Economists warned on March 31 that the British government’s public-sector cuts will leave a shortfall of more than half a million jobs.
The New Economics Foundation (NEF) also warned that nowhere in the budget or “plan for growth“ was there “any evidence that the business tax cuts, regulatory tweaks and relatively minor changes to public-sector investment that are promised will deliver major economic transformation”.
Trade Union Congress general secretary Brendan Barber said the findings showed that “in recent years, the market has become the master, not the servant, of society”.
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The hypocrisy, double standards and selectivity displayed in the Western military action in Libya defy enumeration.
In Yemen and Bahrain, Western-backed regimes are violently repressing the democracy movement the West claims to back in Libya.
In Iraq, a US-sponsored regime protected by 47,000 US troops is trying to do the same —shooting demonstrators, detaining thousands and subjecting many to torture.
Modern ALP is a joke
I’m writing to comment on the interview with Andrew Ferguson in GLW #872. Was this a joke or fair dinkum?
Ferguson (and the dynasty he comes from) seems to me to represent everything that is wrong with the ALP.
Another union boss who never worked in the industry in which he was supposed to represent construction workers (three weeks or something as a stonemasons’ labourer ain’t what I call experience in everyday battling to survive).
Leonard Weinglass, a leading left-wing lawyer in the United States with an international perspective, died in the early evening on March 23, 2011.
Len, who died on his 78th birthday, fell ill in late January while in Cuba. In the first days of February, exploratory surgery at Montefiore Hospital discovered that he had inoperable cancer of the pancreas.
Lenny, a 1958 graduate of Yale Law School, became active in the US left lawyers’ organisation, the National Lawyers Guild, in the course of the civil rights movements of the 1960s.
Former ABC journalist Jeff McMullen attacked the federal government’s intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities as racist and harmful in a March 21 letter to indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin.
McMullen said Macklin had “not responded to the calls by an overwhelming majority of the Aboriginal leaders in … occupied communities to end the Intervention now”.
McMullen wrote in response to a letter Macklin sent him on March 2 that defended the intervention.
The US-NATO intervention in Libya, with United Nations Security Council cover, is part of an orchestrated response to show support for the movement against one dictator in particular.
In doing so, it aims to bring the Arab rebellions to an end by asserting Western control, confiscating their impetus and spontaneity and trying to restore the status quo.
It is absurd to think that the reasons for bombing Tripoli or for the French airforce’s “turkey shoot” (the bombing of fleeing Libyan soldiers) outside Benghazi are designed to protect civilians.
If the last federal election promised the beginnings of a break from the two-parties-for-capitalism electoral system that has plagued Australian politics for the last century, the March 26 NSW election seems to be a lurch in the other direction.
The Liberal-National Coalition won dominance of the Legislative Assembly and (with small right-wing parties) control of the Legislative Council because a large number of working-class voters punished the Labor party with a 13.5% swing in primary votes.
On March 29, pro-choice protestors gave Melbourne City Council (MCC) a clear message: don’t mess with our free speech rights!
Councillor Cathy Oke tabled a bulky tome — nearly 600 statements signed by individuals and organisations, telling the council to uphold the right to protest and stop using local laws against pro-choicers defending the Fertility Control Clinic in East Melbourne against anti-abortion harassment.
From the public gallery, placards demanding “Make Melbourne a free speech city!” underscored the message.
Five revolutions in postwar Latin America have seen illiteracy as a neocolonial battleground.
Salvador Allende’s Chile — birthplace of How to Read Donald Duck, an iconic attack on cultural imperialism — reduced illiteracy from 15.2% to 6.3% in under two years (1971-73), triple the rate of any regime before or since.
In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas slashed the Somoza dictatorship legacy of 50% illiteracy to just 13% before the end of its first full year in power (1980), catapulting women to cultural and political prominence in the process.
About 8000 people demonstrated for urgent action on climate change in Sydney's Belmore Park on April 2 in a powerful counter-mobilisation to a 2000-strong climate deniers rally led by right-wing radio shock jocks Alan Jones and Chris Smith from Radio 2GB held in Hyde Park.
The climate deniers rally was a repeat of a similar-sized rally held in Canberra a week earlier and is part of an attempt to build a right-wing populist Tea Party-style movement as exists in the US.
The climate change activists rally was organised by the internet-based group GetUp!
For many years, competitions granting prizes have been a successful tool used by marketers to try to promote their cause or business.
However, there should be great concern when the prize up for grabs represents sexist ideas and targets women who feel inadequate about their appearance.
Last month, Sin City Nightclub on the Gold Coast promoted breast enhancement surgery “worth $10,000” as a competition prize.
The pro-democracy movement in Bahrain has been severely weakened by the brutal wave of repression that began on March 15.
Attempts to reignite pro-democracy protests have been broken up by government security forces and strikes have been called off.
Troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates entered Bahrain on March 14 to help the Bahraini government “restore order” by attacking thousands of pro-democracy protesters.
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