#auspol

The right to protest campaign in New South Wales has won a significant victory with the state government conceding that demonstrations of up to 500 people are now allowed.

For most of this year, protests about everything from Black Lives Matter to education cuts and LGBTI rights have been broken up by riot police and activists have collectively been fined more than $50,000 for organising or attending them. The government backdown exposes that the police’s claim that protests constituted a public health risk was always bogus, and that the anti-democratic measures were a politically motivated manoeuvre by the police and Liberal state government to crush dissent.

There are still some limitations on the right to protest that should be scrapped, including the cap of 500 attendees. Considering 40,000 people are currently allowed to attend sporting events in New South Wales, a riskier undertaking than protest, this limitation is clearly motivated by politics, not public health. There is also still a fight to overturn the fines accrued by activists as a result of the previous measures.

READ MORE: Defiant campaign wins concessions on right to protest in NSW

The Australian economy’s 30-year expansion, one of the longest of any country in the history of capitalism, came to a screeching halt in the last quarter. Figures for the three months to June show a contraction of 7 percent, the largest fall since records began in 1959. While economists expect a rebound in the next set of quarterly figures, the real pain for many working-class households is only just beginning.

Hospitality, recreation and transport have been the worst-affected industries. Construction and manufacturing are also struggling because investment started to dry up in the middle of the year.

An Australian Bureau of Statistics business survey, released in August, revealed that almost a quarter of companies had reduced or cancelled investment plans in the previous three months, and that a third of businesses were expecting difficulties meeting their financial commitments over the next three months. Uncertainty about the future was affecting the investment decisions of 50 percent of businesses.

READ MORE: When the economy of the “lucky country” collapses

On Tuesday of last week, I was working at home from my job at Curtin University, when, just after lunchtime, I saw a link shared in a WhatsApp group: “At least one dead as building collapses at Curtin University”. A coworker said that they had heard sirens on campus, but assumed it was a fire drill. The entire glass atrium ceiling of a new $100 million building had collapsed, sending 23 year old apprentice Jonnie Hartshorn plunging 20 metres to his death.

Two coworkers were hospitalised. One spent time in intensive care, his life hanging in the balance. Had the incident occurred 5 or 10 minutes earlier, dozens who had been on their lunch break could have been injured or killed. On the morning of the collapse, Curtin staff members were inside the building, which was nearing fit-out stage. That afternoon, the campus was a disaster zone: cops, ambulances, firefighters, unionists, Worksafe inspectors, journalists, and helicopters flying overhead to capture the horrific footage for the nightly news.

This was no mere “accident on campus”, as the heading for the Vice Chancellor’s note to staff appallingly read. It was industrial murder.

READ MORE: An industrial murder at Curtin University

Ninety-eight years old and Ken Lovett hadn’t stopped! Ever the activist, while facing terminal cancer, Ken made sure he posted his voting papers for Victorian Socialists’ candidate Omar Hassan in the 2020 local council elections. He died just a few days later, politically committed to the end.

Ken lived through economic depression, world war, McCarthyism and then the hope of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when revolutionary struggles swept the world. This life experience made him a passionate campaigner in the fight against oppression.

Twenty-seven years ago, he met his dearly loved partner Mannie de Saxe, a committed socialist, anti-Zionist Jewish activist, a South African and fierce opponent of that country’s apartheid regime. Together, they campaigned for so many of these and other causes, for equal rights for all, including, more recently, many contributions to improve services for older lesbian, transgender and gay people.

We have all lost a committed fighter for our rights, but one who has enriched the struggle and helped give us the strength to keep on fighting.

READ MORE: Vale Ken Lovett

1. The election was in large part a referendum on Queensland’s border closure and the right wing decisively lost

The Palaszczuk government’s victory in the Queensland election, the first state election held in Australia since the onset of the COVID crisis, is a defeat for the business lobby that has for months demanded profits be prioritised over public health. It is a triumph for the good sense of ordinary people who have rejected their cruel calculus.

