En Passant

Liberal Party Prime Minister Scott Morrison and billionaire wannabe re-minted politician Clive Palmer have struck a preference deal. The Liberals will preference Clive Palmer’s aptly named United Australia Party, ahead of Labor. It is aptly named because it is a return to the 1930s, when the UAP was the party of Lyon and Menzies. In […]

Turnbull Government intervention could save the Whyalla steel works and the Queensland Nickel plant in Townsville. By occupying the plants workers could put nationalisation on the agenda.

The sacked Queensland Nickel workers could consider occupying the plant and demand Palmer pay them all out of his own wealth until money starts flowing again from refining nickel.

The action of governments of both persuasions in Australia in joining the US-led China containment program is more of a worry to the Chinese ruling class than the caterwauling of a few PUPs.

There is something else in the outrage about Lambie’s ‘package between their legs’ comments. Apparently women shouldn’t express sexual feelings. It is as if women are mere objects of male desire, asexual receptacles of male lust, not people with their own desires, not subjects of their own.

In this the commentariat reflects the oppression of women in our society, an oppression born of capitalism’s need for the next generation of workers to be raised on the cheap, ie in the family. To allow or acknowledge that women have individual personhood outside narrow stereotypes might challenge that important role of women in capitalist society.

The response to Lambie’s comments shows that deep down the ruling elite have not left the 1950s. I’m with those millions of working women and men who say good on her.

Sandra Bloodworth in Red Flag writes that sneering middle class elitism directed at the Palmer United Party senators just gives credence to the conception that the left is sympathetic only to the inner city university educated and only serves to push the disaffected into the arms of populists like Palmer.

I love it when thieves fall out. The front page of The Australian today (Saturday) has analysed the tax position of Clive Palmer’s companies. They haven’t paid tax for 6 years. I am so looking forward to the Australian’s forensic analysis of the tax position of News Corpse both in Australia and globally. Black kettle […]

Changing Labor leaders would be like changing deck chairs on Clive Palmer’s new Titanic. Labor’s embrace of neoliberalism from 1983 has left it high and dry, with no wind in the sails and no steam in the engines. Its iceberg approacheth.

When the Sun kings of profit get challenged the ideology of their empires is threatened and the nudity of their worth stands for all ordinary working people to see. So having not lived in the real world of work, of labour, they do what they always do – invent a self serving story.

If the economy worsens or the Greens actually begin to exercise some power instead of being Democrats in waiting, what Palmer said about them will be a small taste of much worse to come as the rich maggots squirm and worm to protect their rotting patches.