Issue 49 : 17 – 23 June 2021

Why Jeff Bezos and his billionaire buddies should explode in space
Guy Rundle | Crikey
His sudden giant fireworks display would be a death befitting a pharaoh, and act as a counterbalance to the baleful effect of Amazon on the world, its ever-greater extension of buying and selling into the deeper corners of our life.

The effects on women of cashless welfare
Jane Caro | The Saturday Paper
Trials of the cashless welfare card are effectively removing an escape path for women who are trying to flee violent and abusive relationships.

Sexual assault survivors are gaining confidence to demand justice, but will governments deliver?
Van Badham | The Guardian
Does this local rise in reports of the world’s most underreported crime mean a new hope for justice for rape survivors

The Australian government wants to avoid the Great Barrier Reef being listed as ‘in danger’ at all costs
Imogen Zethoven | The Guardian
But the reef needs this listing to survive.

Climate change: Great Barrier Reef warning backlash a sideshow to catastrophe
Mike Foley | Nine Newspapers

Social assistance due to the pandemic helped but many households can’t make ends meet
Greg Jericho | The Guardian
Welfare assistance and public services such as education and health remain big drivers of a more equal society.

Effective marginal tax rate: The circle of hell that eats most of your pay rise
Michael Pascoe | The New Daily
David Plunkett specialises in finding pockets of hell and whole fields of purgatory in our tax and transfer system. In the hell category would be people paying an effective tax rate of 106 per cent on last week’s increase in the minimum wage.

Snap lockdown possible for NZ after trans-Tasman bubble breach
AAP | The New Daily

Australian Football Star Adam Goodes Took a Courageous Stand Against the Game’s History of Racism
Conor Flynn | Jacobin
The AFL’s most celebrated indigenous player, Adam Goodes, has declined to be inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame. His refusal is another act of resistance against the racism that has dogged his exceptional career — and football in general.

Why Goodes’ decision to reject Hall of Fame should be respected
Teisha Cloos | National Indigenous Times

Yolngu leader condemns 14 years of racist NT Intervention
Mark Guyula | Green Left

The Murugappan family and immigration detention
Behrouz Boochani | The Saturday Paper
The decision to transfer one of the daughters of the Murugappan family to Perth Children’s Hospital sent shock waves across Australia and abroad. Growing public pressure forced the Australian government to release the whole family into Perth community detention.

The Morrison Government’s three big furphies on the Biloela family
Abul Rivzi | Independent Australia

Sri Lanka is not safe for Tamils: bring the Murugappan family home to Biloela
Renuga Inpakumar | Green Left

Peru’s elites out to undermine ‘man of the people’ election victory
Guy Rundle | Crikey
By contesting the outcome of the Peruvian election with scant evidence, the country’s elites, and their international allies, are attempting a coup.

Peru: Leftist candidate wins, right cries ‘fraud’
Ben Radford | Green Left

The Global South has lost $152 trillion through unequal exchange since 1960
Dylan Sullivan | Progress in Political Economy

Australian workers must stand in solidarity with Palestine
Davey Heller | Independent Australia
Australia has the opportunity to join this rising working-class movement against the Apartheid Israeli state, as ZIM’s ships profits handsomely from shipping freight to and from the Australian ports of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

Rants and raves and bogus COVID claims: Sky News blows sky high in regional Australia
Cam Wilson | Crikey
As regional areas lose more and more of their local news, Sky has gained an increasingly receptive audience.

“Worse than burning coal”: Hunter Energy powers on bid to burn wood
Jane McIntyre, Tom Ferrier | Michael West Media

Kalbar’s exotic minerals mine a huge risk to Victoria’s food bowl
Elizabeth Minter | Michael West Media

Farm land prices hit record highs
Duncan B | Vanguard

Returned deputy PM threatens Australian agriculture in the name of coal
Bernard Keane | Crikey

Mother of all battles: Joyce allies back stay-at-home parents over childcare subsidies
Katina Curtis | Nine Newspapers

Robodebt: A multi-layered policy failure
Peter Whiteford | Progress in Political Economy

Protests force coal enthusiast to step down as Newcastle University chancellor
Kathy Fairfax | Green Left

Jean-Paul Sartre: between existentialism and Marxism
James Plested | Red Flag
French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, born on 21 June 1905, is remembered primarily as one of the main proponents of existentialism—a philosophy centring on the absolute freedom of the individual, which was popular in Europe in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Less known is his political activism and commitment, from World War Two onwards, to socialism.

The French Far-Right: Bogus ‘Detoxification’ Campaign
Vanguard