Slavery, while intensely profitable for the bourgeoisie, ran counter to capitalism’s ostensible ideology: liberté, égalité, fraternité. A resolution to this contradiction was needed, and came about in the concept of race
Geography Archives: Australia
Scorched earth: capitalism, climate change and Australia’s bushfire threat
Bushfires have always been part of Australia. Even before the first human settlers arrived around 50,000 years ago, fires sparked by lightning strikes were a feature of the landscape for at least 30 million years.
Taming the gig economy
On May 21 Australian Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt introduced a small but potentially significant private member’s bill into the House of Representatives.
BP slip-up says its all about big business and the environment
It’s like something from satirical website the Onion or Australia’s Betoota Advocate.
Recycling crisis is capitalist business as usual
Recycling isn’t complicated. Households and businesses separate their recyclables from the rest of their rubbish and put them out for collection. This material then is supposed to be sorted and made into new products–a small but important contribution to sustainability in a world awash with waste.
The fight over free speech on campus
On university campuses around the world, “free speech” is becoming the favourite slogan of the right, sure to be raised during campus political controversies.
Melbourne protesters defy cops, challenge Milo Yiannopoulos
Milo Yiannopoulos, an avid and notorious alt-right figure, ended his night with several hundred anti-fascist protesters. Joined by residents of the Flemington and Kensingston commission flats, protesting and showing the need for radical anti-capitalist defiance against fascists, such as Yiannopoulos.
Class and Inflation in Australia
Just as the slump in the US economy threatens to trigger a global recession, Australian authorities have pronounced inflation ‘public enemy number one’ and are trying to slow growth. They tell workers to ‘exercise wage restraint’. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Industrial Relations Minister Julia Gillard and Treasurer Wayne Swan sing the same tune: workers […]
Class Warfare and the Australian Elections
The November 24th Australian election has resulted in a sharp defeat of the neoliberal pro-US John Howard government, and a victory for the slightly less neoliberal and pro-US Kevin Rudd of the Australian Labor Party. But what has not been much noticed in global commentary on the result is the intense class struggle atmosphere in […]
The End of a Racist Union Basher: The 2007 Election in Australia
Not only did conservative Australian Prime Minister John Howard lose the election last Saturday in a landslide, he may have lost his seat as well. The Australian Labor Party now controls all nine Australian governments: State, Territory and federal. Industrial relations was the key issue in the election. Years of campaigning against the anti-Aboriginal and […]
Australian Troops Occupy the Outback
After practicing in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Solomon Islands, Nauru, and East Timor, the Australian Government is invading and occupying outback Aboriginal communities with soldiers and police. Conservative Prime Minister John Howard declared a “national emergency” on June 21 over sexual abuse of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory. The trigger was said to be […]
The Music of Industrial Relations and the Reality of the Australian Labor Party
Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd and his deputy Julia Gillard are performing three different and sometimes discordant tunes as they ride high in the polls and promote their industrial relations policy. This is not just a matter of vote maximising; it tells us a lot about the nature and transformation of the Australian Labor […]
Australian Troops Are Back in Timor
Australian troops are back in Timor. But this time, their imperialist agenda is a lot more obvious. In 1999, the people of East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia. The Indonesian military and its puppet militias retaliated by wrecking the place and killing over 1,000 people. Australian Prime Minister John Howard then sent in […]
Perth, Australia, 18 March 2006
The demo in Perth on 18 March 2006 was attended by about a thousand people, down substantially from the size of demos before the beginnng of the Iraq War. The majority of people out in downtown Perth on Saturday were shopping. They weren’t hostile — rather, openly indifferent or mildly curious about the people who […]
