GLOBAL PEACE AND JUSTICE AUCKLAND NEWSLETTER #257, October 29, 2008

Website http://www.gpja.org.nz/
To access the newsletter online go to: http://gpja.org.nz/

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GPJA FORUM THIS MONDAY, Nov 3, 7.30pm, Trades Hall, 147 Great North Rd, Grey Lynn
“CONFRONTING THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS: A DISCUSSSION OF LEFT ALTERNATIVES.” Left alternative political parties standing in the election have been invited to address this forum and the discuss the best approach to the global economic crisis. Groups invited are: Alliance; Communist League; Green Party ; Maori Party; RAM; Workers Party; Everyone welcome.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

NEW ISSUE OF PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW PUBLISHED
http://www.pjreview.info/issues/14_02_08.html

NOMINATIONS CLOSE ON OCTOBER 31ST FOR THE 2008 ROGER AWARD.
You can send your nomination, and any supporting material, by 1/ Filling in the below form and e-mailing it to cafca@chch.planet.org.nz 2/ Or by sending it by snail mail to the Roger Award, Box 2258, Christchurch. The nomination form and full details about the Award, including past winners, Judges’ Reports, etc, can be accessed online at http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/publications/Roger/index.html
Murray Horton, Secretary/Organiser , CAFCA, Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa, Box 2258, Christchurch, New Zealand. cafca@chch.planet.org.nz www.cafca.org.nz

WHAT’S ON IN AUCKLAND

Thursday, October 30, 7.30pm, Tivoli, 5/143 Ocean View Rd, Oneroa, Waiheke Island
Talk - Keith Locke, Green Party. tivolinz@gmail.com www.tivoliNZ.com

Saturday, November 1, 2pm, QEII Square, Customs Street and Queen St intersection, Downtown Shopping Centre
RALLY FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE IN PALESTINE On the First Saturday of Every Month. Come support JUSTICE and PEACE based on: 1. End 41 years of Israeli Occupation of the West Bank & Gaza Strip (including East Jerusalem) ;
2. Right of Return for Palestinian Refugees. 3. Share Jerusalem. 4. Vacate all settlement colonies in Israeli occupied Palestine. 5. Stop Israel's annexation / apartheid wall in occupied Palestine www.palestine.org.nz

Monday, November 3, 7.30pm, Trades Hall, 147 Great North Rd, Grey Lynn
“CONFRONTING THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS: A DISCUSSSION OF LEFT ALTERNATIVES.” Left alternative political parties standing in the election have been invited to address this forum and the discuss the best approach to the global economic crisis. Groups invited are: Alliance; Communist League; Green Party ; Maori Party; RAM; Workers Party; Everyone welcome.

Wednesday, November 5, 7.30pm, Aotea Chapel, Methodist Central Mission, Queen St (Opposite Town Hall)
PUBLIC FORUM ON GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS: Sen. Bob Brown; Jeanette Fitzsimons (with commentary from Prof Tim Hazledene and Donna Wynd). Chair: John Minto. The Green Party has organised this event to inform the political debate on what will undoubtedly impact on the New Zealand economy and individuals. We hope people will be informed and have a forum which will deepen their understanding of the Global Crisis and possible solutions.

Saturday, November 22, 9.00 am - 1.00 pm, Somervell Church Centre, 497 Remuera Rd, (corner Greenlane and Remuera Roads)
Pacific Women’s Watch [NZ]invites you to a Conference. Honouring the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Promoting Peace and Justice in NZ; Overcoming Discrimination in Media, Health/Education, Community Violence. Keynote Speaker: Rosslyn Noonan, Chief Human Rights Commissioner
Other speakers: Judi Clements, CE Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand; Jane Drumm, Executive Director of Preventing Violence in the Home; Ruth Thomas, School of Communications, Auckland University of Technology
Morning tea will be provided; car parking is available – ALL WELCOME # Registration by 14 November would be appreciated – $20 – Please write cheque to PWW[NZ] & post to P.O. Box 99464, Newmarket, Auckland 1149. [There is some discretionary funding for unwaged]Inquiries: Jane 538 3727 or Christine 278 4373, mobile 0274 394 395 or Shakti 634 5426, 636 8514. 25 November is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and White Ribbon Day.

