New Zealand's armed globalisation by Grant Brookes The government has done a back-flip on sending troops to Iraq. ----------------- ANZAC tradition? by Don Franks ....laid a wreath, this time as a part of the protest against America's latest war against Iraq. ----------------- 'Broaden the movement' by David Colyer ----------------- 'Strong message' in Auckland by Nik Massey    Up to 1,000 people took to the streets of Auckland on April 12 as part of the international day of action against war in Iraq. ----------------- 300 people protested in Wellington on April 12 Green MP KEITH LOCKE addressed the protest at parliament on April 12. Here we reprint exceprts from his speech. ----------------- Solidarity is driven from below Last month, Council of Trade Unions (CTU) members in Wellington met to discuss whether to maintain or wind up their local organisation, the Local Affiliates Council. ----------------- War under attack Opposing and organising against the conflict in Iraq is the most important task facing anti-capitalist campaigners today, argues Alex Callinicos. ----------------- No NZ troops for Iraq US president George W Bush has proclaimed the war in Iraq to be officially over. Now the carve-up begins. ----------------- Occupation is not liberation How quickly the image of a "liberated" Iraq has fallen apart. ----------------- Corporate carve up by Grant Brookes ......for all its talk of "liberation", the US has no intention of restoring quality public services, available to all who need them. ----------------- Afghan suffering goes on The US proclaims that its goal in Iraq is "liberation". That same promise was made to the people of Afghanistan. ----------------- How Israel helps US keep its grip Matthew Cookson explains Israel's place in the US Empire ----------------- Building solidarity for Ngawha prison fight by Len Parker ----------------- See anything SARS-picious? Alarming reports in the mainstream media have created widespread fear over the SARS disease. ----------------- Growing opposition to GATS by David Colyer Opposition to the New Zealand government's support for the World Trade Organisation's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is growing. ----------------- Is the US now unstoppable? After the war on Iraq, hard-liners in the US are already threatening Syria. But as Kevin Ovenden argues, the US won't get things all its own way. ----------------- Lies and deception from the corporate media by Grant Brookes The war in Iraq has focused attention on the role of the media. ----------------- Review: NZ military aren't the "good guys" Soldiering On By Alan Brosnan & Duke Henry with Bob Taubert Published by Tactical Explosive Entry School (TEES) 2003. Reviewed by Mitch Glockling ----------------- Obituary: Living songs of freedom by Grant Brookes Legendary jazz and blues singer Nina Simone died in the south of France on April 21.... ----------------- Letters: British state terrorism ----------------- Corporate agenda behind war and GE organisms Why is it that many processed foods in New Zealand still contain genetically modified ingredients, and why is it that these foods are not labelled as containing GE ingredients? ----------------- Labour threatens solo mums by Daphne Lawless Social services minister Steve Maharey has announced a plan to try to force solo mothers collecting the Domestic Purposes Benefit (DPB) to name the fathers of their children -----------------

New Zealand's armed globalisation by Grant Brookes    The government has done a back-flip on sending troops to Iraq.    In March, Prime Minister Helen Clark ruled out sending army personnel.    Unless the UN had a central role in Iraq, she said, the New Zealand would contribute cash only. She would not lend military legitimacy to a US-run Iraq.    In April, however, she announced the deployment to Iraq of up 15 army mine-clearing personnel over coming months.    The reversal goes to the heart of Labour's relationship with business and New Zealand's place in the global capitalist system.    The New Zealand government is one of the staunchest backers of the World Trade Organisation's agenda of corporate globalisation. Free trade.   Labour's decision not to join Australia in wholeheartedly supporting the invasion of Iraq was motivated largely by the fear that war would strain relations between the US and Europe and derail the current round of WTO free trade talks.    They also wanted to stay on side with the European Union.    Now the government's foreign policy objectives in sending troops to Iraq are also clear.    "New Zealand has not participated in the war", commented NZ Herald columnist Fran O'Sullivan on April 9.    "But businesses here are asking whether ­ despite this ­ they will get a slice of the war dividend."    On April 13 Craig Norgate, the chief executive of Fonterra ­ New Zealand's own multi-national corporation ­ went on record with his company's desire for a share in the carve-up of Iraq.    Norgate is also the chair of the NZ-US Business Council.    Labour could hardly refuse to help. A week before war broke out, they appointed one of his fellow Fonterra executives as head Tradenz, the trade development arm of the ministry of foreign affairs.   Earlier, Auckland business consultant Stuart Bennett told readers of the National Business Review to watch out for opportunities in post-war Iraq.    "New Zealanders will be among the management and technical professionals from around the world offered high-paying jobs to re-build Iraq's infrastructure", he said.    Local administrators and consultants would be especially sought after, he added, for their years of experience privatising New Zealand's state assets.    Other New Zealand capitalists pressured the government to send troops to help mend fences with the US and revive hopes for a free trade deal with the superpower.     According to Fran O'Sullivan, Warehouse founder Steven Tindall personally phoned Clark to impress upon her that she should drop her opposition to the US occupation of Iraq.    But while the Green Party has failed to see the corporate agenda behind the government's latest reversal and oppose the deployment of troops, the organisers of the anti-war movement are offering resistance. Foreign interference    Global Peace & Justice Auckland wrote to Helen Clark on April 6 "urging that the government ensure that no New Zealand firms accept contracts for the re-building of Iraq".    "Iraq has its own engineers and construction workers, its own administrative personnel and citizenry able to organise and carry out the re-building of the country", they said.    "What they need is the money to do so and the absence of foreign interference on their soil."    When the government announced the deployment of troops to Iraq, GPJA opposed it.    New Zealand is a junior partner of Western imperialism. Our rulers are on the side of the rich nations, not the oppressed countries of the world.    When the New Zealand military deploys its forces, it's for the same kind of reasons as America ­ to secure corporate interests abroad.    Labour refuse to challenge the workings of capitalism. As a result, they end up pursuing the same imperialist course as ever other Westerm power.    As America ratchets up the aggression of its armed globalisation, Labour is likely to follow.    The need for the anti-war movement to resist Labour and their globalisation agenda is therefore going to grow.

ANZAC tradition? by Don Franks   On ANZAC day 1973, Victoria University student president Peter Wilson laid a controversial wreath on the Wellington Cenotaph.    The message attached read, "In memory of the dead and dying in the struggle against imperialism ­ victory shall be theirs".    This wreath was a part of the protest against the Vietnam war, which was then still raging.    Thirty years on, VUWSA activities officer Nick Kelly laid a wreath with the same message, this time as a part of the protest against America's latest war against Iraq.    Nick defended his action against military personel who said he should not have laid his wreath because "the law's the law".    Nick was supported by members of the public. One woman emerged from the crowd insisting that he "had every right to lay an anti-war message on ANZAC day".    Another wreath was laid by members of Peace Action Wellington, who set up a large tent near the centaph as an "Embassy of Peace and Justice", hung about with large signs saying "US out of Iraq" and "Bring back Te Mana".    The  Embassy issued  Peace Passports bearing a strong antiwar message to passers by.    The Embassy drew a mixed reaction from soldiers attending the parade. Some shook their heads and passed by, while others greeted the protesters in a friendly way.

'Broaden the movement' by David Colyer   Peace Action Network activists in Christchurch are committed to continuing to oppose the war for US power and the occupation of Iraq.    On May 4, we will march against the occupation and Bush's plans for "endless war". A week later PAN will co-host the National Peace Workshops 2003.    At a meeting on April 14 to organise the protest, everyone in the room ­ veteran Quakers and Labour Party members, Greens and Alliance, Buddhists, anarchists and socialists ­ agreed that "the anti-war movement is linked to the anti-capitalist movement". Many activists expressed a desire to broaden PAN to embrace the "economic war".    The slogans for the upcoming protest on May 4 indicate the broadening ­ "Occupation is not liberation", "No to endless war", "Cut NZ ties to the US war machine" and "Another world is possible".

'Strong message' in Auckland by Nik Massey    Up to 1,000 people took to the streets of Auckland on April 12 as part of the international day of action against war in Iraq.    Even though numbers were down for the Global Peace and Justice Auckland protest, a strong message was delivered.    GPJA activists led the march from Western Park through the city to the TVNZ studio, and on to the Australian, British and US consulates.    The march started strangely quiet and subdued.    But the mood picked up to become explosive. Chants, drums and determined supporters lifted our spirits. The big police presence illustrated this.    At the TVNZ studios, representatives of GPJA attempted to deliver a letter protesting their one-sided news coverage of the conflict.    A ring of staunch police officers met them and at first refused them entry.    The protesters refused to relent and surged forward.    With confrontation seemingly imminent, the police backed down and the letter was delivered unhindered.    Our final target was the US consulate where a strong vocal contingent made our message clear.    Local residents seemed like-minded and joined along the way.

