since 1989. This year, as sign of the growing opposition to war, they were supported by two local Regional Councillors for the first time.   Protester Jim Parker told Socialist Worker Monthly Review, "I think the protest had an effect. Afterwards there was an editorial in the local paper against the war. Increasing anti-war sentiments are being voiced in Blenheim."   CHRISTCHURCH - Biggest peace protest yet by David Colyer   Christchurch's Peace Action Network (PAN) responded to the call from American activists to make January 18 an international day of anti-war action.   Organisers expected a few hundred. But 1,200 people turned up, making this the biggest protest in this country so far .   Extensive media coverage before the protest played a part in the big turnout. The Press, whose editor is pro-war, ran a page three story a few days before.   Another factor was the broad range of speakers. PAN used the march to broaden the movement by inviting Left wing politicians and religious leaders.   Local Labour MP Tim Barnett toed the government's line on supporting a UN-backed invasion of Iraq. He was booed.   But Labour mayor Garry Moore spoke against the war. So did Peter Beck, dean of the Anglican Cathedral.   One of the best speakers was Ola Kamel of the Muslim Association.   "Israel is in violation of UN resolutions, but is protected by the US. Israel should be disarmed," she said.   "The US has no right to play policeman. Whether there is a 'regime change' or not is up to the people of individual countries.   "If America was really into good deeds it would spend its arms budget on eliminating poverty."   Green foreign affairs spokesperson Keith Locke flew down to speak at the rally.   The Greens have traditionally advocated the United Nations as a solution to conflict. But the protest encouraged Keith to firmly reject Labour's claim that the UN could legitimise an attack on Iraq.   He said afterwards, "The message that is emerging from the public is that a war would be no more justified if it was endorsed by the UN Security Council after 'arm-twisting' - to use Jim Sutton's phrase - from the Bush administration."   The only downside was provocation by the police. Pushing and pulling, they demanded that the march split itself rather than cross roads against the traffic lights.   Protesters responded with a mix of anger and astonishment. Many kept on walking and one person was arrested.   At the final rally in Cathedral Square, a woman from Britain's Stop the War Coalition asked if we would protest again on February 15, in solidarity with the next international day of action.   The resounding answer was "yes!".   AUCKLAND - 'No Mana in this war'   by Kane Forbes   Over 70 anti-war activists protested at the Devonport naval base on January 28.   The event, hastily organised by Global Peace & Justice Auckland and Students for Justice in Palestine, was against the departure of the frigate Te Mana for a six month deployment in the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman.   Speakers voiced their opposition to US war plans and demanded real democracy at home.   Defence minster Mark Burton said that the vessel was not heading to war with Iraq.   Protesters highlighted the blatant dishonesty of this statement.       Mike Treen from the Alliance argued that at the very least it was freeing up a US ship for the Iraq war. Another speaker asked where the war against terror ended and the Iraq war began.   Protesters chanted "No Mana in this war!" and "No blood for oil!". A giant banner reading "No war on Iraq" was unfurled, easily readable from the ship as it pulled away from the docks. TAURANGA - 'No war for oil, justice for Palestine' by Tony Snelling-Berg & George Jones   600 people marched through Tauranga on January 31 in the city's first anti-war protest. The size of the march and the radicalism of the protesters surprised the organisers.   One protester commented, "I turned up expecting to see a smallish crowd but surprisingly at the meeting point was a crowd of four to five hundred".   Peace activists, quakers, Amnesty International along with Socialist Worker and other groups had called for a the march.   Leaflets advertising the protest were widely distributed - to schools, libraries, workplaces and on the streets. The willingness of people to help distribute and display these leaflets indicates growing opposition to war.   The media largely ignored the march. The only reference in the local Bay of Plenty Times, stated, "Tauranga's peace march on Friday night attracted about 600 people - more than twice the number for a march in Wellington.     "The march was in opposition to the United States' position on Iraq. The group marched along Devonport Road from First Avenue to Mid City Mall carrying banners and flowers."   What was written on the many banners and placards, and the response to speakers at the Mall shows that many people have seen through the smokescreen of "terrorism" and "weapons of mass destruction" to the real motivation for war.   Placards carried on the march said "No war for oil!"   The Labour Party speaker read a prepared statement from Margaret Wilson. He was better received when he abandoned the script. Another speaker advocated following the UN, but got a luke warm response.   The Socialist Worker speaker was well received when he said how the march was part of world-wide opposition to war, and linked to the anti-capitalist movement.   A statement was read out highlighting the need for the anti-war protesters to also support justice for Palestinians.   WELLINGTON - Vigil at US Embassy   Over 200 people marched to the US Embassy in Wellington on January 16, the twelfth anniversary of the first Gulf War.   