“In God we trust, all others we monitor” — Interceptor Operators motto, NSA study, Deadly Transmissions, December 1970.
This chilling quote perfectly summarises the model from which the United States founded their Big Brother approach to intelligence, as more documents leaked by National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden show Australia plays a crucial role in the United States global surveillance operations.
Analysis
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s astounding announcement that all asylum seeker boat arrivals “from now on” would never be resettled in Australia and subject to a rigged offshore dumping deal with the Papua New Guinea government has shocked many.
At time of writing, the new date for the federal election had not yet been set, but we already know who won: Pauline Fucking Hanson.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced a policy so driven by irrational racism that even Hanson could only have fantasised about it ever coming true: no asylum seekers who arrive by boat will ever be resettled in Australia, instead dumped in Papua New Guinea.
You know, some people knock Rudd's achievements, but he's just made Philip Ruddock look like a great humanitarian, and that takes real skill.
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The election of the United States’ first black president was one of those moments. Most of us remember where we were when we first heard about it.
I happened to be on Palm Island, a small community off the coast of Townsville, now home to more than 3000 Aboriginal people from different corners of Queensland. "Palm" is a former black penal colony, and to get sent there you had to commit such heinous crimes as refusing to stop speaking your native tongue, or getting caught hanging around a white Queensland town.
It is now depressingly clear for all to see that whether Liberal or Labor win the coming Australian federal election, we are going to end up with a government that is more right-wing than the last.
How did it come to this? And how can we escape the political spiral to a moral abyss?
The politicians in the ALP and in the Liberal-Nationals who have shaped this latest reactionary turn in the spiral — most notably around attacks on refugee rights and climate change — cannot be let off the hook.
Kuwaiti-born doctor Ghaleb Jaber is prepared to follow in the footsteps of overseas-trained doctors (OTDs) who went on hunger strike in 1997 in Sydney and Melbourne to fight for their rights.
Jaber set up the Overseas Trained Doctors Network of Victoria five years ago. This network is organising a conference on July 26 to raise the issues facing overseas-trained doctors in the lead up to the federal election.
“We want them to listen to us this time,” Jaber told Green Left Weekly.
Former senator and Labor Party ALP national president Stephen Loosely observed that in the lead-up to the 2007 federal election the Howard government’s unfair work laws — known disingenuously as Work Choices — could not have withstood unionism’s industrial response had the previous Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser tried to introduce them.
But by 2006, an industrial campaign was beyond their capacity, a fact that was equally recognised by the unions.
In the two years preceding the 2007 election, the ACTU ran what was effectively an election campaign for Labor.
A Third World country suffering rising violence, rapes, political corruption and plagued by endemic diseases such as cholera and malaria will be the new dumping ground for Australia’s refugee arrivals.
— About 2600 young people were forced onto income management from July 1.
— 50% of their payment is withheld and credited to a BasicsCard that can be used only at specific stores.
— Income management affects people living in the NT, Bankstown in New South Wales; Logan and Rockhampton in Queensland; Playford in South Australia; and Shepparton in Victoria.
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Young people are being targeted under the federal government’s income management scheme.
The United States Supreme Court ruled on June 13 that human genes cannot be patented.
This surprise decision is a victory for women who need genetic testing to detect whether they carry a genetic mutation that increases the risk of developing breast and ovarian cancers.
But the ruling has much broader implications. It puts in jeopardy thousands of patents already granted on human genes over the past 30 years.
The Socialist Alliance released this statement on July 12.
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The Socialist Alliance recognises and welcomes the June 30-July 3, 2013, popular mobilisations of the Egyptian people, led by youth, for democracy, human rights and social and economic justice that brought down the regime of President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Newcastle resident, hip-hop performer and socialist activist Zane Alcorn is the Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Newcastle in the next federal election. Leela Ford spoke to Alcorn about the politics and messages he will bring to his campaign.
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How long have you been involved with the Socialist Alliance and activism in general?
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