Issue 79:  24 February to 2 March

## UKRAINE

Russia out of Ukraine! No to NATO! 
Socialist Alliance | Green Left
The Russian government is responsible for this terrible act of war. However, the relentless drive by the United States to expand NATO up to Russia’s border in order to encircle it militarily significantly frames the conflict. 

Russia’s war is rational, NATO is screwed. Deal with it
Crikey | Guy Rundle
In opposing this brutal invasion, the false notion that NATO expansion and US-UK-NATO imperialism played no role has been revived. The Left needs to deploy state realpolitik in assessing global affairs.

Putin is not Russia. He is a despot on borrowed time
The Age | Robert Horvath


Stop Pretending the Left Is on Putin’s Side
David Broder | Jacobin

The right to live without the roar of imperialist shells in Ukraine
Central Committee (CPA – M-L) | Vanguard
No corner of the world is safe from imperialist rivalry. Here the Coalition and ALP pledge total allegiance to the US imperialist regime. They and the media express outrage against invasion. Yet Australia is built on ongoing invasion and on dispossession of First Peoples. 

Solidarity with Ukrainian resistance and Russian anti-war protestors
Mick Armstrong | Red Flag

The Russian attacks on Ukraine are both immoral and illegal under international law but we ignore similar attacks by ourselves and our allies.
Scott Burchill | Pearls and Irritations

Putin v the West, Madness meets weakness
Alan Kohler | The New Daily
Putin’s calculation is that cutting off Russia’s exports would be too painful for the West and that sanctions other than that are bearable. He might be right.

## FLOODS, FIRES

New IPCC report shows Australia is at real risk from climate change, with impacts worsening, future risks high, and wide-ranging adaptation needed
Greta Peci et al | The Conversation
Australians will experience more deaths and ill health from heatwaves, as will our wildlife. Climate change will pose more of a threat to vulnerable Australians, such as those with inadequate health care, poor quality housing and unstable employment.

Water and settler-colonialism beyond methodological Atlanticism
Dallas Rogers | Progress in Political Economy

Flood victims in devastated Australian regional city denounce lack of government warning
World Socialist Web Site
“Virtually no one in these areas of Lismore is insured for floods. They either can’t get it or it is too expensive.”

Minerals and petroleum lobbies are not taxpayers (but guess who subsidises them?)
Stephanie Tran | Michael West Media 

UN warns Australia in danger of increased wildfires
Sue Arnold | Independent Australia
Australia can expect an increase in catastrophic wildfires according to a recently released UN report entitled Spreading like wildfire: The rising threat of extraordinary landscape fires.  

The Free Market Can’t Lead a Clean Energy Transition
Lyndal Rowlands | Jacobin
Although this seems like a massive task, a number of union- and community-backed cooperatives are already taking up the challenge.

## ONLY CONNECT

Real wages in Australia have tanked – and it can’t be hidden by the Coalition’s feeble scare campaigns
Greg Jericho | The Guardian

Essential workers versus the NSW state government 
Jordan Humphreys | Red Flag
Nurses, paramedics, train drivers, railway workers and teachers have all taken industrial action in NSW over the last twelve months. The Daily Telegraph has dubbed 2022 the “year of the strike”, while the Sydney Morning Herald, in an article written by Deborah Snow on 21 February, warns of an “autumn of discontent”.

Pat Anderson, Lidia Thorpe join calls to close Don Dale Youth Detention Centre
Stephen W Enciso | Green Left

Freelancers Get Organised
Jennifer Mills | Meanjin
Recent research by MEAA showed just how widespread the problems are. Average freelancer incomes are well below half the median wage. Even career journalists with years of experience writing for major outlets are regularly facing exploitation. 

Bongs, booze, and blackmail: on the hauntology of drugs 
Ben Brooker | Overland
Neither the photograph of Tame nor the tabloid media’s response to it truly belong to the present. We might say that, just as Derrida felt the post-Cold War order remained haunted by the death of communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union, so too do the ghosts of another, dying war—that, at least nominally, on drugs—go on stalking the present moment.

Fusion Power: Big Energy Fuses with Big Spin
Darrin Durant | Arena

The Coalition’s push for a single-sex sport law isn’t about sport or even politics – only cruelty
Van Badham | The Guardian
What Scott Morrison calls a ‘terrific’ bill is really the Liberals trying to legalise discrimination and pretend it’s got something to do with women’s equality.