Stop Turkey’s war on Rojava

 [Speech at a rally in Melbourne on July 23.]

Socialist Alliance joins with you in calling for the United Nations to impose a no-fly zone over the liberated territory of North and East Syria — Rojava — to block a new invasion by Turkey and its Islamist mercenaries.

Open Borders or a First World Fortress?

[From Asylum! A Socialist View of the Refugee Crisis (2022).]

The spectacular August 2021 collapse of the Western puppet government in Afghanistan in the face of the Taliban offensive generated a new wave of people seeking asylum.

Prime Minister Scott Morison made it clear that only Afghans who came through “official channels” would be resettled in Australia. If you come by boat forget it — apparently, making the slightest concession to “boat people” would open the floodgates to the dreaded people smugglers. And none of the 4200 Afghans already here on temporary visas would be permanently settled. Then Defence Minister Peter Dutton weighed in, claiming that some Afghan asylum-seekers could be terrorists or pose a threat to Australia.

Introduction to Asylum!

[Introduction to the pamphlet Asylum! A Socialist View of the Refugee Crisis (2022).]

Our world is in chaos. Within countries and between countries, tens of millions of people in the Third World are on the move — they are fleeing war, oppression, gang violence, grinding poverty and escalating climate change. They are desperately looking for a way out.

And now the Russian invasion of Ukraine has produced a fresh crop of refugees. Being forced to leave your home and seek safety in another country will always be traumatic but for various reasons the Ukrainian refugees are generally being treated differently to those from the Third World.

As climate change bites deeper and deeper, the refugee crisis is only going to get radically worse. Whole regions of the world are on the cusp of becoming uninhabitable. This will result in very large-scale population displacement.

Hard rubbish collection: Endpoint of consumerism

The Melbourne suburb of Brunswick where I live is a long way from flood-ravaged Lismore and we’ve suffered no climate disaster but in some streets there is definitely a resemblance at the moment.

It's the biannual municipal hard rubbish collection!

I don’t know what it’s like in wealthy Toorak, but here it’s always a source of great local interest and amazement. This time there seems to be a lot more stuff and, along with the usual crap, some of it looks to be very good quality.