En Passant

Canberra teachers have accepted a 6.1 pay increase over two years under a new deal with the Stanhope Labor Government. This is a defeat for teachers and the wider union movement in Canberra. How so? Headline inflation last quarter was 1.5 percent. Core inflation – the figure the Reserve Bank pays particular attention to – was 3.9 percent. […]

Tom Bramble has a long discussion piece online at Socialist Alternative about the world economy.

Solidarity with Palestine is as necessary and as justifiable as it was to oppose the Iraq war, or the apartheid regime in South Africa.

The time has come to challenge our liars about Afghanistan. Let’s build a mass movment to bring Australian troops home.

The U.S. economy, while almost certainly growing, remains mired in difficulties as workers continue to face downward pressure on their standard of living.

So our politicians have won an extra 3% while the low paid had their wages frozen.  (This is on top of various allowance increases which can become salary when not spent.) Now the usual suspects are lining up barking for more pay for pollies – including putative Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce who wants the PM’s salary trebled […]

Gaddafi is right. The UN is part of the problem, not the cure. When we see George W Bush in leg irons at the Hague then we will know that there is justice in the world.

In Venezuela itself, despite the real improvement in the lives of many ordinary people, the struggle for people’s power continues.

Wilson’s outburst gives confidence to racists and right-wingers – like the thousands of tea party demonstrators who gathered in Washington in mid-September.

In mid-September, a visiting Palestinian-American academic told a Melbourne lecture that Israel is an apartheid state, more extreme in its policy against Palestinians than South Africa had been against its Black population. Professor Saree Makdisi is one of a growing number who make such a comparison – usually provoking an outraged response from pro-Israel commentators. […]