Issue 14 – 15 October to 21 October 2020

October 22, 2020March 26, 2021 editor

Acting on climate change can get us out of recession. There are no excuses left
Greg Jericho The Guardian
Acting on climate change boosts growth in the short term and massively prevents economic destruction later.

Bernie Sanders and the left: what happened?
Mick Armstrong, Red Flag
The two presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders have culminated in the US left coming under enormous pressure to fall in behind the neoliberal Joe Biden. Where did it all go wrong?

It’s Not Enough to Fight — Labor and the Left Have to Be Serious About How to Win
Jane McAlevey, Jacobin
Unions and the Left across the globe have the power to defeat the billionaires. But doing this requires we learn the best traditions of labor organizing — and that we talk to people who don’t already agree with us and win them over to our side.

America’s electoral counter-revolution
Nicole Hemmer, Inside Story
What the Republican Party is attacking is democracy itself. To understand how this anti-democratic politics emerged, it’s first necessary to understand how Americans came to embrace broad democracy.

Next to Trump, even Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison look good
Van Badham, The Guardian
The US president has lowered the bar so much, the rest of the world is happy to settle for underperforming leaders. Morrison delegates leadership itself to state premiers, who front daily press conferences in various grey states of exhaustion

Australia’s biggest criminal threats are aided by our largest companies
Bernard Keane, Crikey
The government has long insisted the biggest threat to our security comes from sinister figures operating online. In fact it comes from some of our highest-profile companies failing to enforce the law.

Abetz’s questioning tests our democracy
Osmond Chiu, Meanjin
Little did I know when I appeared before a Senate committee last week that I would be subjected to a national controversy about loyalty tests.

No ‘bang for buck’: Budget is big on political correctness, weak on job creation
Ross Gittins, Nine
The government has chosen budget measures based on how well they fit the government’s “core values”, not on whether they’re likely to deliver “bang for buck” – maximum jobs per dollar spent.

From Rebel Teas to marching bands: A year of protest culture in Chile
Sandra Cuffe, Green Left Weekly
October 18 marked one year of mass protests for systemic change in Chile and one year of brutal repression

The coming COVID science sh*tstorm: responding to the Great Barrington Declaration
Jeremy Baskin, Arena Online
Progressives should make sure not to fall into the same traps over calls to “open up” as they did over climate change, even though all the triggers are in place for them to do so. Differences over COVID strategies, as over climate change, are not mainly about science.

The Alt-Right’s Star Racist Propagandist Has No Regrets
Daniel Lombroso, The Atlantic
Lauren Southern could spew racist propaganda like no other. But the men around her were better in one thing: trafficking in ugly misogyny

Bolivia and the thesis that the Pink Tide is over
Luis F Angosto-Ferrandez, Progress in Political Economy
The results coming in on the Bolivian election give an opportunity to test the limits of the debates over resource nationalism and the Pink Tide is Over thesis

How Australia’s Labor Movement Helped Build Neoliberalism
Elizabeth Humphrys, Jacobin

The ‘Unlock Hospitality’ campaign is cooked
Chris di Pasquale, Red Flag

Dark clouds descend on PM in the Sunshine State
Paul Bongiorno, The Saturday Paper

Gender, power and corruption: The case of Gladys Berejiklian
Binoy Kampmark, Independent Australia

Erasing Culture: The Attack on Critical Education – Arena
Jasmine Pfefferkorn, Arena Online

Political leaders such as Premier Berejiklian are getting away with murder
Sue Arnold, Independent Australia

Conflicted cuts at the Audit Office
Kate Griffiths & Danielle Wood, Inside Story

Cox Plate snafu reveals Victoria’s messy relationship with racing industry
Bernard Keane, Crikey

Emails show Qantas promotes climate action in public, betrays carbon commitments in private
Elizabeth Minter, Michael West Media

Julian Assange and the fight against digital capitalism
Yanis Iqbal, Green Left Weekly

Australia’s post-Covid jobs snapback is all about part-time work | Greg Jericho
The Guardian

‘Poor Gladys’ spin goes into overdrive, but voters are no closer to the truth
Janine Perrett, Crikey