“Rich people got it good in this country”, said African-American comedian Wanda Sykes on the September 24 Tonight Show with Jay Leno. “We refuse to let them not be rich. Think about it. Broke people are about to bailout rich people. This is what is going on.”
Analysis
Dear Professor Garnaut,
In your recent letter to scientists and environmental groups, you asked for further input into your final report on the question of the 450ppm target and “overshoot”, and Australia’s position given the uncertainties about the outcome of future global negotiations.
Residents of Caroona, in the Liverpool Plains of New South Wales, are in their 11th week of a blockade that has stopped BHP Billiton from carrying out coal exploration on their land.
A dangerous precedent for an ambiguous anti-terrorism law has been set by the conviction of a majority of the 12 Melbourne Muslim men accused of constituting a terrorist cell. Almost all the charges were based on a law that turned on the definition of a terrorist organisation.
On September 24, Greens Senator Rachel Siewert tabled legislation that would establish a fund to compensate members and families of the Stolen Generations, but the Rudd Labor government is unlikely to support it.
The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, has threatened that Catholic hospitals could be forced to close emergency and maternity wards if a proposed bill to decriminalise abortion is passed.
To lobby or not to lobby? Fortunately for the Australian union movement our forebears in the union leaderships didnt spend much time trying to answer this question. Campaigns were more direct and more successful than todays so-called strategies of boxing smart and keeping your powder dry.
On the fateful evening of September 18, when Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Bank Chair Ben Bernanke pulled together a closed-door meeting to discuss the rapidly unfolding crisis plaguing the financial system, congressional leaders feigned shock and horror at its severity.
In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided and conquered. Turns in the class struggle might have surprised Walter Rodney, the political economist whose 1972 classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa provided detailed critiques of corporate looting.
Whether or not US Treasury secretary Henry Paulsons rescue scheme works, one thing is already crystal clear: The capitalist system has failed spectacularly. The following editorial was published by the US Socialist Worker on September 25.
In the room are a chemical engineer from a large mining/energy corporation, a solar energy engineer, a psychiatrist, a veterinarian, an artist and a construction worker. Also present are an ex-Labor Party activist, a Greens candidate in the 2007 election and a socialist student. Where do you find all these people, and more besides, in one room working for the one cause? At a meeting of Melbournes Climate Emergency Network (CEN).
On September 15, in his last full day as federal opposition leader, Brendan Nelson confronted the Labor government with a tin of baked beans and a jar of jam. “That is the reality for Australian pensioners: baked beans and jam sandwiches”, Nelson said, moving a censure motion against the government for its failure to agree to increase the Age Pension by $30 a week.
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