The march met up with a small group who'd maintained an all-day vigil, holding huge banners up for passing commuters.   There were a lot more new faces on the march - many young people and a fair few Iraqi nationals. And, for the first time, serious media interest.   Heaps of cops were in attendance. At this stage their sole concern was to negotiate us through the traffic and then watch the grounds of the US Embassy like hawks.   Brass Razoo Solidarity band played "The Internationale", "Nga Iwi e" and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?".   The protest filled the space outside the main gates. Red streamers were tied all over the fence, there were speeches, featuring Green MP Sue Bradford and polytech teachers' union president Jill Ovens.   Protesters chanted "Hands off Iraq!" and "No Blood for Oil". ---------- Cops protect warmongers Daphne Lawless (Wellington report)   A peaceful protest against America's plans for war on Iraq was attacked by police at the American Embassy today.   At least 15 demonstrators were arrested as a huge police presence defended the warmongers against a crowd of ordinary unarmed people.   The protest, conceived as a "citizens' weapons inspection", began at Parliament at 11 am on Sunday morning.   About 150 demonstrators, many in costume or carrying "weapons inspector" badges, then set off for the American Embassy in Molesworth Street.   When they arrived at the Embassy, it was surrounded by at least 40 uniformed police and some plain-clothes officers.   Nonetheless, the mood of the demonstration continued to be light-hearted. Protesters described the United States as "the greatest threat to world peace" and demanded its disarmament.   At one point, the demonstrators sang "if you cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq".   At about 12 noon, some demonstrators attempted to breach police lines and scale the Embassy fence. The police reaction can only be described as "heavy-handed".   Not only were those protesters attempting to scale the fence arrested, but those who were even nearby were manhandled out of the way and threatened with arrest themselves.   One witness describes seeing a peaceful protester physically tackled by a police officer and handcuffed for no more than being too close to a police van.   It became increasingly clear that the purpose of the police was not just to save the Embassy from "trespass", but to teach the protesters a lesson.   One protest organiser who had suggested that some might want to climb the fence was arrested and charged with "inciting a crowd".

George Bush is now threatening war on Iraq "in weeks, not months".   The opening bombardment of Bagdhad will be, in the words of military planner Harlan Ullman, "like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima". But as war looms, opposition mounts.   Here in New Zealand, Helen Clark says the government does not support a war waged without UN backing. If the UN gives a mandate, she says, then New Zealand would try to make a contribution to the forces in Iraq, but only for "logistical" or "humanitarian" purposes.   Few people are fooled. The frigate Te Mana is already sailing to the Arabian Sea. It replaces Te Kaha, and will be under the command of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.   This carrier is launching daily bombing raids on Iraq. The role of Te Mana will be to escort US warships heading for the combat zone.   The possibility of further "humanitarian" or "logistical" support is designed to sound harmless.   But the Hercules aircraft that went to Afghanistan as "humanitarian" and "logistical" assistance were used to ferry US troops to the front.   Clark's "opposition" to war is phony. But cracks over Iraq are starting to appear at top levels of her government.   In January, trade minister Jim Sutton told the Sunday Star Times that New Zealand shouldn't support war even if the UN does give a mandate. Any UN backing, he said, would only show succesful "arm-twisting" by the United States.   These cracks are due to pressure from below from the anti-war movement. Sutton pointed out that war will increase tension between the US and Europe and undermine progress in world trade talks. Opposition to war by European leaders is due in part to the huge anti-war protests on the streets.  While Labour may be split over Iraq, they're united in their dedication to New Zealand capitalism.   The division of opinion is simply over whether that's best served by pursuing a free trade deal with America and supporting Bush's war, or whether it's better to oppose war and look for multi-lateral deals involving Europe.   No-one in Clark's government can be trusted. If the wind shifts in Europe, Sutton will be banging the war drum to beat the band. Real opposition to war in New Zealand will have to come from below.   And increasingly, it is. The next major demonstration of opposition will be on February 15.   Polls in America now show a majority of people opposed to war on Iraq without international support.   Comparisons are being made with Vietnam. When America went into Southeast Asia, dissent at home - added to heroic resistance by the North Vietnamese - ended the war and humbled a superpower.   Like Vietnam, this new war can be stopped. We can play a part by forcing Helen Clark to withdraw all support for war - withdraw Te Mana, the air force Orion and the offers of further logistical support.   On February 15, everyone should join add their weight to the protests and show the world that George Bush has one less international ally.

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