Liberals’ inquiry prepares attack on rights at work
The vicious overreach of the Coalition government is on display in the recently-announced Productivity Commission inquiry into workplace relations.
Muslims pay the price of Abbott’s desperation
After narrowly surviving a leadership spill on the first day of parliament for 2015, Tony Abbott reached for one of his most trusted political cards: racist fear-mongering in the name of the war on terror.
Manus hunger strike largest in detention regime history
By 23 January a hunger strike protest had swept the detention centre on Manus with hundreds of asylum seekers in every compound joining in. The biggest sustained protest against Australia’s offshore detention regime had begun.
Shooting the messenger on kids in detention
For weeks, in the run up to the publication of the Human Rights Commission report into children in detention, The Australian has been running a witch-hunt against its President, Gillian Triggs.
Refugee deportations: ‘If people stand up they can make a change’
Refugee rights activists have stepped up anti-deportation actions as the government tries to send back a growing number of asylum seekers to countries like Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and China. In December, for the first time, action by passengers on an Air China Flight from Sydney successfully prevented the deportation of an asylum seeker.
Queensland rejects austerity in LNP election rout
Despite their enormous majority in the Queensland parliament, Campbell Newman and the LNP have followed the Victorian Liberal government to be thrown out of office after just one term.
Political chaos as out of touch parties govern for the elite
Australian politics is in turmoil. Labor under Rudd then Gillard tore itself to pieces and lost all credibility within six years. Now the Liberals are repeating the experience. What’s going on?
Sweet victory for flavour factory workers
Workers at the International Flavours and Fragrances factory in Dandenong have won a significant victory following a four-day occupation.
Australian police and politicians guilty hypocrites over Bali nine
As the execution of Bali nine “ringleaders” Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran has moved closer, the Australian government has joined hundreds of thousands of Australians calling for clemency. But the government, unlike the millions of people who would like to see Chan and Sukumaran given a second chance, has no real concern for the their lives.
Anti-racists in Germany push back Islamophobic Pegida
Anti-racist campaigners in Germany have pushed the Islamophobic Pegida movement into crisis.
Syriza’s challenge to austerity in Greece
Alex Callinicos looks at the challenges facing Greece’s new left government—and the ideas behind its strategy
EU leaders prepare to punish Greece
Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras’s first act in government was canceling privatisations in electricity and the ports of Pireaus and Thessaloniki.
The Second International: Movement that failed to prevent war
Eliot Hoving looks at how the international workers’ movement pledged to resist the outbreak of the First World War
Karl Marx, crisis and capitalism
The growth of inequality and the persistence of economic crisis mean Marx’s ideas are as relevant as ever, argues James Supple
Racism and Aboriginal rights: Fifty years since the Freedom Ride
The NSW Freedom Ride saw student activists tackle racist discrimination against Aboriginal people—a fight that continues today, writes Lachlan Marshall
Workers and Egypt’s unfinished counter-revolution
If you want to understand the social processes and economic contradictions which led to the Egyptian revolution in 2011, read this book. It also explains why the military is back in charge and waging a counter-revolution, but never suggests this was the inevitable outcome.
Sickening piece of propaganda for US power
It was incredibly hard to watch American Sniper. The prospect of a two-hour long justification—or, more accurately, glorification—of the Iraq war was not particularly exciting.
