Labor overwhelmed by oil price crisis
A SEVEN per cent swing against it in the Gippsland by-election, a truckies’ blockade in NSW and news that the rising cost of living has wiped out the benefits...
Truckies: Jam your fuel price rises
IN SYDNEY and across the world truck drivers are leading protests demanding relief from rising fuel costs.
In the first week of July, Operation Escargot saw truck drivers initiate a...
Things they say
“I would say it’s an endeavour that will last at least 10 years”
Defence force chief Angus Houston on the Afghanistan deployment”President Hamid Karzai’s government is corrupt, incompetent, harbours vicious...
Retirees hit hard by subprime crisis
THE GLOBAL financial crisis is making its mark in Australia. Speculation in global markets by superannuation fund managers has hurt the retirement savings of many ordinary Australians
The Australian...
It’s a bit rich
THERE ARE 650 people to every wealthy person in the world, according to the World Wealth Report just released by investment bank, Merrill Lynch and business consultancy, Capgemini.
If “wealthy”...
Iraq oil contacts go to US, British multinationals
US AND British oil corporations have grabbed prime position in the jockeying to exploit Iraq’s oil resources.
The US puppet government in Iraq is negotiating two-year “no bid” contracts with...
NSW public sector battles below inflation pay offers
NSW public sector unions including public servants, firefighters and train drivers are planning a united day of action on July 30 against the state government's 2.5 per cent pay...
WorkChoices: how much is Labor planning to change?
The Your Rights at Work campaign mobilised thousands of unionists to campaign against the Howard government and its vicious Workchoices laws. Yet over six months into the Rudd government’s...
Dean Mighell: “95 per cent of WorkChoices is intact”
Solidarity spoke to Dean Mighell, secretary of the Southern States branch of the Electrical Trades Union
"THE LABOR Party’s promises have proven to be hot air.
Labor was elected because...
Labor’s IR changes explained
Solidarity summarises how much of WorkChoices Labor has reversed so far, what else it plans to change, and how much of Howard's laws will be retained
Labor’s changes so far
The...
Construction walkout over Gold Coast deaths
On Saturday morning June 21 two construction workers were killed when their swing stage scaffolding fell from the side of a Gold Coast high-rise building site. The next day...
NTEU campaign: our universities matter
UNIVERSITY STAFF and university communities suffered badly under the Howard government. The HEWRRs legislation, a precursor to the WorkChoices legislation, tied government funding to the imposition of draconian employment...
War on terror shakes politics in Pakistan
WITH THE Pentagon finally admitting that the occupation of Afghanistan is in crisis, Pakistan has once again been thrown into the centre of the the “war on terror”.
On June...
Changing faces: is Barack Obama really so different from Bush?
Despite the massive enthusiasm for his campaign and some of his rhetoric, Barack Obama's actual policies are disturbingly similar to those of the Bush administration
THE AMERICAN magazine Newsweek published...
Mass protests sweep South Korea
SOUTH KOREA has been rocked by weeks of protests against the government’s decision to lift a ban on imports of US beef. They have been banned since the detection...
Macklin’s review―a whitewash in the making
The new government's review of the Northern Territory intervention is stacked with supporters of the policy, and looks set to whitewash the disastrous impact on Aboriginal people in the...
Last Drinks: Toohey’s racist diatribe
THE WIDESPREAD acclaim for The Australian journalist Paul Toohey’s Last Drinks: The Impact of the Northern Territory Intervention (Quarterly Essay 30, June 2008), demonstrates just how deeply racist attitudes...
Ferguson calls for nuclear waste dump
FEDERAL RESOURCES Minister Martin Ferguson has called for the “fast tracking” of a selection process to locate a radioactive waste dump, according to a report in Melbourne’s The...
New Sydney committee campaigns against the intervention
On June 23 a new group, Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney (STICS), was established to campaign against the Northern Territory Intervention.
The new group, which includes many of the founding...
The long, hard struggle for justice on Palm Island
Veteran journalist Jeff Waters has authored a new book investigating events surrounding the death in custody of Aboriginal man Mulrunji on Palm Island in late 2004, and the subsequent...
Carbon trading and market solutions
The threat of dangerous climate change is now widely acknowledged. So why won't governments take serious action? Chris Breen examines the major proposed market solutions—and the alternatives.ALMOST IMMEDIATELY after...
Zimbabwe: the road from liberation to dictatorship
Zimbabwe is in the midst of an enormous social and political crisis. Jarvis Ryan details the history of a troubled country
THERE ARE few parallels in history with Zimbabwe's spectacular...
Let them in, but never mind the neo-liberalism
Review of Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders
Jason L. Riley, Penguin USA
ON May 1, there were mass protests in cities across the United States for the...
Deported to danger
Review of A Well Founded Fear
Directed by Bentley Dean and Anne Delaney
Screened as part of the Sydney Film Festival, A Well Founded Fear investigates the fate of a number...
Shopping, sex and the city
Review of Sex and the City, directed by Michael Patrick King
Coming to DVD
SEX AND the City (SATC), the film based on the television series of the same name, has...