300 people protested in Wellington on April 12.   Numbers were down on the 4,000 who demonstrated three weeks earlier, reflecting the barrage of US triumphalism in the media.   But there is now a greatly enlarged core of determined activists in Wellington who know that America's public relations "victory" in Iraq may be short-lived.   The protesters marched via New Zealand defence HQ, where they wrote chalk messages on the footpath calling for the withdrawal of the frigate Te Mana, to parliament. ----------- 'We are trying to build a different world' Green MP KEITH LOCKE addressed the protest at parliament on April 12. Here we reprint exceprts from his speech. -----------   It might seem strange to some that we are having an anti-war march today when the war seems pretty much over.    But it is important to join with people around the world to stand up to the Bush administration.    The war machine will roll on to other countries, such as Syria and Iran.    This has been a dishonest war. Bush said his troops had to get Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. No weapons of mass destruction have been found.    Thousands have been killed and many others wounded.    Thousands more will die from the effects of depleted uranium shells and unexploded cluster bombs.    We will now see the US administration install its puppet government to allow Bush and his cronies to divvy up oil resources.    But out on the street, millions of people have said, "No!".    We are trying to build a very different world order, based not on the rule of the rich in places like America or Britain, but on respect for the rights of all nations, cultures and religions.    Where the world's resources are used to uplift the poor, not wasted on manufacturing the instruments of war.    We want our government to join us on this mission. Helen Clark should not be apologising for suggesting that there would not have been a war if Al Gore had won the election.    We have to bring back our frigate Te Mana from the Gulf. We must also close down the Waihopai satellite communications spy base.    And any aid that New Zealand gives must be for genuine reconstruction and not to strengthen the US occupation.

Solidarity is driven from below   Last month, Council of Trade Unions (CTU) members in Wellington met to discuss whether to maintain or wind up their local organisation, the Local Affiliates Council.    LACs are the CTU's equivalent of the old Trades Councils of the Federation of Labour.    Trades Councils varied in strength around the country, but were generally functional bodies, planing and coordinating combined union actions in each centre.    No such cooperation exists today. That difference reflects the largely unarrested decline of the union movement since the imposition of the Employment Contracts Act.    Today's LAC meetings are tiny informal gatherings of whoever turns up. They exchange information about issues of the day, but make no binding decisions.   The April meeting consisted of 18 mostly left-of-centre union officials and activists. It noted the sustained irrelevance of the Wellington LAC, to which only the 1997 Holidays Act campaign had delivered some real unity in action, defending workers' holiday entitlements.    It was also noted that LAC meetings would have more point if they had authority to make decisions. Some hoped elected job delegates might take that role. Several regretted the decline of internal union debate.    One unionist sourced that decline to unions seeking to be "politically correct" ­ by politically correct he meant "not wanting to upset Helen Clark."    Others complained that the Iraq protests had been largely ignored by the unions and that the union movement was not attracting enough young people.   Significantly, there was no representation at the meeting from the biggest CTU affiliates ­ such as the Engineers, the PSA or the NZEI. "They feel they don't need the LACs" a delegate observed.    CTU secretary Paul Goulter arrived 20 minutes late, announcing: "As is the case around the rest of the country, the Wellington LAC has no sense of vibrancy."    "We are in a state of 'disconnect'," said Goulter, wondering, "is this structural or has the world changed?"    Paul cited as an example of "disconnect" the campaign in 2001 against Carter Holt Harvey using non-union labour to load log ships, which "had found it very hard to get traction".    He asked: "Do we look at our structure to get a better model?"    Structure was not the problem in that case. The CHH dispute foundered on the fact that union leaders were unwilling to challenge Labour's anti-strike laws and take the necessary, but illegal, solidarity actions.    Paul's attitude to the current Kinleith dispute revealed continuing CTU unwillingness to face this challenge. "That Kinleith dispute is big and getting huger," he said.    "Now it's dragging in other unions. However, the rail thing's been settled ­ the picket's been called off, which is for the best because the action is not about shifting the product but about not operating the plant."    Having approvingly noted the cessation of railways solidarity action, the CTU secretary had nothing more to say about the Kinleith strike.    He said the CTU should "connect better" with issues of the day, concluding: "I don't have an answer to how we do this, you should be telling us".    Paul Goulter left the meeting soon after that. Had he stayed till the end he would have been told that unionists wanted to retain their LAC and had proposals for improving it.    The remedies suggested were mainly structural. There was wide support for a program of 5 substantial meetings per year, and the hiring of a regular part time coordinator.    Others felt that to be meaningful, LAC meetings should be made up of unionists authorised to make collective decisions. Future LACs should be held outside work hours, so that job delegates had some chance to attend.    One speaker posited lack of vision as a current industrial problem, citing the effect of the disappearance of the Soviet Union.    While that had existed, it was argued, there had been a current of opinion in the union movement upholding a socialist alternative for workers, so that the Labour Party was not universally seen as the only possible alternative.    Today uncritical support for Labour dominates union leadership thinking.    There was also sharp criticism of CTU president Ross Wilson for promising a new era of "campaigning and organising" but in practice promoting union "partnership" with employers and government.    Partnership was slated by one unionist as being destructive to worker's organisation: "If unions exist as an echo of the rulers' opinions why should workers want to spend extra money to join them?"    No unionist present defended the strategy of partnership. Many present referred to the Holidays Act struggle as a model to follow.   That militant mass struggle, the first for some years, had fired because it presented unions as something other than echoes of government policy; it offered workers a way forward that they could not get anywhere else.    One major lesson of the holidays struggle not examined by the meeting was that the struggle had been forcefully led from below.    It was initiated and developed by an ad hoc group of union activists, who finally pushed the dormant LAC into doing its job.    The April meeting ended positively, with the practical suggestion from a working union activist that a striker from Kinleith be invited to speak at a special LAC meeting on the evening of May Day. That was agreed to, and arrangements were begun to carry the decision out.    May that small step from below be the first of many more in the direction of regular union solidarity.

War under attack Opposing and organising against the conflict in Iraq is the most important task facing anti-capitalist campaigners today, argues Alex Callinicos ------------   We are currently participating in one of the most remarkable mass movements in world history.   Its origins date back to before the Bush administration exploited 11 September 2001 by launching its war-drive, to the great wave of anti-capitalist protests-Seattle, Prague, Genoa.   Yet, as the movement has come to focus on mobilising against imperialist war, first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq, it has grown astonishingly in extent ­ 15 February 2003 is simply without any historical precedent as a gigantic day of global protest ­ and in political radicalism.   The determination with which the movement met the actual outbreak of war on 20 March, and the scale of the protests that swept across the world as the missiles began to fly, indicate that a new generation of anti-imperialist militants is being forged. The anti-war movement: a step back?   Yet many figures who played an important role in the initial development of the anti-capitalist movement are unhappy about this evolution. For example, Bernard Cassen, founder of Attac France and still the dominant figure in this pioneering campaign against neoliberalism, attacked the European Social Forum in Florence last November because "the issue of war... overshadowed everything else" there.   In an interview in New Left Review he said: "Knowing that the forum would be held in Italy, and that Rifondazione would mobilise around the issue, we all agreed that war would be a leading theme in Florence, alongside its original theme: 'We Need a Different Europe'.   "But then we discovered that all the posters for the march spoke only of war, without mentioning Europe. I canıt say I was entirely surprised. But if the forum had been held in France, it would not have gone like this. War would have been on the agenda, but not an obsession with war."   Since the next European Social Forum will be in Paris, and in the suburb of Saint Denis, in November, Cassenıs remarks are less a comment than a promise or a threat.   Yet there is nothing particularly surprising about what he said. Cassen, in collaboration with elements of the French Communist Party and the CGT trade union federation, has sought to make Attac the right wing of the anti-capitalist movement, bitterly resistant to any attempt to widen the movementıs agenda to opposing imperialism and war.   Much more remarkable is the emergence of similar arguments by forces that present themselves as being on the extreme left of the movement. Michael Hardt and Toni Negri's Empire is the bible of autonomist currents such as the Italian disobbedienti who see decentralised networks as the basis both of resistance and of the alternative to capitalism.   Hardt has been rightly critical of Cassen for seeing the nation-state as the basis of opposition to global capital. Yet after 15 February he complained that "the coordinated protests last weekend against the war were animated by various kinds of anti-Americanism... This... tends to close down the horizons of our political imagination and limit us to a bipolar (or worse, nationalist) view of the world.   "The globalisation protest movements were far superior to the anti-war movements in this regard. They not only recognised the complex and plural nature of the forces that dominate capitalist globalisation today... but they imagined an alternative, democratic globalisation consisting of plural exchanges across national and regional borders based on equality and freedom.   "It is unfortunate but inevitable that much of the energies that had been active in the globalisation protests have now at least temporarily been redirected against the war." Hardt doesn't quite echo Basil Fawlty's command "Don't mention the war!" ­ but he comes pretty close.   Another leading autonomist intellectual, Naomi Klein, writing from Argentina, has argued that war goes on there daily in attacks on the activists in the mass movement against neoliberalism: "The anti-war message resonates forcefully here, and tens of thousands participated in the global day of action on 15 February. But peace? What does peace mean in a country where the right that most needs defending is the right to fight?   "15 February was more than a demonstration; it was a promise to build a truly international anti-war movement. If that is going to happen, North Americans and Europeans will have to confront the war on all its fronts: to oppose an attack on Iraq and reject the branding of social movements as terrorist.   "The use of force to control Iraq's resources is only an extreme version of the force used to keep markets open and debt payments flowing in countries such as Argentina and South Africa. In places where daily life is like war, people who are militantly confronting this brutality are the peace activists."   Klein's argument is a good example of how a proposition that is true in the abstract can turn out to be misleading when directly applied in concrete circumstances. Of course there is a very real sense in which capitalism is always war. Socialists, after all, have long used the metaphor "the class war" to refer to the constant struggle between workers and bosses over the terms of exploitation. But if the implication is that the movement against the actual war in Iraq is a diversion from the "daily war" against capital, then Klein is dead wrong.   Common to the "Don't mention the war" tendency is a mistaken view of capitalism. Cassen expresses this particularly crudely: "Whether war breaks out or not, B-52s and special forces will not alter poverty in Brazil or hunger in Argentina."   Capitalism is conceived here as an economic system that is quite distinct from the system of states through which military power is exercised. Hardt, Negri, and Cassen all agree that neoliberal globalisation has radically weakened the nation-state.   Hardt and Negri argue that national antagonisms have been dissolved in the "smooth space" of Empire, as institutions of so-called "global governance" such as the UN, G7 and NATO transcend state rivalries. They welcome the decline of the nation-state, while Cassen seeks to reverse it, but all agree that this development is a consequence of the latest wave of capitalist globalisation.   The international crisis since 11 September has decisively refuted this analysis. At the heart of this crisis has been the effort of the Bush administration to use the military power of the US state to perpetuate the global dominance of US capitalism. The persistence of imperialism   In the process, they have split international institutions and provoked the emergence of what is beginning to look like a rival coalition to the Anglo-American duo, headed by France, Germany and Russia, with China tagging along on the sidelines.   This is a more complex situation than straightforward inter-imperialist rivalry ­ US military supremacy is counterbalanced by a greater diffusion of economic power among the leading capitalist states.   Nevertheless, it is clear that, as Marxist theorists of imperialism such as Lenin and Bukharin argued nearly a century ago, contemporary capitalism is still constituted by two interlocking forms of competition-economic rivalries among firms and geopolitical conflicts between states.   Hardt and Negri's response to the refutation of their theory has been, to say the least, confused. Hardt has argued that "the captains of capital in the US" should recognise that the Bush strategy isn't in their interests, and that "there is an alternative to US imperialism: global power can be organised in a decentred form, which Tony Negri and I call 'empire'".   So Empire isn't so much the actual form of capitalist globalisation as a policy option that enlightened capitalists should embrace.   For Negri, by contrast, Empire is not an alternative to the Bush war-drive but what explains it: "Preventative war... is a constituent strategy of Empire".   At stake in the present crisis, according to Negri, are "the relative degrees of power that American and/or European capitalist elites will have in the organisation of the new world order". So, in contradiction to what Hardt and Negri argued in their book, Empire involves rival centres of capitalist power after all.   Tens of thousands of anti-capitalist activists around the world have instinctively cut through this muddle. They have recognised that while capitalism involves myriad forms of domination and oppression, currently the most important front in the struggle against it is stopping the war in Iraq.   The greatest capitalist power in the world is waging the latest in a series of wars designed not just to perpetuate its domination and extend its control over global energy supplies, but also to make it easier to impose neoliberal economic policies on the rest of the world.   The administration's National Security Strategy of the United States of America makes the connection between US global domination and the neoliberal Washington consensus absolutely clear.   If the US is victorious in Iraq, then it is more likely to go on the offensive in Latin America, the zone in the south where resistance to neoliberalism is most advanced. Even if the B-52s and Special Forces aren't directly deployed against Brazilian landless labourers or Argentinian piqueteros, victory for US military power will weaken the struggle against poverty and hunger everywhere.   Drawing these connections has played a crucial role in the maturing of the anti-capitalist movement. This can be seen in two ways. First, a deeper understanding of the nature of capitalism has developed-a recognition that it involves not just economic oppression but also political and military power that is used domestically to crush resistance, and organised globally through the system of competing nation-states.   Secondly, the movement is learning how to think strategically. In Empire Hardt and Negri argued that anti-capitalists should reject Lenin's concept of the weakest link ­ in other words, the idea that there are particular points where the contradictions of imperialism have accumulated, making the system particularly vulnerable. The implication is that it doesn't matter where or over what you fight.   But this is a big mistake. Revolutionary politics is like war in this sense: we have always to analyse the tensions in the system as a means of identifying-and attacking-where the enemy is weak. In launching a war that even their fellow thieves and murderers in the world's ruling classes denounce as illegitimate, Bush and Blair have exposed their flank to us.   We shouldn't worry too much about the "Don't mention the war" tendency. In different ways, Cassen, Klein, Hardt, and Negri helped to initiate the anti-capitalist movement. It often happens that those who played a part at one stage of a movement are unable to make the transition to a new one. They may, like Moses, never reach the Promised Land. The important thing is not to let them hold the rest of us back.

