Equality with the stars: the Ardern/Gayford baby and social inequality

It’s easy to have woman working and stay at home dad when the woman is being paid over $470,000 a year; but what about poor families?

by Don Franks

NZ prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s bearing of a baby while in office has understandably launched many words.

Michelle Duff writing in the NZ Herald enthused: “When her partner Clarke Gayford is excited about being a stay at home dad, it’s equally inspirational.

“It sets a precedent.  It normalises powerful women and nurturing, caring men.  It decimates outdated ideals of where a mother ‘should’ be – at home, with the children, while dad earns the money.  It smashes those boring boxes and makes room for new shapes, new ways we can all live our lives.

“It creates a conversation about

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Mass rallies, occupations, protests in Argentina for women’s right to abortion

The Congress in Argentina has been discussing abortion law reform in that country.  Mass action in support of reform has taken place in the streets, there have been school occuaptions and other action.  Below is the mass march and rally in Buenos Aires; the video is by Left Voice.

As you will see at the end of the video, the vote in the Congress was 129-125 in favour of the legalisation of abortion.

 

The role of Saudi Arabia in the Middle East

Public beheadings take place each year by the score, frequently for taking part in political protests

by Lutte Ouvriere

For more than two and a half years, Saudi Arabia has been waging a war on Yemen that has already caused 10,000 deaths. Bombing has hit hospitals, schools and military positions indiscriminately. On January 1, 2018, a gas station in the marketplace of Al Hudayadh in West Yemen was hit, killing at least 20 people. According to the Red Cross, the cholera epidemic that is a direct result of the war has affected a million people since March 2017. Due to the embargo imposed by the Saudi regime, famine now threatens 70% of the Yemeni population of 27.5 million.

NZ prime minister John Key visiting Saudi Arabia 2015; what’s a few score of public beheadings a year between friends? Photo: Radio NZ/Kim Baker Wilson

Led by the US, imperialist powers gave their go-ahead, and the Saudis launched Operation Decisive Storm on March 25, 2015. The UN Security Council immediately approved. Great Britain, France and the U.S. supplied arms and military intelligence and continue to do so, ignoring the catastrophic effect on the Yemeni people. Saudi Arabia is now bogged down in this endless conflict.

The Saudi ambassador to the US, Adel al-Jubeir, declared, “We’re doing this to protect Yemen.” Saudi Arabia has interfered in the region for decades, but its aim has never been to protect the population – it has always been to protect its own interests and prove itself a faithful ally of U.S. imperialism. Its role of “gendarme” for imperialism, together with its regional ambitions and the instability of its regime, are the ingredients of

Abortion referendum: Historic victory for women’s rights and social progress in Ireland

Crowd welcomes the result, Dublin Castle, Saturday afternoon, May 26 (Irish time)

by Philip Ferguson

“I think for so many people in this country the weekend’s vote was just like an enormous weight being lifted – a ball and chain that dogged us all our adult life being finally gone. And I can’t believe that I’m 50 years of age and it’s taken this long. . .  I think for so many women it represented so much.  It’s almost like society atoning for everything it’s done to women in this country.  Atoning for how we stigmatised women faced with crisis pregnancies, the Magdalene Laundries, the Mother and Baby Homes, the shaming, the forced adoptions, the robbed identities. . .  For me, the biggest sentiment of the Yes vote, the thing that people said the most was, ‘Who am I to judge? It’s not my decision.'”

‘Kicking Bishop Brennan up the arse!’ The making and popularity of the ‘Father Ted’ TV comedy series, made in the mid-1990s, was an indication of changing attitudes towards the Catholic hierarchy.

With these words, spoken this week in the Dublin parliament, independent Marxist TD (MP) Clare Daly, welcomed the massive victory for women’s rights and human progress in the referendum vote last Friday, May 25.  The referendum was on whether or not to repeal the 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution (the constitution of the southern or 26-County state).  The amendment, which had been passed in 1983 effectively banned abortion in Ireland.

