Labor
Mulch Dropped On NSW State Forests To Prevent Bushfires
In a bid to fireproof the state for the remainder of summer Chris Minns has spread half a billion tonnes of mulch over the state’s bushland.
“We’ve been sending out Elvis the water sucking helicopter to hoover up all that asbestos rich mulch from Sydney’s parks and playgrounds and dump it over the state,” said the NSW Premier. “We now have the least flammable National Parks in history. We’ve demoted the fire danger from “Catastrophic” down to “Go Charging Through The Wollemi With A Flame Thrower Like A Hooligan And Stuff All Will Happen, We Dare You”.
The newfound use for their product has been a boon for the state’s besieged mulch suppliers.
“Hey stickybeak, we have no idea how that asbestos ever got into our mulch,” said some guy named Big Vinnie from the Corleone Mulch Company. “There’s certainly no truth to the rumour that we’ve secured the contract to ethically dispose of all the radioactive waste from the AUKUS submarines.”
Big Vinnie then suggested that it wasn’t wise to be asking too many questions about mulch to someone who owns a machine that can turn a solid log into mulch sized pieces and could easily do the same to a pesky reporter.
Peter Green
http://www.twitter.com/Greeny_Peter
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Canberra Braces Itself After Barnaby Is Tasked With Organising Albo’s Bucks
The sleepy little town of Canberra is bracing itself this week after it was announced that the Opposition’s shadow minister for home affairs, Barnaby Joyce, had been tasked with organising Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s upcoming bucks party.
”It’s an honour to be handed the reins to Albo’s bucks,” said the member for New England. ”I know Bill Shorten had put his hand up, but his idea of going knife throwing was quickly shot down.”
”I will make it a night to remember, well for those of us that don’t get blackout drunk, it will definitely be.”
When asked what could be expected at the upcoming bucks, Mr Joyce said: ”Well, usually what happens on a bucks stays on a bucks. But, as I’m keen to sell the story to the highest bidder I might give you a glimpse.”
”There’ll be the usual, you know, drinks, rippers a donkey show.”
”I know Albo likes his music, so I will definitely have to find a strip club with a good DJ.”
”Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get to work, these strippers won’t audition themselves.”
Mark Williamson
@MWChatShow
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Cartoon: Forced labor funnies
This cartoon is based on the AP story entitled "Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands" that was recently published here on DK. (It's a long piece, so if you're in a hurry, you can check out the AP’s "takeaways" article summarizing the report.) To put it briefly, prisoners are doing a lot more labor in the food supply chain than I think most of us realized. While some inmates choose to work, many are compelled to do so under threat of punishment. The 13th Amendment allows involuntary labor as punishment for a crime, so the practice -- which disproportionately affects people of color -- can look an awful lot like slavery. The Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, where inmates do farm work, is literally located on a former slave plantation.
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The New U.S. Labor Movement
The labor movement in the United States is passing through a transition from the stagnation of the period from 1980-2010 to a new period of dynamic change in industrial decentralization, new technologies, work, organization, union activism, and the enormous and enveloping issue of climate chan
The post The New U.S. Labor Movement appeared first on New Politics.
Coalition Backbenchers Busy Googling How To Polish A Turd
Coalition backbenchers worried about the pathetic polling of their leader, the Dark Lord Peter Dutton, have spent the day googling how to polish a turd in anticipation of shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor challenging for the leadership.
”It was always a risk putting Peter in the top job, but we just had no one else,” said a Coalition Spokesperson. ”We thought he might make a little ground, what with the cost of everything going up but he’s gone backwards.”
”Hopefully the public will have a bit of amnesia and not google for awhile so Angus Taylor can gain some traction.”
When asked why they weren’t focusing on new policies or positive engagement instead of looking at the leader, the Coalition Spokesperson said: ”Negativity and fear worked for Abbott, so why wouldn’t it work for us now.”
”Besides, being negative and spreading hate is like throwing red meat to the base.”
”Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and try and wipe Angus’s social media accounts and spread some vicious rumours about Albo.”
Mark Williamson
@MWChatShow
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Between Conflict and Collegiality: Palestinian Arabs and Jews in the Israeli Workplace
by Asaf Darr* The ongoing and fierce conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs is a daily reality in Israel, the country where I reside. As a sociologist of work and economic sociologist, I became increasingly interested in the ways in which the broader conflict is manifested in daily socio-economic encounters on the shop floor between […]
Social Research Introduces “Frontiers of Social Inquiry”
The Winter 2023 of Social Research, “Frontiers of Social Inquiry,” explores new and newly foregrounded areas of research and scholarship such as memory studies, inequality, race, and climate....