No NZ troops for Iraq   US president George W Bush has proclaimed the war in Iraq to be officially over. Now the carve-up begins.   Even as US troops shoot down unarmed protesters, US oil executives are appointed to run government departments.   As groups of hand-picked Iraqis ­mostly US citizens ­meet in stage-managed exercises in "democracy", the future shape of Iraq's government is being set thousands of miles away in company board-rooms.   For a couple of weeks,as war raged, prime minister Helen Clark had appeared to stand aloof from all this.   But on April 22, Labour announced the first official deployment of New Zealand troops to Iraq. Four soldiers from the army's mine-clearing unitwill leave this month, followed later by up to '' more.   Helen Clark assured New Zealanders that the troops are being sent as part of the United Nations mission, not as part of America's "coalition of the willing".   Two days later, US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Pentagon press briefing, "Our coalition in Iraq now includes some 65 or 66 nations, and a growing number are on the ground in Iraq helping to provide food, water, medicine, trucks, generators, field hospitals [and] mine clearing".   The government hushed up the combat role of the SAS, who fought alongside US troops in Afghanistan.   They misled the public over Iraq, telling people they opposed the war, all the while using the frigates and the Waihopai spy base to assist the US war effort.   And today they're playing the same double game.   Sadly the Green Party, who campaigned against the deployment of troops to Afghanistan and the use of the frigate Te Mana and the Waihopai spy base to aid the war in Iraq, have supported the dispatch of army mine-clearers.   Green MP Keith Locke repeated Clark's assurances that the mine-clearers would be acting under UN auspices.   But as Gordon Campbell wrote in the Listener last month, "Even if our peacekeepers were proudly wearing UN badges,they are likely to be seen by Iraqis as the enforcement arm of an alien regime".   "Are New Zealand peacekeepers destined to become the security cops in the transforming of Iraq into a Friedmanite [neoliberal] theme park for US corporations?", he asked.   The answer from the anti-war movement and the Green Party as well ­must be "No".

Occupation is not liberation   Children mourn the death of three members of their family, shot dead by US marines at a check?point in Baghdad.   How quickly the image of a "liberated" Iraq has fallen apart.   Within two days of the US entering Baghdad there was chaos, looting and continued fighting.   The media has talked about "rampaging mobs" as if Iraqis are a naturally "uncivilised" people who don't know how to live in peace. But the chaos is a direct result of the war the US has waged on Iraq.   For many, the war hasn't stopped. At least 80 civilians have been killed by US troops since the capture of Baghdad.   Human Rights Watch says more civilians have been killed or wounded since the war ended in northern Iraq than during the war.   The US just wanted to blast in, seize the oil and level Iraq. When Bush's military reached the capital, they rushed to protect the oil ministry headquarters, not the city's hospitals.   US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld is on the wing of the Project for the New American Century that advocates crushing the US's opponents and spending as little money as possible dealing with the consequences. Ba'ath regime   Faced with "restoring order", the occupiers have turned instead to the forces which operated under Saddam Hussein.   George W Bush said he was going to remove Saddam Hussein's regime. But the US called for Saddam's former policemen to come and patrol Baghdad.   The order was passed on by Major General Zuhair al?Nuami, head of the police department at the interior ministry under Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist party.   Over 2,000 police registered for work. Many had stopped patrolling only days before US forces closed on the capital. Some were so fearful of reprisals from locals that they turned up without their uniforms   British defence secretary Geoff Hoon commented, "The Ba'ath Party had a system of administration that will deliver".   British forces have also selected one Mozahem al Tamimi to run their "liberated" Basra.   Al Tamimi was a Ba'ath Party member and brigadier general in Saddam's army. Several hundred protesters threw stones at his house as he held a meeting to discuss how to restore order.   Meanwhile, the US has put Dan Amstutz - a former senior executive of the biggest grain exporter in the world, Cargill - in charge of Iraq's agriculture.   Kevin Watkins, policy director of the charity Oxfam, said Amstutz would "arrive with a suitcase of open?market rhetoric".   "Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights commission," he said. Demonstrations   Demonstrations against the invasion have spread through much of Iraq.   In Karbala, south west of Baghdad, a cleric told people, "We reject this foreign occupation, which is a new imperialism. We don't want it anymore. We don't need the Americans. They're here to control our oil."   As the US held the first "talks" about self?rule with hand?picked opposition groups, around 20,000 people protested in Nasiriya.   Guardian writer Jonathan Steele has reported on the extent of the protests in Kut.   "Throughout southern Iraq, confrontation between Shia Muslims and the US forces is rising," he wrote.   "The prophecy that 'Iraq will become Palestine', which some Iraqis were making within hours of the US entry into Baghdad, is not as far?fetched as it first seemed.   "Low flying helicopter gunships, stonethrowing crowds, arrests of popular leaders, and now the first death [of a protester]: the ingredients of an intifada [uprising] are beginning to appear."

