February 27, 2019 - click here for index of articles.
THE PEOPLE UNITED A letter from President Maduro
If I know anything, it is about people, such as you, I am a man of the people. I was born and raised in a poor neighbourhood of Caracas. I forged myself in the heat of popular and union struggles in a Venezuela submerged in exclusion and inequality. more ...
Editorial – To solve the housing crisis
There is only one thing that will create affordable housing and solve the current housing crisis – a massive revival of public housing and a revolution in how it is used. Nothing but a massive infusion of high-quality, publicly-owned housing of diverse types will challenge the choking dominance of the private market. more ...
Hands off Venezuela!
Over the weekend as part of the international weekend of actions in solidarity with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and its legitimate government, solidarity groups in Australia rallied against the economic sanctions, rejecting the coup d’état and saying no to military intervention. more ...
Crippling funding cuts for higher education research
Undergraduate students starting the new academic year will face an additional roadblock this year. The federal government’s university VET-FEE HELP vocational education scheme, which (they said) would help undergraduate students meet the crippling demands of the HECS fee system, has been so unhelpful that the government has been forced to introduce a new $10.5 million assistance scheme to provide additional financial assistance for students. more ...
Aged care – Pain and suffering
With another burst of stories detailing the pain and suffering being experienced by nursing home residents appearing in the media as the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety gets underway, the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) says it’s time we finally, and genuinely, acknowledge that the system has failed Australia’s most frail and vulnerable. Radical change is desperately needed, both to the system’s rules and the system’s culture. more ...
Not an accident, a crime – The Mines are Weeping
The bodies of 300 Brazilians have gone cold, drowned in the 13 million cubic metres of iron-ore sludge that swept out of a tailing dam at a mine owned by Vale – one of the world’s largest mining firms. Outrage was the normal emotion that greeted the news from Brumadinho, north of Rio de Janeiro. more ...
Human rights at risk from “tsunami” of privatisation
In a recent report to the UN General Assembly, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston (from Australia), said that existing human rights accountability mechanisms are clearly inadequate for dealing with the challenges presented by large-scale and widespread privatisation. more ...
Trump’s abusers
MIAMI: A federal judge’s ruling in Florida has added President Donald Trump’s Labour Secretary, Alexander Acosta, to the ever-lengthening parade of ethically suspect Trump Cabinet choices. And, in an eerie resemblance to how Acosta got the Department of Labour (DOL) job in the first place, Acosta got caught for the same reasons – exploitation of women in the #MeToo era – that forced Trump’s prior DOL nominee, business executive Andrew Puzder, to drop out. more ...
The capitalist illusion and the independent state
In this series on the Capitalist Illusion I have tried to expose as clearly and plainly as possible the exploitative class nature of the capitalist system at the level of both the individual worker and internationally. The next task is to clearly understand how all this is facilitated within borders, structures and laws, created by citizens of a state, in order for us to further understand the exploitative system and its ability to perpetuate itself. more ...
At the soup kitchen in Martin Place, Sydney, on the weekend, organised and run by the Communist Youth. It feeds the victims of capitalism every week. It builds a community of young volunteers.
Quote of the Week
Down there in the deep they are lying,
They died for nine shillings a day.
They worked out their shift and ’tis now they must lie
In the darkness until judgement day.
Song from the Gresford mine disaster, Wales – September 24, 1934
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Tuesday, February 26, 2019.