Saturday, DECEMBER 6, 2pm, QEII Square, Customs Street and Queen St intersection, Downtown Shopping Centre
RALLY FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE IN PALESTINE On the First Saturday of Every Month. Come support JUSTICE and PEACE based on: 1. End 41 years of Israeli Occupation of the West Bank & Gaza Strip (including East Jerusalem) ;
2. Right of Return for Palestinian Refugees. 3. Share Jerusalem. 4. Vacate all settlement colonies in Israeli occupied Palestine. 5. Stop Israel's annexation / apartheid wall in occupied Palestine www.palestine.org.nz

QUOTES OF THE WEEK

“Not only have individual financial institutions become less vulnerable to shocks from underlying risk factors, but also the financial system as a whole has become more resilient.” — Alan Greenspan in 2004

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office" - Aesop

"You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches, and then pull it out six inches, and say you're making progress." -- Malcolm X

"The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough to those who have little."- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"All our lauded technological progress -- our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal." - Albert Einstein

"Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man's power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened" - Madame de Stael (French woman of letters, political propagandist, 1766-1817)

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals." - Martin Luther King

BEST ON THE WEB

NEW ZEALAND
Douglas's reforms were an economic disaster for the country By JOHN MINTO
http://www.stuff.co.nz/vote08/4741692a28480.html
Financial crisis should spur discussion of economic alternatives
http://www.stuff.co.nz/thepress/4734366a19739.html
IS JOHN KEY ‘SHONKEY’? Complaint lodged with SFO BY PENNY BRIGHT
http://uncensoredmagazine.co.nz/news/2008/10/08/is-john-key-shonkey-complaint-lodged-with-sfo/
Gordon Campbell On The Politics Of Poverty
http://election08.scoop.co.nz/gordon-campbell-on-the-politics-of-poverty/
State of the unions
http://listener.co.nz/issue/3567/features/11865/state_of_the_unions_.html
New Zealand's income gap doubles
http://www.stuff.conz/print/4709001a11.html
Strikes at McDonald's part of escalating campaign
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/28659/strikes-mcdonald039s-part-escalating-campaign
Matt McCarten: Election about mighty minnows, not major parties
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10539435

ECONOMIC CRISIS
An historic opportunity for transformation
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/772/39798
Wall Street banks in $70bn staff payout - Pay and bonus deals equivalent to 10% of US government bail-out package
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/17/executivesalaries-banking
The Latin American alternative: a new financial system
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/771/39749
The Problem Is Capitalism, Not Just the Banks by Rick Kuhn
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/kuhn171008.html
City bankers in £16bn bonus bonanza
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/business-news/city-bankers-in-pound16bn-bonus-bonanza-14007546.html
Paulson tries again - Unlike the UK plan, the revamped American bail-out puts banks first and taxpayers second
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/16/useconomy-usa
A crisis sparked by the world's rich will have the poor paying the highest price
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/20/globalisation-economy-imf-india-africa/print
Karl Marx's guide to the end of capitalism: a primer - Sales of Marx's Capital are reportedly soaring as the world realises that this was where he prophesied how capitalism will destroy itself. So it's time for a Capital primer, time to talk fetishism (yay!) of commodities (d'oh!).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/21/creditcrunch-globaleconomy/print
Guided by an invisible hand by Joseph Stiglitz
http://www.newstatesman.com/business/2008/10/economy-world-crisis-financial
Karl Marx: did he get it all right? As financial markets crash, the reputation of Karl Marx soars. So has his time come at last? Our writer examines the evidence, while other commentators from the Left discuss his validity
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4981065.ece

ENVIRONMENT
Fear The Coming Nature Crunch By George Monbiot - This is nothing. Well, nothing by comparison to what's coming. The financial crisis for which we must now pay so heavily prefigures the real collapse, when humanity bumps against its ecological limits
http://www.countercurrents.org/monbiot171008.htm