Corporate carve up by Grant Brookes   Electricity and water are still out across Iraq. Basic services are non-existent.   But for all its talk of "liberation", the US has no intention of restoring quality public services, available to all who need them.   Instead, US policy?makers have plans to turn Iraq into a neoliberal hell of open?slather deregulation and wholesale privatisation, policed by brutal thugs.   The Heritage Foundation, a right wing US think?tank with close ties to the White House, held a conference late last year on the future of Iraq.   The conference listened intently to a speech by two economists who declared, "A post?Saddam government will need to move simultaneously on a number of economic policy fronts, utilising the experience of privatisation campaigns and structural reform in other countries".   "Privatisation", they said, "works everywhere".   The US state department carried a summary of this speech on its website.   In Britain, the Adam Smith Institute published a report in March which announced, "Privatisation is a sine qua non [necessity] for successful reform in Iraq".   "There is so much to privatise", they drooled.    Today, the US Aid and International Development agency overseeing Iraq's "reconstruction" has given privatisation pride of place in their "Vision for a New Iraq".   Top of the list for the privateers is Iraq's state?owned oil industry.   US oil corporations will initially skim a profit from repairing oil wells. This is likely to extend to pumping and selling Iraqi reserves for a cut of the revenue.   But in a classic "double dip", any revenue that does go back to Iraq will then be used to pay other US corporations for "reconstruction ".   The contracts awarded so far give up to US$140 billion to American corporations with some of the worst records for corruption, union?bashing and environmental destruction anywhere. Halliburton   The Texan oil corporation formerly run by the US vice president, Dick Cheney, will be paid $7 billion to put out the oilfield fires in Southern Iraq   As Gordon Campbell commented in the Listener, this contract is "a mere entree to much larger oilfield repair contracts".   No competition for the contract was allowed.   The Pentagon said "it would have been a wasteful duplication of effort" to have invited other bidders". Betchel   US infrastructure conglomerate Bechtel has scored a $680 million deal to repair Iraq's electricity, sewage and water systems. This is tipped to lead onto even bigger contracts later.   Bechtel is best known as the corporation which bought up privatised water utilities in Bolivia. They promptly hiked the price of water to 25% of an average person's income.   Bechtel's contract even demanded ownership of the rain. In April 2000, a popular uprising forced the government to cancel the contract and re?nationalise the water.   Bechtel turned around and sued Bolivia for $25 million for "breach of contract".   George Schulz, former US secretary of state, sits on the company's board. SSA   Stevedoring Services of America was earlier awarded the contract to manage the port at Umm Qasr. They are now hiring.   Under Saddam Hussein, average wages on the wharves were 25˘ a day, with bonuses of up to $36 a month.   But according to the American Inland Boatmans Union, "the British [who run Southern Iraq] have stated that they already think that this is 'too much', saying it would lead to inflation and a skewed wage scale for the rest of the country's new workforce".   SSA was the owner of New Zealand Stevedores. In 1998 they placed NZ Stevedores in liquidation, owing watersiders $15 million in redundancy and back pay.   The Waterfront Workers Union asked the Serious Fraud Office to investigate, but only managed to recover $2 million of the money robbed from workers. DynCorp   US military contractor DynCorp has been hired to recruit a private police force for Iraq.   Only US citizens need apply and you do not need to speak a word of Arabic.   DynCorp was forced to pay $330,000 to an employee sacked after she blew the whistle on other DynCorp employees taking part in a prostitution ring in Bosnia.   The DynCorp workers, contracted to the UN, bought and sold prostitutes as young as 12. DynCorp employees were also accused of video?taping the rape of one of the women. Creative Associates International   Creative Associates International has been handed a $2 million education contract to manage school supplies and teacher training.   CAI is also "building a new education system" in Afghanistan. Over a year after the fall of the Taleban, 99% of school-age girls in Afghanistan were still being denied an education. Qualcomm   Republican congressman Darrel Issa has introduced a bill that would require the US defence department to build a CDMA cellphone system in Iraq.   This is in order to benefit "US patent holders". CDMA is the US phone system developed by Qualcomm, one of the most generous donors to congressman Issa.   In the weeks to come contracts are due to be handed out for almost every sector of the economy.   New Zealand businesses like Fonterra are also scrambling to make up lost ground and get a share of the carve?up for themselves.

Afghan suffering goes on   The US proclaims that its goal in Iraq is "liberation". That same promise was made to the people of Afghanistan. But as Wellington peace activist John Anderson writes, Afghans are no closer to freedom today, 18 months after the fall of the Taliban.   From the years of the Great Game between Russia and Britain in the late 19th Century, through the Russian invasion of the eighties, up to the US led Operation Enduring Freedom (or "Operation Payback", as some US forces called it), Afghanistan has been a target of foreign imperialism.   The latest interference took the form of the US?led invasion in 2001.New Zealand's secret involvement has now been documented thanks to the efforts of researcher and author Nicky Hager.   New Zealand SAS squadrons were involved in "Operation Payback" on a rotating basis from December 12, 2001.   The role of special forces in Afghanistan was to gather information on enemy forces, and "target acquisition".   Conservative estimates say that 3,000 civilians died as a result of "target acquisition". It is undeniable that the New Zealand government has blood on their hands.   New Zealand SAS operations are confidentially described as being "conducted by specially organised, trained, and equipped military and paramilitary forces to achieve military, political, economic, or psychological objectives by unconventional military means".   I find it hard to distinguish the above from a definition of a terrorist cell.   I strongly believe that the only meaningful contribution that New Zealand can offer to reduce international terrorism is to publicly review its links with the US led, Anglo Saxon five nation alliance and disband the SAS. Northern Alliance   Foreign minister Phil Goff praised the post Taliban government of Afghanistan to the rafters.   The formation of a new Northern Alliance government, he said, was " a landmark for the people of Afghanistan, giving them the right to freely determine their own political future in accordance with the principles of Islam, democracy, pluralism and social Jushce".   It would, he added, promote "lasting peace, stability and respect for human rights" and allow "the participation of women in Afghanistan's political life".   But the treatment of women under the Northern Alliance is fundamentally unchanged from their treatment by the Taliban   "The turbans have changed to pakols", says Afghan poet Noor Beasharat, "but the heads are covered with the same mentality."   "The beards are trimmer, but the smell of fanaticism coming from unwanted hair is very strong indeed."   While the public beatings are less common, women are still dragged home and shamed in front of their family if they wear the wrong clothing.   Religious graffiti around Kabul chillingly warn women not to wear anything other than traditional dress, or face dire consequences. Discrimination within existing bureaucracies is common   In terms of religious doctrine, when it comes to women, virtually nothing has changed. Human rights   And far from bringing "democracy" and "stability", the Northern Alliance has brought more terror and chaos.   According to a report by US?based Human Rights Watch, "In most parts of the country, security and local governance has been entrusted to regional military commanders - warlords - many of whom have human rights violations rivalling the worst commanders under the Taliban".   Warlords like Ismail Khan run cities like Herat as their own personal fiefdom.   US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld describes Khan as "an appealing person", "thoughtful, measured and self?confident".   Herat residents tell a different story. "Ismail Khan and his followers - their hands are bloody", said one. "For them, killing a bird is the same as killing a man."   The report documents widespread intimidation, beatings and "an almost complete denial of the freedom of expression and association in Herat".   The much vaunted "democracy" of Rumsfeld is nothing more than a cruel joke.   The meeting of the Loya Jirga to appoint the Afghan Transitional Administration was marred with corruption, murder, and arm twisting.   Khan was one of the worst offenders. He terrorised delegates in his region.   The US and its allies must leave now for there to be any attempt at forming some kind of stability.   The UN involvement is a thornier issue. The International Security Assistance Force is proving capable of bringing some semblance of order to Kabul.   Afghanistan has many problems, and the increase of public infrastructure and facilities, whether by building roads, schools or hospitals, increases the chances for a stable society.   The extension of public projects by the UN in consultation with the local people could increase the level of education and free movement. Troops out   There are key differences between Afghanistan and Iraq, such as Iraq's abundance of oil, public infrastructure, and the strongly anti?imperialist popular movements within Iraq.   However, some conclusions can be drawn for Iraq from the example of Afghanistan.   Firstly, US?led forces cannot provide humanitarian aid, stability, or make credible choices when choosing factions to support.   The only way to move towards Middle East stability is by the removal of US forces and their sponsorship of factions.   Peacekeepers may be welcomed, but will only be there legitimately when the people have voted in a democratic government.   Ultimately though, this level of justice is impossible without massive reform of the Security Council and the UN And it is hard to imagine the international warlords surrendering their power.

