The cat-and-mouse game between piracy supporters on the one hand and state authorities and major multinational companies on the other is heating up. Over the past few years there has been a marked increase in the persecution of websites and individuals involved in piracy. Democratic rights are being thrown overboard and the full force of the state applied in the media industry’s ruthless pursuit of profits.

On April 17^th, 2013, marriage between persons of the same gender became lawful in New Zealand after parliament voted 77 to 44 in favour of the passing of the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Act.  This law passed with widespread support from the New Zealand public with most opinion polls showing up to 70% of those polled supporting same sex marriage.

This makes New Zealand the 13^th country to legalise same sex marriage and the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to do so. 

Since the death of Margaret Thatcher last week the British Establishment have been revelling in their past. In a similar manner to the death of Princess Diana, the Royal Wedding and the London Olympics, they believe that this event could serve as another circus to distract working class people from their problems. We would all come together as one nation and forget our class differences. This has been a serious miscalculation.

It was announced in the early hours of 9th April, here in New Zealand, that the former British Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had died.  Immediately the Prime Minister, John Key, gave platitudes along with the rest of the right wing media to the most hated women as far as British labour movement is concerned.  Here we reprint an article from our sister paper, Socialist Appeal, in Britain .

The Westpac television advert showing the house-sharing pensioners arguing about their food and chores may not be so funny in a few years' time. The Government has concluded that it can no longer afford a decent standard of living for pensioners. The problem is that there will be too many of them – as people are living longer and into the bargain, there is the baby boom.

This perspectives document is a Marxist analysis of New Zealand.  Such an analysis provides Marxists with a guide to the developing situation of the country.  This perspective document is not intended to be a blueprint of future events which is beyond the scope of scientific socialism and nor is it our intention to present it as such.

Marx wrote in the 18th Brumaire that history repeats itself first as a tragedy and then as a farce. This is what is happening in Cyprus. We are witnessing a situation similar to two years ago when the EU put pressure on Greece to accept a bail-out, but this time around 56 Cypriot politicians have created a huge problem for capitalists across Europe.

Although there had been some concessions to private capital under the old Assad, what was to rapidly accelerate the process and lead to a qualitative change was the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 and the Soviet Union in 1991. The system the Assad regime had modelled itself on collapsed like a house of cards. And just as the Soviet model attracted the young officers who carried out the coup in 1963, now its collapse shook their confidence in that same regime.

I begin this article on the Christchurch earthquakes and the rebuild by discussing a very different disaster that took place five years earlier in New Orleans. In 2005 New Orleans was severely damaged by Hurricane Katrena and over five thousand people died primarily as the result of the failure of the levees that were supposed to protect the city from severe flooding.

The false idea that the Assad regime is somehow progressive, is rooted in the events of the 1960s, which were eventually to lead to the setting up of a centrally planned, state owned economy, very similar to that in the Soviet Union. However, a long drawn out process has changed the nature of the Syrian economy from what was fundamentally a planned economy to one where the private sector dominates and this has to be understood if one is to make a correct appraisal of the nature of the regime headed by Assad today.