The process of creating a more progressive Chilean constitution took another decisive step on 9 May. Unfortunately, it was a step further away from the demands of the 2019 rebellion, which pushed the conservative government to the brink of collapse and forced it to initiate the constituent process as a way out of the political crisis.
Not content with spearheading a concerted racist campaign against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament and his repeated vile attacks on Aboriginal youth in Alice Springs, Peter Dutton has now turned his fire on migrants.
Under the cover of darkness, at midnight on 7 April 1998, balaclava-hooded thugs swarmed onto Australian docks, confronting workers with orders to “Get out! You don’t work here any more!”. Shocked Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) members, employees of Patrick Stevedores, were frogmarched off the job and replaced by non-union scabs protected by security guards with dogs and mace.
The mission statement of Universities Australia, the peak industry group for the sector, describes in lofty terms the purpose of universities: “For hundreds of years”, it reads, “universities have existed as institutions that seek to further human endeavour through the distribution of knowledge and the embodiment of the ideals of free inquiry, equality and independence”.
While French President Emmanuel Macron continues his months-long battle to raise workers’ retirement age from 62 to 64, his government is waging war on another front, some 8,000 kilometres away on the island of Mayotte.
“In Safsaf, after the inhabitants had hoisted the white flag, the soldiers gathered the men and women into separate groups, bound the hands of 50 or 60 villagers, shot them, then buried them all in the same pit.”
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Palestinians have their backs against the wall. In Gaza, they are subject to a devastating economic blockade and regular Israeli air offensives. In the West Bank, they have every aspect of their lives controlled and regulated by humiliating and often violent restrictions. Within the 1948 borders of Israel, they are routinely harassed, denied basic democratic rights and hounded out of their homes and off their land. In every part of historic Palestine, there are escalating levels of brutality, intimidation and repression. Nevertheless, there are flickers of resistance.
One of the biggest activist meetings in nearly half a decade was last week held at the University of Melbourne, as students gear up to support staff in the National Tertiary Education Union fighting for better wages and conditions.
It is a real treat to have a new edition of Socialist Alternative member Tom O’Lincoln’s 1993 book, Years of Rage: Social Conflicts in the Fraser Era. While the text remains basically unchanged, as it did in the 2012 re-issue, this edition by left-wing publisher Interventions is significantly expanded and enlivened by the addition of photos, leaflets and posters from the time, and a twelve-page afterword by Rick Kuhn.
In 2020 the University of New South Wales (UNSW) partnered with universities around the world to form the International Universities Climate Alliance. Ian Jacobs, vice-chancellor of UNSW, boasted of the university’s “proud history of being at the forefront of climate science and renewable energy”.
Australia has some of the most miserable unemployment benefits of any developed country, and the Albanese government is refusing to increase them across the board.
Ethan Ackelsberg, in a 2018 piece published at SocialistWorker.org, makes the case that Israel is an apartheid society, existing in defiance of international law.
Labor’s federal budget throws a few crumbs to those suffering most from the cost-of-living crisis, while otherwise maintaining the status quo of an economy in which—in the decade to 2019—93 percent of the gains from economic growth flowed to the top 10 percent of income earners.
A new report from the Australia Institute paints a disturbing picture of the increasingly unequal division of wealth in our society. The report, Inequality on Steroids: The Distribution of Economic Growth in Australia, looks at how the benefits produced by economic growth have been distributed between the top 10 percent and the bottom 90 percent of income earners.
There are five main themes of my article on the industrial campaign at Sydney University, each of which is disputed by the Rank and File Action (RAFA) group in its self-justification.
Things might be getting tough for most of us, but it’s a good time to be an energy capitalist. Energy distributors have scored billions in extra profits due to regulatory loopholes and are set to make even more in the months and years to come.
In a major escalation of war games near China, the armed forces of the Philippines and US troops are holding the largest annual Balikatan military exercises in history. From 11 to 28 April, 12,200 US military personnel, 5,400 Philippine forces and 111 Australian troops are taking part in the drills. Balikatan—meaning “shoulder-to-shoulder” in Tagalog, the national language—will be the first time Philippine and US forces engage in live-fire exercises at sea.
It’s not often that the proceedings of a local council meeting make national headlines. But when more than 100 far-right activists descended on a recent meeting of the Monash City Council, it was right to pay attention.