How Israel helps US keep its grip Matthew Cookson explains Israel's place in the US Empire   Israel is heavily involved in Bush and Blair's war on Iraq.   Top White House hawks like Richard Perle identify strongly with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and his hard right Likud Party.   Perle and other White House hawks want to reshape the Middle East to fit Israel's interests.   The Israeli army has been telling US troops heading for Iraq how to crush resistance in towns and cities based on their experience in Palestinian camps like Jenin.   The man appointed to run the post-Saddam administration in Iraq, General Jay Garner, has strong links to Israel.   Some argue that the US's links to Israel is a result of the power, influence and votes of the "Jewish lobby" in the US.   The majority of those who make up the large pro-Israel lobby actually come from the Baptist Christians in the Bible Belt of the southern states in the US. But this lobby does not explain why the US backs Israel.   Israel is the US's "watchdog" in the strategically important, oil rich Middle East.   Israel was founded in 1948 when the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union was hotting up.   The two superpowers competed for influence within the region.   The US supported the partition of what was then Palestine to allow for the creation of Israel.   Israeli militias ethnically cleansed 750,000 Arabs and grabbed their homelands. US president Truman recognised the state of Israel just 11 minutes after it was declared.   The pro-West Arab regimes in the area were vulnerable to rebellions by the people excluded from the oil wealth their states controlled.   The US wanted a stable power in the Middle East. It gave a $100 million loan to Israel in 1949.   The growth of Arab nationalism in the early 1950s worried the US.   The moderate Mossadeq government in Iran nationalised oil properties in 1951, challenging Western control of oil.   Israeli leaders spotted an opportunity to make themselves useful to the West.   The Israeli Ha'aretz newspaper, which was closely associated with the government, said during the Mossadeq crisis: "Strengthening Israel helps the Western powers maintain equilibrium and stability in the Middle East.   "Israel is to become the watchdog. If for any reason the Western powers should sometimes prefer to close their eyes, Israel could be relied upon to punish one or several neighbouring states whose discourtesy to the West went beyond the bounds of the permissible."   In 1956 radical Egyptian leader Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal inspiring a wave of Arab nationalist revolts.   The US feared it was losing control. A US National Security document stated that the only "logical" move "would be to support Israel as the only strong pro-West power left in the Near East". US economic and military aid to Israel increased.   In June 1967 Israel crushed the forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan in six days. This convinced the US that Israel could be its attack dog in the Middle East.   Ever since, the US has backed Israel to the hilt. It continues to give Israel around $3 billion every year.   This year, it announced an even bigger aid package ­ $10 billion ­ days before the invasion of Iraq.   During Israel's war against Egypt and Syria in 1973 the then US president Nixon airlifted weaponry to Israeli forces.   "The strength and Western orientation of Israel and Iran safeguards US access to oil," said US senator Henry Jackson in 1973.   "They have served to inhibit and contain those irresponsible and radical elements in certain Arab states who would pose a grave threat to our principal sources of petroleum in the Persian Gulf."   Richard Perle worked for Jackson early in his career.   Israel became even more important for the US after the Iranian Revolution overthrew the Shah in 1979.   The US has a complex relationship with Israel. It supports Israel as its most stable ally in the Middle East.   But US leaders also know they need the support of Arab rulers to keep the oil flowing.   The mass of Arab people are outraged by Israel's oppression of the Palestinians and the support it receives from the US.   The US must therefore sometimes play down its links with Israel, and go through the pretence of supporting yet another "peace process".   Israel, too, may sometimes strain on its leash. But the master always controls it.   Israel continues to be the outpost for US imperialism in the Middle East today.   "After the Cold War Israel's main task has not changed at all," said General Shlomo Gazit, former head of Israeli military intelligence.   "Its location at the centre of the Arab Middle East predestines Israel to be a devoted guardian of the existing regimes-to prevent or halt the processes of radicalisation and to block the expansion of fundamental religious bigotry."   Any movement for democracy and freedom in the Middle East will have to challenge not just the power of the US but also its watchdog, Israel.

Building solidarity for Ngawha prison fight by Len Parker   Maori protesters and supporters resisting a proposed prison at Ngawha in Northland met with 30 members of Global Peace & Justice Auckland on April 14.   Kaitiaki and supporters have been occupying land adjoining the site since last December, following the eviction and arrests of 37 occupiers in June.   Ngapuhi tribal elders, kaumatua, kuia and other leaders of the struggle outlined the history of their peaceful endeavour to stop the prison being built on their sacred land. Ngawha is waahi tapu (a sacred place), taonga tuku iho (a treasure handed down), a geothermal area with healing springs of world renown.   A GPJA leaflet advertising the meeting pointed out that "after decades of Government policies leading to closure of industries, rising unemployment and benefit cuts (Northland has one of the highest levels of unemployment in New Zealand) leaving struggling communities with resulting rising crime, the prison is the bottom of the cliff solution".   In answer to a question of why Ngawha was chosen when there were 83 alternative sites, it was pointed out that the decision was made under a National government.   Pakeha vested interests lobbied against a proposed prison near Whangarei, lifestyle-block country, in what was then John Banks' electorate. Banks is now the right-wing millionaire mayor of Auckland.   A video was shown of the original occupation of the site at Ngawha.   Protesters now fear further arrests will follow to allow the contractors to get on with construction.   The legal process has been exhausted. The Court of Appeal has ruled out an appeal to the Privy Council, which anyway would have been too expensive.   The crown has ignored the Waitangi Tribunal's 1993 Ngawha Geothermal Report, which concluded, "The springs, indeed the entire underground geothermal resource, is taonga (sacred treasure)".   The chosen site is also likely to create an environmental disaster. It is located in an old lakebed. Some 29,000 drains must be put in the bottom of the catchment basin.   An entire nearby hill about the size of Mt Maunganui has been dug up and used as fill.   The department says another 10,000 cubic metres of fill must be transported to the site along the road that is now barricaded by protesters.   Mercury concentrations previously undisturbed are also being brought to the surface by excavations.   These run off the land into the Waitangi River which provides drinking water for Paihia and Waitangi.   In June, concentrations of mercury in the water were 30,000 times the safe levels set by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Local Maori say the eels are inedible.   Machine operators have been exposed to full-in-the face spurts of mercury-rich water and many have left the job ill. This should be taken up by the union as a health and safety issue.   Prisoners from Paremo-remo maximum-security prison near Auckland are pouring concrete for the prison. Protesters want this prison labour stopped.   Maori legend has it that the Ngawha site is guarded by a taniwha. If disturbed, it will seek retribution. The area is geothermal and on a fault line.   A D2 earth-moving  machine, which fell into a hole and could not be dragged out, was buried intact.   New Zealand already has the second highest rate of imprisonment in the West behind the United States. It is estimated that 80 percent of the prisoners in Ngawha will be Maori if it is built.   The big criminals, like Bush and Blair, create the conditions that produce petty criminals, through unemployment, subsistence wages, inequality, homelessness and poverty.   They also produce wars and great atrocities as they carve up the globe for resources and markets. But the big criminals are never locked up.   Workers together with environmentalists and others need to get behind the fight to stop the prison at Ngawha.   Spreading the campaign to Auckland greatly boosts the chances of this happening.   An impassioned plea was made to the meeting for supporters to visit the site and help stop another Treaty injustice.

See anything SARS-picious?   Alarming reports in the mainstream media have created widespread fear over the SARS disease.   According to an NBR poll taken last month, 77% of people are now concerned about SARS.   Already this has led to a racist backlash, with Asian students who show no signs of ill-health being told to stay home from school.   Even as media reports detailed the spread of the disease, and as the death-toll nudged into the hundreds, a new report on malaria was released by the World Health Organisation.   The WHO said that in Africa alone, a million people will be killed by malaria this year.   One African child dies every 30 seconds from the disease.   As the report points out, malaria is a disease of poverty primarily affecting countries near the equator.   It is not a major health problem in rich countries in Europe or North America.   There is a real threat posed by the SARS outbreak.   London-based doctor and socialist Kambiz Boomla says, "SARS is like cholera was in cities like London in the 19th century.   "The rich can't quarantine themselves off from it."   "Many of the measures now being taken to control SARS are the right kind of thing ­real resources are being put into it."   "But the question we should ask is, why can't the same be done for other killer diseases like malaria, TB and AIDS?"

Growing opposition to GATS by David Colyer   Opposition to the New Zealand government's support for the World Trade Organisation's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is growing.   On April 10, several hundred Christchurch people came to an Arena (Action, Research and Education Network of Aotearoa) meeting  on GATS.   The talk was given by Jane Kelsey, professor of law at Auckland University and a long-time campaigner against globalisation.   After Jane's talk, discussion turned to Iraq and the links between America's "endless war" and globalisation.   Under US occupation, Iraq's infrastructure ­ from oil to education ­ will be opened up to US corporations.   The US victory will also put them in a stronger position to bully other countries into accepting a version of globalisation that will most benefit US business.   As an Arena newsletter puts it, "We have to understand that US imperialism at the military level and by dominating the world economy are flip sides of the same coin".   The meeting was co-sponsored by Forest and Bird, highlighting widespread concern about GATS.   The Council of Trade Unions and individual public sector unions have also joined the campaign.   Union leaders have focused on lobbying the government. Labour's response has been that there is nothing for them to worry about.   Helen Clark appears to have reservations about some areas of GATS, after her plans for quotas for New Zealand music and TV were sunk by the agreement.   However, her government remains one of the most gung-ho supporters of the deal.   Support for corporate globalisation has been a fundamental plank of the Labour Party's agenda since 1984. Former Labour leader Mike Moore ended a term as head of the WTO last year.   The government's documents on GATS only consider the potential benefits to New Zealand business, not the costs of deregulation that will be paid by working people here and overseas.   A major factor in Labour's opposition to the US invasion of Iraq was that the resulting tension with France and Germany could undermine WTO negotiations.   Many critics of GATS stress the increased power it will give foreign corporations operating in New Zealand.   But it's not just overseas multinationals or the small number of New Zealand capitalists in the "services export" sector who are rubbing their hands at the thought of GATS.   All New Zealand bosses will benefit from the way the agreement locks-in existing free market policies and the pressure it puts on for more deregulation.   Given Labour's commitment to the WTO, changing their position will take a lot more than lobbying.   Opponents of GATS should follow the example of the anti-war movement, and form coalitions to organise united action.   The spread of information through public sector unions means potentially thousands of the best organised and most militant workers in the country have been alerted to the threat of GATS.   Mobilising these workers will be key to protecting public services.