The main issue at stake in this election was whether the Palaszczuk government’s strategy of keeping the state border closed to the southern states for several months, with only gradual reopening, would receive popular support. The measure has done much to minimise the impact of the coronavirus in Queensland—there have been only six deaths in the state since the start of the pandemic and, other than a brief outbreak in July when the border was briefly reopened, case numbers have been extremely low since April.

READ MORE: Takeaways from the Queensland election

Make no mistake, a Democratic victory is a victory for the rich and powerful, who overwhelmingly backed Biden in. Across the country, areas with median household incomes of $100,000 or more (the richest one-third of the population) donated three times the amount to Biden’s campaign as compared to Trump’s, according to a New York Timesanalysislast month. Among these households, “Mr Biden smashed Mr Trump in fundraising, $486 million to only $167 million—accounting for almost his entire financial edge”, the article’s authors wrote. The election results suggest that voting patterns have followed the money trail, Democrats cleaning up in the wealthiest areas in the country. This should not come as a complete surprise—prior to this election, 27 of the wealthiest 30 congressional districts in the US were held by the Democratic Party, which, like the Liberal Party in Australia, is a party created and run by the bourgeoisie.

A Biden win will be a win for Corporate America, much of which also fell in behind his campaign. For example, a Yale School of Management survey of its CEO Caucus participants in September found that 77 percent said they would be voting for Biden. While some industries, such as agribusiness and energy, clearly favoured Trump, the big money was with the Democratic candidate. The finance, insurance and real estate sector, for example, donated two-and-a-half times more to Biden than it did to Trump, $200 million to $84 million—dwarfing the contributions from other industries.

READ MORE: The ‘election of our lifetime’ delivered the worst of America

Join leading American and Australian socialists for a special US election meeting where we will analyse the results and project what a second Trump term, or a Biden Presidency will entail. This Wednesday, November 4, 2pm AEDT.

US Election Special: Live breakdown with Socialist Alternative

The Australian economy’s 30-year expansion, one of the longest of any country in the history of capitalism, came to a screeching halt in the last quarter. Figures for the three months to June show a contraction of 7 percent, the largest fall since records began in 1959. While economists expect a rebound in the next set of quarterly figures, the real pain for many working-class households is only just beginning.

Hospitality, recreation and transport have been the worst-affected industries. Construction and manufacturing are also struggling because investment started to dry up in the middle of the year.

An Australian Bureau of Statistics business survey, released in August, revealed that almost a quarter of companies had reduced or cancelled investment plans in the previous three months, and that a third of businesses were expecting difficulties meeting their financial commitments over the next three months. Uncertainty about the future was affecting the investment decisions of 50 percent of businesses.

READ MORE: When the economy of the “lucky country” collapses

Journalist and filmmaker John Pilger has been attending WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition hearing, which he has observed for several weeks from the public gallery at London’s Old Bailey. He spoke to Arena magazine’s Timothy Erik Ström about arguably this century’s most important political trial.

READ MORE: Eyewitness to the agony of Julian Assange 

jadedownthedrain:

I love Burnum Burnum ❤️

bundibird:

Holy shit i am SO PLEASED TO SEE THIS TWEET ON MY FEED. My mum is one of the people that’s been helping the Djapwurrung people protect these trees for the last two years (the fight to save the sites has been going on for way longer; two years ago was just when works were about to begin, and attempts to stop the destruction moved from council/legal offices to people literally sitting in front of the trees to block access by large machinery), so it’s an issue I’ve been watching from up close, and and it’s one that hasn’t seen mainstream attention, even though it should have.

There is a core group of individuals who have been on site for TWO YEARS. Other volunteers come in and out to help and live onsite for anywhere between a few days to a few months at a time, but there’s a few individuals who have been on country for TWO YEARS, without pause. They have been camping, unceasingly, on the land to protect these sites (several trees with varying types of cultural importance, including an 800 year old birthing tree which has been the site of over 10,000 Djapwurrung babies being born) for two years. The sites haven’t been left unmanned even for a few hours since this all started.