Scale of victory

On May 25 66.4% voted Yes for repeal and just 33.6% voted No.  In numerical terms this was a vote of 1,429, 981 to repeal the anti-abortion amendment and 723,642 to maintain it.

Indicating the sea-change of attitudes among the people in the 26-Counties, this was a

Ireland’s abortion referendum – interview with Eirígí activist Cat Inglis

Eirígí banner: “No freedom without the freedom of women; Cat Inglis is on right

In 2015 the south of Ireland became the first state in which the people voted for gay marriage.  In a referendum in May that year a decisive majority voted in favour of the right of same-sex couples to marry.

The next big battle for social progress was inevitably going to be abortion, as the reactionaries had got in early, securing a victory in a 1983 referendum that added a ban on abortion to the constitution of the state (the 8th amendment).

On Friday this week (Irish time), voters in the south will go to the polls to vote on whether to repeal the 8th amendment,

Recently Philip Ferguson of Redline interviewed Cat Inglis, a long-time left-wing activist and a member of the socialist-republican organisation Éirígí about the issues.

Philip Ferguson: Could you tell us a bit about the role of religion, especially the Catholic Church as an institution, in the life of southern Irish society and in terms of the state, public services etc?

Cat Inglis:  Since the inception of the state the church has had a firm grip on many aspects of Irish life, schools are still run mainly by the diocese and are mostly catholic although in recent years there has been an upsurge in educate together style model among others.  Until about 20 years ago hospitals were run by sisters from various orders.  Overall there was a large religous presence in daily life; in recent years it has been greatly reduced.

PF: How did the 8th amendment come about and what was its practical, legal effect?

CI: Abortion was already

Hillary Clinton the woman warmonger

by Daphna Whitmore

Hillary the woman politician and smasher of glass ceilings breezed into Auckland this week. The media coverage has ranged from gushy snippets on baby boutique shopping and gift exchanges with the pregnant Prime Minister to shallow takes on not seeing the real Clinton. That comes after a week of Royal Baby story headlines, so no surprises from the mainstream media.

Jacinda Ardern and Hillary Clinton swapped baby gifts. No mention of troops in Iraq?

No surprises either from the three thousand people who paid good money to hear Clinton speak at what was essentially a book launch.  While they were lapping up the cliches about daring to compete and tweeting “feeling really inspired”, none seemed to reflect on Clinton’s actual record.

Not Clinton the hard done by faux feminist, but the establishment leader in the US imperialist-militarist system. Where was the commentary beyond children’s books and buzzy bees? Has Hillary the hawk, the supporter of US military adventures in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo been forgotten? How about the Hillary Clinton who voted in favour of the invasion of Iraq in 2002, and promoted the weapons of mass destruction propaganda? Even later by 2007, when the whole world knew no such weapons were ever found Clinton supported continuing the war. “We cannot lose sight of our very real strategic national interests in this region” she said.

Fighting back: a new wave of workers’ resistance in Argentina

Rio Turbio miners

by Nicolás Daneri (Feb 20, 2018)

In the recent midterm elections in Argentina, the right-wing Cambiemos party of President Mauricio Macri was able to secure the largest share of votes. As a result, the elections were widely interpreted as political support for his austerity program. However, shortly thereafter, his government saw a rapid dwindling in popular support when it passed a major pension reform. The proposed law was met by a major resistance movement this past December. Although it succeeded in passing the pension reform, the government paid a high price for its offensive and had to retreat from its initial plan to pass a labor reform law as well.

20,000 attended election rally of the Left & Workers Front in Nov 2016

During the summer months, when there’s generally very little political activity in Argentina, the government continued to lay off workers in the public sector, and unemployment rose in the private sector as well. This summer though, in almost every industry, workers fought back with strikes, roadblocks, and marches, in stark contrast to the previous year in which the majority of the layoffs were carried out without a fightback from workers. Some of the most important struggles this summer (winter in the Northern Hemisphere) include the miners’ strike of Rio Turbio and the strike by workers of the Posadas Hospital. These actions point to a growing political unrest among the working class

Because the government wasn’t able to push through a