Is the US now unstoppable? After the war on Iraq, hard-liners in the US are already threatening Syria. But as Kevin Ovenden argues, the US won't get things all its own way. ----------   The warmongers in the White House feel flushed with success.   The most hard-line are already threatening to extend the slaughter they have inflicted on the people of Iraq to other states on George Bush's "axis of evil".   They always said toppling Saddam Hussein was a stepping stone in a permanent "war on terror".   John Bolton, senior adviser to George Bush, chillingly warned Iran and North Korea last month to "draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq".   William Kristol is a guru of the Project for the New American Century, the main lobby group for the neo-conservative fanatics who now direct the US state. He told US senators last week "not to rule out" war with Syria.   Colin Powell and other figures in Bush's regime have already suggested Syria is harbouring the elusive "weapons of mass destruction" that have so far failed to materialise in Iraq.   Former head of the CIA James Woolsey is set to be one of the US-installed governors of a slice of Iraq. In March, he called for Iraq-style regime change in Saudi Arabia.   The anti-war movement argued the war on Iraq, and before it on Afghanistan, was part of a deeper project to establish unchallenged global domination for the US and its multinationals.   Now those who have been pushing for a decade to occupy Iraq scarcely veil their wider aims.   But they do so just as the global instability they have unleashed grows to such an extent that it is creating cracks even among the architects of the new American century.   There was never any doubt that the biggest war machine in history would overwhelm Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime.   Even so, the initial resistance to the invasion shocked US generals who had been ordered by US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld to go in with half the number of troops they had asked for.   There were no armed uprisings paving the way for US tanks to trundle unopposed into Baghdad.   But the Ba'athist regime was in no position to organise mass popular resistance to the invasion. It had to rely on functionaries of the regime and on Iraq's depleted, ill-equipped army.   After years of collaboration with the US and of repressing the mass of the population it could not turn to, for example, the two million residents of the largely Shia slums of Baghdad to defend the city.   One widely reported comment from ordinary Iraqis was that "Saddam Hussein is a CIA agent".   Those Iraqi exiles who returned to fight said they were there to oppose the US not to defend Saddam.   For Saddam Hussein, encouraging truly popular resistance risked unshackling a force that could threaten his rule as well the US invasion.   Mass sentiment in Iraq against a return to colonial-style domination continues. It colours the complex power struggle between different Iraqi factions. And it creates a big problem for the neo-conservatives in Washington.   One wing, concentrated around Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon, believes anyone in their right mind the world over will spontaneously rally to the Stars and Stripes and embrace US-policed corporate capitalism.   They see little problem in establishing a pro-US regime in Iraq which will ally itself to US corporations and Ariel Sharon's Israeli state. Growing opposition   But others, centred on the US State Department, recognise the anti-imperialist feeling across the Middle East and know they could have to station large numbers troops there for a long time to come.   One of the self-deluded Rumsfeld hawks, Ken Adelman, was flummoxed on Newsnight recently when he said he wanted democracy across the Middle East.   An Arab ambassador pointed out that if the authoritarian regimes were replaced with popular governments it would mean greater opposition to US interference and to domination by the multinationals, not less.   The new US presence in Iraq means it is pitting itself directly against growing radicalism among the mass of Arab workers and the poor rather than relying solely on Arab autocrats to contain that feeling.   And the US has not had to deal face to face with a popular anti-imperialist movement since Vietnam.   The feeling is not confined to the Middle East. The war and occupation of Iraq are immensely unpopular the world over.   From Latin America, through Europe to the Far East the great mass of people oppose what the US is doing, whatever their governments say.    For all the bluster about liberation, today is not like the 1950s and 1960s when Western Europe and some of its former colonies willingly came under the US umbrella while the world economy boomed.   Today people see rule by the IMF and World Bank backed up by increasingly aggressive US militarism.   For their own reasons rulers of many states also fear what the US neo-conservatives have in store.   Leaders of so called rogue states (any small state that the US sees as a potential localised challenge) have everything to fear.   There's pressure on them to fall into line. But the North Korean regime has outlined a different option, which is at least as likely. Nuclear   The lesson it has drawn from the Iraq war is that not having nuclear weapons leaves you open to attack.   However, building such weapons ­ as Pakistan and India have ­ gets you some respect from the mafia don in Washington. One wing of the Iranian state thinks the same.   The prospect of a war on the Korean peninsula ­ the last one cost four million lives ­ is so hideous that the US faces unprecedented opposition in its traditional ally, South Korea.   The neo-conservatives' plan has created a breach with other US allies.   France and Germany are worried about US power.   That's why they wouldn't endorse the war and why some of their leaders talk about constructing a counterweight to the US.   The documents of the Project for the New American Century call for containing not just "rogue states" but every state that could be a "potential challenger" to US military and economic power.   Top of the list is China, but the neo-conservatives have welcomed the opportunity to launch a swipe at the European Union.   All these tensions are growing just as the world economy is slowing down. Economy   The neo-conservatives want to keep the "reconstruction of Iraq" in US hands.   But there are already doubts about whether the US alone can put in the cash now, in the hope of a big return at an unknown point in the future.   The US has the largest economy in the world, but it is not in the overwhelming position it was in the 1950s and 1960s.   The European Union lacks an integrated military machine, but its economy equals the US's.   Part of the neo-conservatives' imperialist strategy is to use US military power to lever economic advantage.   That is fraught with danger. It means clashes not just in the US's "sphere of influence", as during the Cold War, but across the globe.   It means relying on an influx of cash, principally from East Asia, to fund the huge debts George Bush is running up to maintain military dominance and featherbedding for US corporations.   Crucially, it means creating the conditions on every continent for mass popular resistance to militarism and corporate power.   At the start of this war the New York Times said the anti-war movement showed there is not one superpower in the world, but two ­ "the US and world public opinion".   Bush and his bag carrier Tony Blair have shown their contempt for public opinion.   But their more sober advisers are already worried that the anti-war movement signals a move from strongly held opinion to vigorous, militant and global resistance.

Lies and deception from the corporate media by Grant Brookes   The war in Iraq has focused attention on the role of the media.   On April 12, 1,000 people demonstrated outside TVNZ studios in Auckland, in protest at "the pro-US bias emanating from New Zealand's state broadcaster".   Global Peace & Justice Auckland spokesperson John Minto attacked TVNZ's coverage as "an unrelenting stream of bald US/UK propaganda and blatant lies".   The media likes to claim it is "accurate" and politically "impartial". But even as the war was raging, the chief executive of RadioWorks resigned to take up the post of general manager of the National Party.   RadioWorks owns Radio Pacific, The Rock FM, Solid Gold FM, The Edge FM and a grab-bag of local stations.   He'll be joined in June by the former editor of Wellington's Dominion Post newspaper, who's taking over as National's chief of staff.   Under normal circumstances, the media use unobtrusive methods to disguise reality for the benefit of the corporations.   Grassroots opposition to the workings of the system ­ and the views of ordinary people taking up the struggle ­ are simply ignored because they're "not newsworthy".   When the opposition becomes too big to ignore, "balance" means their views are drowned out by extensive, unquestioning reporting of lies from our rulers.   News stories are always reported as unrelated events. So in the build-up to war, the front page stories would repeat the claim that the issue at stake was Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.   Buried away in the business pages were occasional articles about the opportunities for oil companies in Iraq after Saddam Hussein's removal. But no links were made.   Night after night TV news readers would repeat US condemnations of Saddam's brutal regime with straight faces, without mentioning past US backing for the dictator.   However, faced with overwhelming opposition to war on the streets, these "normal" methods were not enough.   A mass anti-war movement was starting to understand that corporate interests were fuelling war, and starting to shape wider public opinion.   This movement had the potential to unleash a threat to the corporations who provide the lifeblood of the media ­ advertising dollars ­ and could spark challenges to the news corporations themselves.   The media turned to simpy reporting falsified evidence. As more independent journalists leave Iraq and as the US administration steps up attacks on the anti-war movement, falsified stories are likely to grow.

