Bob Gould
Michael Berrell’s political views are a strange mix. He supports the Chinese Stalinist regime against Tibetans struggling for autonomy, and he supports the Communist Party (Marxist) regime in Bengal cracking down on insurgent peasants who oppose being driven off their land for an industrial park owned by Western companies.
Bob Gould
I read Peter Murphy’s comment on Mark Aarons’ articles about unions and the Labor Party after returning last night from a rather heated debate between Aarons and Senator-elect Doug Cameron at Gleebooks, which Murphy and I both attended.
Bob Gould and Ed Lewis
It’s fairly rare for one individual to get a run on the same issue within a couple of weeks in the opinion pages of the competing broadsheet newspapers of the Fairfax and Murdoch press, but Mark Aarons is obviously saying something that the media owners like to hear.
Bob Gould
The Kurdish people, the largest nationality in the world with contiguous boundaries that wants a state but has never had one, have a saying: “The Kurds have no friends but the mountains.” That saying can be adapted in Australia to the situation of the economically poor and excluded, trade unionists, indigenous people, migrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds, refugees and the more exploited sections of small business. Those Australians, who are a majority, have, in practice, no friends but the voters and the trade unions.
A large and important rally at Parliament House, in Sydney
Bob Gould
This isn’t an end but a beginning, Unions NSW president John Robertson told the protest against electricity privatisation at the opening of state parliament for this year.
The rally drew about 12,000 people, and it was clear this rebellious movement is not about to go away, nor is Robertson. The estimate of 12,000 came from the platform, and it seemed accurate.
Bob Gould
Despite the usual tendency of Australian politics to go into recess in January, the developing struggle over electricity privatisation is shaping up as the first major political collision of the Rudd era.
Phil Sandford
Bernie Banton was a man of principle and a fighter for justice and his state funeral at Olympic Park on December 5 did him proud.
Trade unions, war on the waterfront, a pretty good time for dialectics
Bob Gould
Green Left discussion list, May 16, 2007
In their desperation at their failure to make any headway in the opinion polls, the ideologues of the Liberal-National Coalition are getting wackier by the second, as are the hysterical pundits of the ruling class in the media. Peter Costello even redbaited Kevin Rudd the other day in an extremely eccentric way, asserting that Rudd’s use of the word dialectic had a Marxist flavour.
Green Left Weekly discussion list, October 6, 2006
I’ve just noticed NSW Socialist Alliance convenor Duroyan Fertl’s post,without comment, of a media report celebrating the death of the Tree of Knowledge at Barcaldine.
Jenny Haines
Supporters of the 107 Leighton’s workers from Mandurah, WA, gathered at the Sydney Trades Hall on August 29, at a meeting organised by the NSW branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union. The rally was held on the day the workers were due to face court in Perth.
Jenny Haines
“Who’s got $28,000 sitting aside to pay for something like this? We are ordinary working-class people. We live from week to week. If we can’t pay, he will have to go to jail. I can’t sleep at night.” Bernie, mother of three, whose husband is among one of the 107 construction workers victimised for taking industrial action.
On July 24 I attended the solidarity evening held by the NSW CFMEU (Construction, Forestry, Minining and Energy Union), for the 107 West Australian workers who are facing $28,000 fines or jail under the Howard Government’s Orwellian-named Building Industry Improvement Act.
Bob Gould
The courageous English communist poet John Cornford, who had been moving away from Stalinism, sent his companion Margot Heinemann a moving poem from the Spanish Civil War, which began: “On a quiet sector of a quiet front”, and a few weeks later he was killed in battle.
Bob Gould
The new leadership of the DSP is having real problems trying to make reality fit its arbitrary schemas. Last Thursday night there was a successful and vocal official union demonstration against Howard’s industrial policies, focussed on the Howard 10th anniversary hoopla at the Westin Hotel.