One of these indigenous protectors has:

• been deliberately sprayed in the face with weed poison by a local farmer
• been endlessly targetted by the local cops, including being arrested for having an expired licence (even though he was driving a truck on a private field at the time, and not out on the road, so there was no grounds to arrest him) and put in jail for several months over this offence (even though a white would never be arrested for an expired licence. In the end when it finally got to court, the judge was like “You’ve imprisoned this man for months for an expired licence? What the fuck, get out of here, charges are dropped, give the man a warning and let him go”
• had the local MacDonalds threaten to call the cops on him for the “crime” of loitering (read: eating a meal in-store)
• had a different MacDonalds threaten to call the cops because he didn’t want to give the staff his name and phone number (the COVID restrictions require restaraunts to ask for phone numbers in case of a break out so they can notify people, but it’s not actually a requirement of diners to give those details, and the restaurant certainly doesn’t have the grounds to call the cops on someone for not supplying their number)
• strained himself so much by insisting on staying on the land to protect the sites that he wound up hospitalised with various illnesses that struck him because he was physically and emotionally exhausted by the whole situation
• walked from the site into Melbourne city, on foot, in an effort to raise awareness (over 200 kilometres/41 hours worth of walking)
• The front line camp is alongside a busy road, and all the asshole locals and truck drivers who go past that are pissed about the protest make sure to express their displeasure by honking their horns loudly and repeatedly whenever they go by, whether that’s at 2 pm or 2 am, which I’m sure you can imagine does wonders for the protectors ability to get a good night sleep

That’s just a snippet of what this one person has gone through. That doesn’t cover the constant abuse faced by all of them, the attempts at property destruction, the attitude they get by locals whenever they go into town for supplies, the constant red alerts because someone’s heard that the machinery is being mobilised and that they’re moving to start works tomorrow. There were several occasions where police were called to disperse the protectors so that works could begin, and it’s only because there were more protectors than cops that everyone wasn’t arrested and dragged off.

I could literally go on for days with details about this. An archeologist came out to the site and was absolutely staggered by the stuff that was there – in addition to the trees themselves, there was more archeological evidence of the local indigenous tribe that had lived there, sitting untouched on the surface of the earth than this archeologist has seen at any other site throughout Australia. A detailed report was sent to the supposed Minister for the Environment, who summarily ignored it and gave her stamp of approval for the works to commence without reading any of the reports. The protectors went to court over this and it was found that yeah, the Environment Minister hasn’t done her job at all, and a full review has been ordered —- but the works haven’t been cancelled altogether.

All this for a road that will shave a few minutes of travel off the road that currently already exists. All this for a road that’s got a speed limit of 80 that they want to boost to 110. All this for a road that could go a different route. There’s another route available that the protectors have been pitching for since the start, but VicRoads refuses to consider it for reasons they won’t specify.

This route that they’re insistent on not only cuts directly through several indigenous sites (some of the only ones left in Victoriaof this kind) it also costs around $630 million more. This route is full of hills and valleys that need to be flattened, and it’s twisty and turny. The Northern Route - the one protectors have been wanting since the beginning - is flat and straight, will be literal hundreds of millions of dollars less expensive, will take less time to complete, and doesn’t cut through any indigenous sites.

If you could sign this petition, that would be awesome. Here is another petition.

Here is a copy of an academic petition sent by RMIT to the Victorian government, signed by over 150 academics.

Here is an article written by an indigenous woman (which I am not, by the way; I’m just a white woman who is outraged by what my government is trying to do to these people) on the topic that has some more information.

And thank you, @whitepeopletwitter , for sharing this.

theculturedmarxist:

lordandgodoftheobvious:

“Let’s invade a sovereign nation, overthrow their government, and replace it with one that’s friendly towards us!” says person with Ukrainian flag in their Twitter handle.

I can’t believe “countries have a right to determine their own security arrangements” was only a hollow talking point

theauspolchronicles:

Peak ‘graphic design is my passion’ energy coming from the Young Libs

Look at my new cup

I wish Labor would get back to what they are actually supposed to be and be a half decent opposition party. In a week where the Liberals have allegedly denied an asylum seeker the right to an abortion after being raped in an Australian detention centre,  and approved an environmentally damaging coal mine in Queensland, surely they could find something better to hound the Liberals on than a broken marble table?