Labor’s Assistant Minister for Defence Matt Thistlethwaite has embarrassingly confirmed that the two amounts of $A4.7billion gifted to the US and UK miliary machines in an effort to pump prime the AUKUS arrangements will not be refunded if the arrangements fall apart.

On  July 19, 2012, armed fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) captured the city of Kobane from government forces in north-east Syria.

This article is republished with the kind permission of the author, Marxist historian Humphrey McQueen.  It first appeared on the Pearls and Irritations website on July 13, 2024-eds.

An often-overlooked way in which Australia is kept dependent on foreign powers is through access to space. Since this country currently has no orbital launch ability of its own (this could change later this year with Gilmour Space’s Bowen Orbital Spaceport granted Australia’s first orbital launch facility licence), Australian satellites must be launched on foreign soil by foreign, typically American or French, space programs. 

Discussions taking place at the highest levels of the Israeli state have revealed planning for prolonged control of Gaza and the West Bank along neo-colonial lines. While various policy options are being considered, none have included any reference to granting recognition of a Palestinian state in accordance with United Nations recommendations decades ago.

Twenty Australian Manufacturing Workers Union maintenance workers employed at the Burnie (Tasmania) plant of Canadian-owned dairy processor Saputo have been on strike for a month.

Why in one of the richest countries in the world do we have to scramble to get by?
People have trouble paying for the roof over their heads, stressed by the costs of putting food on the table, fuel in the car and paying power bills.
Why? 

Two important webinars, one recently held and the other still to come, are building the people’s movements against imperialism.
On July 4, the Australian Anti-AUKUS Coalition (AAAC) presented a webinar titled “Independence – Breaking the US Stranglehold in Australia.”

ALP Senator Fatima Payman resigned from the ALP last week after courageously "crossing the floor" of the Senate to support a Greens motion that Australia recognize a state of Palestine. 

Last May we published an analysis of conditions In Russia by our comrades in the Union of Maoists of the Urals. Today, they have sent us the following update which will be of interest to Australian anti-imperialists. Long live the proletarian friendship between the workers of Russia and Australia-eds. 

In the wake of intense demonstrations against the Finance Bill 2024 and the consistent, resolute demand for the resignation of President William Ruto, the President has made a belated and insincere about-face, declaring that he shall not consent to the bill and ostensibly acceding to the people's demands. This disingenuous capitulation comes only after Ruto ordered the brutal murder of more than 10 confirmed protesters and unleashed death squads to ...

A brief political assessment about Thailand in the Australian business press has revealed widespread concern about a likely resurgence of opposition forces in one of the most important US-led centres for regional defence and security and trade. Thailand, historically, was and remains a major diplomatic player in South-east Asian affairs, including the ASEAN trade bloc. Any return to previous widespread opposition to the traditional centres of Thai power are likely ...

Following French President Macron’s decision to withdraw the “thawing” of citizenship in New Caledonia, the vindictiveness of the French bourgeoisie has only heightened.

For the last few mont  Corporation  hs union members of the AMWU and CEPU have been taking industrial action against the federal government owned Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC) at Osborne Naval Base in South Australia.

The recent state visit by China's Prime Minister Li Qiang to Australia took place under intense media scrutiny. The media coverage, nevertheless, was highly misleading, as was intended. The US-led trade war with China, for example, was not openly discussed yet remained the main factor behind the high-level Australia-China diplomacy.

Imprisoned Australian journalist Julian Assange is free - bar the formality of an appearance before a US court in the US Marianas Islands tomorrow.

Arundhati Roy was the youngest winner of the prestigious Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 for The God of Small Things . Then aged 36, she emerged as an activist campaigning on behalf of India’s poor and marginalised, the same people whose lives she had written about in her novel.

The national anthem lies about our country. There’s golden soil in Australia but the natural wealth is not for toil.
It’s like there’s two Australias: a corporate wonderland for foreign investors and a labour camp of battling to make ends meet for hard working people in the one nation.

We are reproducing a June 15 statement by the Communist Party of the Philippines. The parallels with anti-Chinese hysteria manufactured by US sycophants in Australia are plain to see.  Here, a so-called “former spy for China’s secret police network” alleged on ABC’s Four Corners that there were 1200 Chinese spies targeting Chinese dissidents in Australia. In 2021, Australia's intelligence chief Mike Burgess, without naming India, said his agency had investigated ...

Diplomatic statements invariably reveal far more than they contain; the recent high-level visit by Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles to Honiara proved no exception to the general rule. Timed to coincide with the establishment of a new Solomon Island's government, the diplomacy highlighted the strategic significance of the small South Pacific country for Australia's specific Cold War military and security considerations and general 'US interests'.