All they think about is money…
Fred Wright was a cartoonist for the United Electrical Workers of America (UE), from 1949 until 1984. Wright’s cartoons reflected the daily routines experienced by the working men and women: layoffs, discrimination, income inequality, industrial accidents, union-busting, etc. These realities of the class structure of capitalism were the basis for his artistic and activist work. […]
Palestine movement should welcome dissenting Labor members
Supporters of Palestine are rightly horrified by Albanese’s support for Israel as it continues to annihilate Gaza.
The ALP has a long history of support for Israel. Labor’s “Doc” Evatt, as Foreign Minister and President of the UN General Assembly, was one of the leading architects of the 1947 plan for the partition of Palestine.
In 1978, Labor leader Bill Hayden joined Malcolm Fraser at Camp David to celebrate the Egypt-Israel peace agreement, saying there, “My party feels a keen sense of involvement in the future integrity of an Israeli state.”
Bob Hawke, a staunch Zionist, first visited Israel in 1971 as president of the ACTU, where he described his meeting with then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir as “life-changing”.
But since the war on Gaza began 40 Labor branches have passed motions calling for a ceasefire and four Labor MPs have attended pro-Palestine rallies. Labor-controlled Canterbury-Bankstown Council voted to fly the Palestinian flag until a ceasefire is declared.
Even former Labor leaders such as Bob Carr and Paul Keating have condemned Israel’s war.
This raises the question of how the campaign for Palestine should relate to supportive Labor members and MPs.
Some activists argue that pro-Palestine Labor Party members should not be welcome in the movement unless they leave the party.
So far the Palestine Action Group has voted to exclude Labor speakers from the platform at their weekly rallies in Sydney. Many on the left, including the Greens, say that Labor is essentially the same as the Liberal Party.
But Labor MPs who speak out and break with Albanese and the Labor leadership’s position increase the political pressure on the Labor government over Palestine. More internal dissent makes it harder for the government to continue supporting Israel.
Palestine activists should encourage Labor members to support our demands and seek to draw them into the movement.
The involvement of dissident Labor MPs on speaking platforms will build the movement’s power through drawing in people who still look to Labor as a progressive force and are disappointed by its stance on Palestine.
Demanding that Labor members resign from the party as a condition of involvement will simply cut these people off from the campaign and weaken it. They are more likely to be won to the need for protest and action outside of parliament, and potentially pulled to the left, and out of the Labor Party, if they are welcomed into the wider movement.
Mass movements in Australia that have brought change, like the anti-Vietnam War, anti-uranium and women’s and Aboriginal rights movements, have always involved large numbers of Labor members and supporters. Rank-and-file Labor and union members have often challenged the leadership or party policy, as they did on Labor’s support for conscription in World War One or the Vietnam War in the 1960s.
Divided party
The existence of starkly conflicting views within one party is because Labor, like all social-democratic parties, is a contradictory force.
Labor is pulled in two directions, between its working class base on one hand and its desire to manage capitalism on the other. Labor, particularly when it is in government, consistently prioritises the profits and needs of the ruling class.
This explains why Albanese has gone from speaking at pro-Palestine rallies 20 years ago to now fervently supporting Israel, whose role as watchdog state in the Middle East is so crucial to the alliance of Western imperial powers, of which Australia is a part.
Labor’s support base among workers and sections of the left differentiates it from the Liberal Party, which is an out-and-out party of the rich. When Peter Dutton makes racist comments or calls for even greater support for Israel, there is virtually no disagreement from Liberal Party ranks.
Support for Labor among workers has undoubtedly diminished since the 1980s and Albanese won government with the lowest primary vote for Labor since 1934.
But there is still a class divide between the average Labor and Liberal voter. An opinion poll in 2021 showed a clear preference for Labor among lower income earners, and the opposite among the wealthy.
Crucially, unions still control 50 per cent of the votes at party conferences, meaning Labor has an organic connection with the organised working class.
Unionists for Palestine has shown the possibility of bring rank-and-file union members into the Palestine movement and pushing the leadership of individual unions, including the Teachers Federation and the Labor-affiliated ASU, to support the campaign.
Since many trade union officials and activists are Labor Party members, this also increases the pressure on the Labor party from within.
Rather than excluding Labor members, activists must build a united front and as broad a movement as possible if we are serious about ending Israel’s war and liberating Palestine.
By Caitlin Doyle
The post Palestine movement should welcome dissenting Labor members first appeared on Solidarity Online.