REVIEWS
Book Review: How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth
http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=555

AFGHANISTAN
Civilian dead are a trade-off in Nato's war of barbarity
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/16/afghanistan-nato
David Davis: We are losing Taliban battle - In an alarming dispatch from Afghanistan, the Conservative MP reveals the rampant corruption that has infected public life and threatens to destroy Nato's hopes of bringing peace to this traumatised country
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/david-davis-we-are-losing-taliban-battle-966926.html

AUSTRALIA
Jury clears Jack Thomas of terrorism charge
http://www.theage.com.au/national/jury-clears-jack-thomas-of-terrorism-charge-20081023-574f.html
A New Land Grab In Australia By John Pilger - What is unique about Australia is not its sun-baked, derivative society, clinging to the sea, but its first people, the oldest on earth, whose skill and courage in surviving invasion, of which the current onslaught is merely the latest, deserves humanity's support.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21094.htm

BOLIVIA
‘The people will decide’
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/772/39840
Workers march for new order
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/workers-march-for-new-order/2008/10/14/1223750036837.html
Message of President Evo Morales to the Continental Gathering of Solidarity with Bolivia in Guatemala City
http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2008/10/message-of-president-evo-morales-to.html
Refounding Bolivia: struggle for the new constitution
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/771/39748

COLOMBIA
Colombian regime cracks down on indigenous protests
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/772/39835

FRANCE
It's time for revolution, says French leftwing star
http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/charles_bremner/2008/10/its-time-for-re.html

IRAQ
VIDEO: "The slogans are clear: no to America, no to the occupation, no to any agreement which would leave US troops here a moment longer. One of Moqtada al-Sadr's aids [Sheik Abdul-Hadi al-Mohammadawi] read out a message from him urging Iraqi Members of Parliament not to betray their country by approving the draft agreement
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/iraq181008.html

LATIN AMERICA
The Latin American alternative: a new financial system
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/771/39749

PHILIPPINES
'Lukewarm action' on missing activist’s case hit
http://www.gmanews.tv/story/129428/Lukewarm-action-on-missing-activists-case-hit
Migrant groups to declare Oct 29 as ‘Zero Remittance Day’
http://www.gmanews.tv/story/127966/Migrant-groups-to-declare-Oct-29-as-Zero-Remittance-Day
DEMAND RELEASE FOR JAILED LABOUR LAWYER - On Wednesday last week, Remigio Saladero, the chief legal counsel for the KMU (an independent labor federation in the Philippines) and the union representing Dole Philippines's workers, was illegally arrested by the Philippine government. The International Labor Rights Forum has launched a campaign to call for his release:
http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/saladero

SRI LANKA
The Tamil question in Sri Lanka
http://links.org.au/node/679
500,000 displaced in Lanka – UK
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sinhala/news/story/2008/10/081014_uk_parliament.shtml

SWEDEN
Swedish Peace Activists Repeatedly Break Into Weapon Factories By Bill Quigley - Using hammers and bolt cutters, peace activists repeatedly broke into weapon plants and damaged weapons in Sweden. Activists from the Swedish group OFOG/Avrusta admitted damaging twenty high explosive grenade launchers as well as internal parts to a Howitzer 77. Five people were arrested. Two remain in jail
http://www.countercurrents.org/quigley201008.htm

UK
Simon Jenkins : My farewell plea to MPs: defend liberty: Is Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, a pocket dictator? - She wants to record at her Cheltenham communications headquarters every mobile phone call, text and internet message of every Briton living. This is close to madness.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/simon_jenkins/article5014720.ece

USA
The Diplomacy Of Lying By John Pilger - No presidential candidate, least of all a Democrat awash with money from America's "banksters", as Franklin Roosevelt called them, can or will challenge a militarised system that controls and rewards him. Obama's job is to present a benign, even progressive face that will revive America's democratic pretensions, internationally and domestically, while ensuring nothing of substance changes.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21093.htm
The Torturer's Tale By Jolyon Jenkins - Tony Lagouranis was trained by the US Army to torture Iraqis. This is why he stopped,
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21096.htm

ENDS

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