Review: NZ military aren't the "good guys" Soldiering On By Alan Brosnan & Duke Henry with Bob Taubert Published by Tactical Explosive Entry School (TEES) 2003. $29.95. Reviewed by Mitch Glockling   Advertised as a New Zealand adventure story, this book is an insider's view of the brutal training and the right wing ideological grounding that moulds the members of the elite Special Air Service (SAS) army unit.   Taking it in turns, the two authors describe their early army life, tours of duty in Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore, followed by the grueling nine?month selection process to gain their SAS "wings".   But while Henry says he still feels "completely justified" over New Zealand's involvement in Vietnam - and presumably okay with the slaughter of millions of people in South East Asia - the two are not so forthcoming about their time spent on active duty in the SAS.   Missing from this work is the full story of their overseas deployments, which Henry says is "nobody's business".   This is not surprising. As Brosnan hints, the SAS "work with our foreign counterparts, particularly the Brits and Americans, throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, Central America and the South Pacific". Dirty wars   Successive governments, both National and Labour, have largely kept the involvement of the SAS in a host of dirty wars secret for political reasons.   Most people in New Zealand would be repelled by the bloodshed, and the fact we were involved in wars against people who were no threat to our "national security", but who were a danger to the control of resources coveted by Western imperialism.   The SAS was formed in 1955 to fight alongside the British in what is now Malaysia and Singapore.   During the Second World War, the Malayan Peoples Army had driven out the Japanese occupiers. The peninsula's rich mines and rubber plantations were taken over by Peoples' Committees.   After the war, the British invaded Malaya. The SAS helped British forces re?take control of these resources for Western corporations in a campaign of bloody terror.   They repeated this in Brunei in the mid1960s, fighting a democratically elected Legislative Assembly which threatened Shell's control of the country's oil wells.   From 1971-75, SAS members were attached to a British squadron in Oman where they supported a repressive sultanate, protecting Western oil interests against a local uprising called the "Dhofar War". Then in 1983, SAS members intervened in the civil war in Sudan.   More recently, SAS members have joined British units in Northern Ireland. There they got to try out their interrogation, torture and assassination techniques for real.   It's not known where in the world the SAS Overseas Squadron is right now, but last year it was in Afghanistan in an operation code?named "Kiwi Cracker".   As part of America's so?called "Operation Enduring Freedom", they were used to identify targets and direct US missiles.   The one?sided slaughter was huge. Thousands of civilians were killed and maimed.   However, it is not what the book seeks to conceal but what it inadvertently reveals that is interesting.   The brutality ingrained in SAS members shines through. The training officer, says Brosnan "seemed to hate the world and everything it stood for".   Group drinking sessions were encouraged "to develop camaraderie". "Male elitism" is the official culture. Brosnan jokes about the Penthouse magazines he later took on missions "to wank over". Extreme right   Soldiering On is shot through with extreme right wing ideas. Brosnan has the biggest political axe to grind.   Now an American citizen, he is a supporter of the National Rifle Association (recently exposed in the film Bowling for Columbine) and a staunch Republican.   He describes Ronald Reagan as a "truly heroic president who believed in tough, straight talk followed by strong action". You get the picture? So did Nicaragua.   In the chapter, "Pulling the Pin - Why I left the SAS and New Zealand", Brosnan aims his considerable venom at the fourth Labour government, at "mainstream kiwis" for voting for them and in particular at David Lange, "a left wing, liberal, anti?military pacifist".   "The mere mention of his name", says Brosnan, "makes me want to vomit."   The object of this bile is the nuclear free policy, which he sees as a total sell?out of the military. "He (Lange) should have been tarred and feathered".   "As far as the military was concerned there would have been no shortage of volunteers to carry out the task."   He makes it clear that views like these are shared by everyone in the tightly?knit unit.   SoIdiering On should also give cause for thought to those who supported the New Zealand deployment to East Timor.   When the troops went in, supposedly to support "peace keeping", democracy and self-determination, the operation was spearheaded by the right wing thugs of the SAS.   The Green Party backed this deployment, just as they're supporting the army mine-clearers going to Iraq now. State forces   Underlying their position is the belief that state forces like the army are politically neutral and subservient to parliament. Therefore, say the Greens, the army can be directed by an elected government to serve democratic and peaceful ends.   But as Henry tells a highly placed regular army officer: "Sir, there is only one person that I am loyal to. It is not the Queen, Governor General, Prime Minister or the Minister of Defence. It is the Commanding Officer of the Special Air Service".   When Henry pays his respects to the Fijian military, he is praising the past masters in the overthrow of democratically elected, left?leaning governments.   David Lange should count himself lucky that he didn't find himself with the business end of a gun pointed at his head and one of these guys on the other end.   Would I recommend this book? Well, it is interesting for its exposure of the extreme right politics of the SAS.   But if you buy it, you will be supporting an American mercenary training school, TEES, now headed by Brosnan.   TEES operates in the Third World, training elite police and military units. So you could do what I did and borrow it from your local library instead.

Obituary: Living songs of freedom by Grant Brookes   Legendary jazz and blues singer Nina Simone died in the south of France on April 21, in self-imposed exile from the racism of her homeland. She was 70.   Born Eunice Waymon, her earliest experiences were of grinding poverty and the segregation of the American South.   The Great Depression was at its height. Her father was earning starvation wages on a National Relief Agency job scheme.   Her mother, a Methodist minister, was trying to make ends meet as a housekeeper for rich white families.   Nina's exceptional musical talent was recognised at a young age. An affluent white woman became her benefactor, fund?raising around her home town of Tyron, North Carolina, so that she could receive piano lessons.   By the late 1950s, Nina was mixing with Black radicals as a rising star of New York's beat scene.   "Like anyone with half a brain", she recalled, "I had followed the development of the civil rights movement from its early days with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Junior and the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955." Collective action   "I understood for the first time the power of collective action." But as an international recording artist, she had felt detached from it - an observer rather than a participant.   Two events in 1962 changed that. First she befriended Black revolutionary writer Lorraine Hansberry.  Lorraine, she said, helped her to see the bigger picture for the first time.   "Although Lorraine was a girlfriend, we never talked about men or clothes or other such inconsequential things when we got together. It was always Marx, Lenin and revolution - real girls' talk."   Then on 15 September, 1962, she heard the news came over the radio about a bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Indiana.   Four Black children - Denise McNair Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie May Collins - were killed.   In the rioting which followed, Birmingham police shot another Black kid and a white mob pulled a young Black man off his bicycle and beat him to death.   "All the truths I had denied to myself for so long rose up and slapped me in the face", said Nina.   An hour later, the song Mississippi Goddam! had poured out of her. Nina dedicated the next seven years of her life to the struggle for civil rights and revolution.   As an activist in the movement, she took part in the increasingly sharp debates on strategy. Divisions were opening up between the various Black political organisations. Non-violence   Nina felt closest to Stokely Carmichel and the Student Nonviolent Co?ordinating Committee.   "Like SNCC," she said, "I felt non?violence was the way forward in the early sixties because it seemed to get results, but I wasn't committed to non?violence for ideological reasons like Dr King's organisation, the SCLC."   "The Klu Klux Klan weren't non?violent," she pointed out, "and neither were the police nor the government if they felt threatened."   She was attracted to the militant Black nationalism preached by Malcolm X while he was a minister in the Nation of Islam.   But as she became more conscious, she said, "I came to my own conclusions about separatism'".   She shared points of agreement with Malcolm: "Anyone who has power only has it at the expense of someone else and to take that power away from them you have to use force, because they'll never give it up from choice."   But she also disagreed with him. "I didn't believe that there was any basic difference between the races", she said.   Nina reached the same conclusion that Malcolm X later reached himself after leaving the Nation of Islam. "I realised that what we were really fighting for was the creation of a new society."   In 1966 her song for Lorraine Hansberry, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, was adopted by the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) as "The National  Anthem for Black America".   A year later she recorded the album Nina Simone Sings the Blues which contained a song written for her by the radical Black poet Langston Hughes, Backlash Blues. Revolution Part 1, her own composition, appeared in 1969. Vietnam   Nina's political activism went beyond civil rights. In early 1970, she joined Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland on a huge concert tour against the Vietnam War.   In songs like Four Women, Nina also took up the issues being raised by the resurgent women's movement.   "Along with everything else", she said, "there had to be changes in the way we saw ourselves and the way men saw us."  The downturn of the Black liberation struggle in the 1970s hit Nina hard.  Looking about herself in 1970, she saw, "The SNCC was dead in the water, with its most talented members exiled or imprisoned and the rest arguing among themselves. CORE was going the same way.   "The SCLC was trying to recover after losing Martin. Every black political organisation had been infiltrated by the FBI. Police terrorised our communities."   Pessimism set in. "The days when revolution really had seemed possible", she  thought, "had gone forever.   "I watched the survivors run for cover in community and academic programmes and felt betrayed."   Nina suffered bouts of depression and gave up recording and performing. But unlike many of her peers, she never recanted her revolutionary politics.   In 1991 she published her autobiography, I Put a Spell on You. Looking back over her life, her closing words were a celebration of struggle: "Years of joy - hard, but joyous all the same - fighting for the rights of my brothers and sisters everywhere".

Letters: British state terrorism Dean Parker Auckland   Article 17 of the United Nations (who?) Basic Principles of the Role of Lawyers states, "Where the security of lawyers is threatened as a result of discharging their functions, they shall be adequately safeguarded by the authorities".   Seems a fair enough sentiment, especially if you're a lawyer.   As a principle, it was quoted in a letter from the New Zealand Law Society to Tony Blair, British prime minister, in April 1999.   The Law Society, prompted by the group Information On Ireland and some concerned lawyers, was calling for an independent and impartial inquiry into the death of a civil rights solicitor in Northern Ireland.   Rosemary Nelson had been murdered the previous month in a car bomb attack at her home in Lurgan, Co Armagh. The killing had been preceded by threats against her by members of the Northern Ireland police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary.   There was an enquiry, though conducted largely by the RUC. No one was charged. Released   The following year, the Law Society wrote again. Some time later two men were arrested. And then promptly released.   Nothing ever came of that campaign over Rosemary Nelson, the murdered civil rights solicitor from Lurgan.   But now we can guess what happened. Now we have an official report on the way the security forces of Northern Ireland treated those who questioned the nature of Britain's sectarian colony.   According to this report, by Britain's most senior policeman, Sir John Stevens, British army intelligence operatives, together with Northern Ireland police officers, deliberately helped pro?British loyalist paramilitary groups murder Irish republicans.   Among those murdered was Pat Finucane, a lawyer who had represented republicans detained by the army and the police and who was shot dead by loyalist paramilitaries in front of his family in his north Belfast home in 1989.   The British Army had its own men inside the loyalist paramilitaries, the Ulster Defence Association.   One of them was Brian Nelson, an enthusiastic gun?runner for the loyalists, who could draw on his sources in British intelligence and pass on the names and addresses of known republican activists to the UDA.   He scouted Pat Finucane's house before the killing and passed on a photograph of the lawyer to his loyalist accomplices.   Another British agent was William Stobie, a UDA quartermaster, who told his British handlers that Finucane was going to be murdered. No attempt was made to halt the killing.   In fact, there are those in Belfast who say the latest confirmations help explain how Pat Finucane's killers moved so easily through British patrol units on the night of the murder.   Stevens said his investigations - which he said were blatantly hampered to the extent of an arson attack which burnt down his office in Belfast - had pursued allegations that senior Belfast police officers had briefed British home office minister Douglas Hogg that some solicitors were "unduly sympathetic" to the IRA cause.   Hogg extraordinarily repeated this view in the British House of Commons, weeks before the killing of Pat Finucane.   As well, in an interview in the London Daily Telegraph (May, 1999) the former Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary claimed Finucane was known by police "to associate with members of the IRA". Presumably, this is why he was killed. And why Rosemary Nelson was.   The only people ever charged over the Finucane murder have been potential witnesses for the prosecution: a former member of the security apparatus charged with breaking state secrets and an investigative journalist for refusing to disclose sources.   According to an editorial in the London Guardian, April 18, "The Stevens Report is one of the most shocking commentaries on British institutions ever published. (It) tells a shameful story of state sanctioned murder, collusion and obstruction more commonly associated with South American dictatorships than with western parliamentary democracies".   A columnist in the same paper went further. Deborah Orr wrote, "The depravity, evil and corruption outlined by Sir John Stevens is unbearably shocking, chilling and vile.   "It is sobering to look at this emerging story of something uncomfortably close to British state?sponsored terrorism, and see confirmation that some of the most awful allegations made against Ulster and Britain by the republicans [and, one could add, by those who patiently and stubbornly stood outside the British Consulate in Queen St at lunchtimes, handing out leaflets] had very much more than a slender basis in truth. 'Cannot be trusted'   "Now, as the West is being asked by its various governments to surrender its civil liberties as part of the war against terrorism, it is timely to remind those who believe this to be a small price to pay, that the price is not always small.   "When the state itself cannot be trusted to uphold civil liberties, then the population cannot afford to surrender a single one of them."   Stevens' report, which in its fuller, unpublished version deals with many more killings, has been sent to the Northern Ireland Director of Public Prosecutions. It is said that something like 20 key people have been named as culpable.   However the DPP is notorious for not pursuing cases against Britain's security forces. And the truth is that the whole British war machine and its colonial police force in Northern Ireland should be standing in the dock.   A final note. The head of the British army intelligence unit that sanctioned the murder of Pat Finucane was one colonel now brigadier, Gordon Kerr.   Where is he now? He was sent to the Middle East in February of this year to head the military intelligence wing of yet another British occupation army.

