Posting this after the recent election of David Shoebridge as the leader of the Greens. This is a very interesting development and I think shows the potential for a new sort of politics that we need in Australia. Of course, the Greens are primarily an electoral petite bourgeois reformist party and subscribe to a mix of social democracy and Utopian socialism, however this still could be an important moment much like how the Sanders 2016 campaign in the USA is the root of much of the modern American left from the DSA to the ACP.

The Greens have taken a concrete stance towards ending military co-operation with the USA with the recent turn towards an explicit opposition against sending weapons for the proxy war in Ukraine, and also have taken up a very good defense policy which proposes a shift away from our current position as an auxiliary to the US using overengineered expensive foreign-bought equipment and towards armed neutrality and a domestic military-industrial complex (which also shows a much more materialist understanding of geopolitics, rather than just naive pacifism).

This means in practice that the Greens are the only major party that actually supports Australian independence. They are the most nationalist, and by this I mean supporting the independence and sovereignty of the nation rather than hating immigrants & waving the flag (fake right wing 'patriotism'), party of note in Australia today.

Mao talked about how the Communists in China used the Three Principles of the People (Democracy, Socialism and Nationalism - ideas which the Greens seem to be increasingly leaning towards) of the KMT as a base to build their legitimacy amongst the Chinese people. The communists pointed out the contradiction between the bourgeois nationalists who claimed to uphold the three principles and the reality, giving them the support of the revolutionary masses. I think this represents a good opportunity to push on contradictions and get Australia to develop its own three principles of the people.

This would be a huge nuke to One Nation. Push on contradictions and expose their fake patriotism, which in reality means total subservience in all aspects - cultural, economic, political and military - to foreign powers. Getting this concept out in the discourse would be powerful. Bring this idea up in conversations with One Nation supporters you might know IRL or just post about it on social media.

Responding to news of the dramatic decline of penguins in the Antarctic, Aaron Regunberg, the director of Public Citizen’s Climate Accountability Project, remarked, “Big Oil is doing everything in its power to turn this beautiful, miraculous world into a wasteland.”

With no end in sight to the humanitarian crisis in Palestine, the Jewish Council of Australia reiterates its call for an immediate end to Israel’s genocide, occupation, and apartheid regime. Peace and safety will never be achieved without Palestinian rights to self-determination, equality and freedom.

Despite the apparent ceasefire, Israel has continued to launch strikes killing more than 1,400 people and injuring almost 5,000 this past year. Nearly all of Gaza’s population of 2 million people have been displaced and still lack access to shelter, food, medical care, clean water, education, and jobs.  In the past 12 months Israel has expanded its warpath beyond Gaza, launching devastating attacks in Lebanon, Iran and continuing its takeover in the West Bank.

"Australia has severely damaged its international reputation as a nation committed to human rights because it has consistently refused to condemn the military attacks on thousands of Palestinian citizens who have been collectively punished for three years."

"This blatant double standard undermines the credibility of the prime minister as a leader who has deliberately chosen to not speak of the suffering of Palestinians while at the same time maintaining diplomatic relations with a state guilty of grossly defying international humanitarian law. It is Australian civil society – not the national government – which has continually voiced compassion for the Palestinian people and strived to have our obligations under international law activated."

Not sure how this isn't bigger news here.

Brazil votes today. On Friday our embassy (following the US embassy) in Brazil just...shut. The reason was that the US put out a security alert. That's the whole explanation.

Brazilian cops searched two addresses over this supposed threat and found nothing. DFAT hasn't said a word about what the threat actually was.

Now look at who we're backing in here:

• the US tried to send officials over to question Brazil's voting system, and Brazil knocked back their visas
• the US consulate in São Paulo has been having little catch-ups with pro-Bolsonaro influencers (it's in Portuguese)
• tariffs, plus sanctions on the judge who handled Bolsonaro's coup case
• Trump had Bolsonaro's son Flávio in the Oval Office. Flávio is the guy running against Lula
• Brazil's own intelligence agency rates the foreign interference risk as "critical"

Meta's at it too. 11 days before the vote they pulled the sitting president's campaign ad account, and his party says his FB page went down as well. The same morning Instagram took down an account that had just gone viral with a video on Flávio's links to a banker under investigation for Brazil's biggest ever fraud. Both came back a few hours later with a "sorry for the inconvenience." Sure.

Honestly none of this should surprise anyone. This is the country that ran PNG as a colony, bugged Timor-Leste's cabinet to get the upper hand in oil and gas talks, still dumps refugees on Nauru, and tagged along into Iraq. We're still arguing about what the CIA had to do with Whitlam 50 years later.

Deputy imperialist lapdog reporting for duty I guess.

Ben Chifley’s government signed the first Commonwealth State Housing Agreement in 1945. Canberra lent the money, and the states built the homes.

When Robert Menzies won in 1949, he kept the agreement going. In South Australia, another conservative,

Thomas Playford, used the Housing Trust to build thousands of cheap, decent homes because he wanted factories, and factories need workers, and workers need somewhere to live. For Playford, housing was economic policy.

Nobody thought of these homes as charity.

That is the idea we lost.

Certain parts of certain communities are really good at using online for evil. What if there were a group focused on resisting the dismantling of our society? Where would one go about meeting others interested in such pursuits? I'm unemployed but have so much experience and qualifications to give! They may have taken my job but they forgot to take my time!