Corporate carve up by Grant Brookes   Electricity and water are still out across Iraq. Basic services are non-existent.   But for all its talk of "liberation", the US has no intention of restoring quality public services, available to all who need them.   Instead, US policy?makers have plans to turn Iraq into a neoliberal hell of open?slather deregulation and wholesale privatisation, policed by brutal thugs.   The Heritage Foundation, a right wing US think?tank with close ties to the White House, held a conference late last year on the future of Iraq.   The conference listened intently to a speech by two economists who declared, "A post?Saddam government will need to move simultaneously on a number of economic policy fronts, utilising the experience of privatisation campaigns and structural reform in other countries".     "Privatisation", they said, "works everywhere".   The US state department carried a summary of this speech on its website.   In Britain, the Adam Smith Institute published a report in March which announced, "Privatisation is a sine qua non [necessity] for successful reform in Iraq".   "There is so much to privatise", they drooled.    Today, the US Aid and International Development agency overseeing Iraq's "reconstruction" has given privatisation pride of place in their "Vision for a New Iraq".   Top of the list for the privateers is Iraq's state?owned oil industry.   US oil corporations will initially skim a profit from repairing oil wells. This is likely to extend to pumping and selling Iraqi reserves for a cut of the revenue.   But in a classic "double dip", any revenue that does go back to Iraq will then be used to pay other US corporations for "reconstruction ".   The contracts awarded so far give up to US$140 billion to American corporations with some of the worst records for corruption, union?bashing and environmental destruction anywhere. Halliburton   The Texan oil corporation formerly run by the US vice president, Dick Cheney, will be paid $7 billion to put out the oilfield fires in Southern Iraq   As Gordon Campbell commented in the Listener, this contract is "a mere entree to much larger oilfield repair contracts".   No competition for the contract was allowed.   The Pentagon said "it would have been a wasteful duplication of effort" to have invited other bidders". Bechtel   US infrastructure conglomerate Bechtel has scored a $680 million deal to repair Iraq's electricity, sewage and water systems. This is tipped to lead onto even bigger contracts later.   Bechtel is best known as the corporation which bought up privatised water utilities in Bolivia. They promptly hiked the price of water to 25% of an average person's income.   Bechtel's contract even demanded ownership of the rain. In April 2000, a popular uprising forced the government to cancel the contract and re?nationalise the water.   Bechtel turned around and sued Bolivia for $25 million for "breach of contract".   George Schulz, former US secretary of state, sits on the company's board. SSA   Stevedoring Services of America was earlier awarded the contract to manage the port at Umm Qasr. They are now hiring.   Under Saddam Hussein, average wages on the wharves were 25˘ a day, with bonuses of up to $36 a month.   But according to the American Inland Boatmans Union, "the British [who run Southern Iraq] have stated that they already think that this is 'too much', saying it would lead to inflation and a skewed wage scale for the rest of the country's new workforce".   SSA was the owner of New Zealand Stevedores. In 1998 they placed NZ Stevedores in liquidation, owing watersiders $15 million in redundancy and back pay.   The Waterfront Workers Union asked the Serious Fraud Office to investigate, but only managed to recover $2 million of the money robbed from workers. DynCorp   US military contractor DynCorp has been hired to recruit a private police force for Iraq.   Only US citizens need apply and you do not need to speak a word of Arabic.   DynCorp was forced to pay $330,000 to an employee sacked after she blew the whistle on other DynCorp employees taking part in a prostitution ring in Bosnia.   The DynCorp workers, contracted to the UN, bought and sold prostitutes as young as 12. DynCorp employees were also accused of video?taping the rape of one of the women. Creative Associates International   Creative Associates International has been handed a $2 million education contract to manage school supplies and teacher training.   CAI is also "building a new education system" in Afghanistan. Over a year after the fall of the Taleban, 99% of school-age girls in Afghanistan were still being denied an education. Qualcomm   Republican congressman Darrel Issa has introduced a bill that would require the US defence department to build a CDMA cellphone system in Iraq.   This is in order to benefit "US patent holders". CDMA is the US phone system developed by Qualcomm, one of the most generous donors to congressman Issa.   In the weeks to come contracts are due to be handed out for almost every sector of the economy.   New Zealand businesses like Fonterra are also scrambling to make up lost ground and get a share of the carve-up for themselves.

Labour threatens solo mums by Daphne Lawless   Social services minister Steve Maharey has announced a plan to try to force solo mothers collecting the Domestic Purposes Benefit (DPB) to name the fathers of their children.   Under current regulations, mothers who don't do so can have $22 a week taken away from their benefit. Last month, Maharey said he wants this penalty increased.   Maharey has been criticised by the ACT party, who want to minimise the cost of the DPB, or even abolish it.   Their family spokesperson, Muriel Newman, would prefer a system like the one in the American state of New Jersey, where mothers who do not name a father for their child get no benefit at all.   Newman says, "It should be mandatory for children to have their father's name on birth certificates except in cases where there was good reason not to, such as where a birth was because of incest or rape".   Green Party spokesperson Sue Bradford, on the other hand, has accused Maharey of caving in to pressure from ACT. Safe   "In many cases there is a real and valid reason why a mother is not naming the father, such as if the father is known to have abused children or is violent towards the mother and/or her child," she says.   "Children have the right to feel safe within the DPB, and the unfortunate reality is many children are safer in a single parent family."   Bradford is right that mothers should not have their privacy violated and should not be forced to name the fathers of their children.   It's also true often children are better off when one of their birth parents is no longer involved in their lives.   But she's not publicly attacking the basic assumption in both Maharey's and ACT's idea - that the state should be finding "liable parents" to pay for the raising of children.   The right-wing arguments against the DPB are solely financial ones, dressed up to look like moral arguments.   The people who run the state - the corporate bosses - need families to raise children to become their next generation of employees.   But they couldn't afford to pay parents what their work is really worth, so they want working families to pay for as much of the burden of raising children as they can.   Sometimes, however, single parents - in this society, usually women - aren't earning money, and don't have a partner to support them, and so have no other source of income on which to raise their children.   The DPB is supposed to support people in this situation, but of course the state doesn't want to pay one dollar more than it needs to.   Government spending has to be covered by taxation. Paying a living income to single parents opens the door to calls for higher taxes on the rich.   Maharey's plans are supposed to minimise this cost by finding another parent who can be forced to pay for the child's support   This restores the "normal" pattern of how child?rearing is paid for in this society, and minimises the drain on corporate profits.   To justify not supporting parents as of right, right wingers have to pretend that the work parents do to care for and educate their children is not work at all.   The same people who are approving of Maharey's plans to force women to name fathers of their children are opposing Maharey's other initiative, to no longer require DPB recipients to find paid work once their children reach school age.   New Zealand First's family spokesperson, Barbara Stewart, says, "The Social Security Amendment Act is absurd because it now guarantees wages for 18 years without the recipients ever having to contribute, or attempt to contribute to their own existence.   "This country is becoming even more of a benefit state with hundreds of thousands of people being paid to do nothing."   The editorial of the Dominion Post on March 12 takes a similar stand, warning against those who "are on the DPB as a lifestyle option". Contributors   The editorial huffs that "it is only when beneficiaries take jobs that they cease to become financial burdens on society and instead become financial contributors".   There is no mention of the fact that parents on the DPB are real contributors to society, accepting the hard and necessary work of raising children for what even the Dom?Post admits is a pittance.   Steve Maharey is following the agenda of the right in trying to violate beneficiaries' privacy to save the state a few bucks.   Sue Bradford is right to attack him, but she should be attacking the whole idea that being dependent on an absent parent is morally better than being dependent on the state.   She should not only oppose increasing penalties for solo mothers who don't name a father, but call for the abolition of the penalty which already exists.

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