by Don and Lyn Longo

Comrades,
There are many things about our liberal, consumerist and bourgeois society that drive us to anger, and even rage. And on a daily basis. Here are some of these things. It’s an open-ended list, so we urge you to add to it with your own grievances. I’ve tried to categorise them under headings, though there is a lot of overlap between the categories. They are in no particular order.

(Geo)politics

• Mr Harbourside Mansion – all front and no substance.

• The malcontent of the privileged.

• Nonsense about the death of ideology, used as an effective way of hiding ideology.

• The Left is ‘ideological’ or ‘extreme’; the Right is ‘sensible’ or ‘pragmatic’.

• The way gossip replacing politics, and personal stories are replacing ideology.

• Wealthy ex-politicians who tell you that the age of entitlements is over.

• Salaries of judges and politicians are increased periodically, but if there’s talk of the basic wage or pensions increasing, we’re told the economy can’t afford it.

Read more: Radicals' Rage

AN OPPORTUNITY TO ENHANCE AND PROGRESS AUSTRALIA’S NEED FOR GENUINE INDEPENDENCE AND SOVEREIGNTY IN A CHANGING GLOBAL CONFIGURATION

by Brian Boyd

(A snapshot review to encourage a broader, ongoing public debate)

February 2017

Introduction

The US presidential win by arch-conservative, billionaire Donald Trump (9.11.16) immediately stimulated an interesting debate in sections of the media about Australia’s broader standing in the global order and specifically about the possible future of the ‘alliance’ with the US superpower.

Events around his recent inauguration (21.1.17) provides a temporary line in the sand to review this initial media discussion and encourage a more wide ranging public debate around such an important national issue.

Read more: Trump U.S. Presidency

This article was a leaflet distributed by Spirit of Eureka at May Day rallies in a number of capital cities.

We're living in dangerous times, under the cloud of a major world war with devastating consequences for people and the environment.

The U.S. has put the world on a course of a major world war.  Military, economic and political tensions between the world’s big powers are building up rapidly in the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and east Europe, threatening all-out war.

Read more: No Australian Involvement in U.S. Wars of Aggression

by Humphrey McQueen

Chapter 17 from Japan to the Rescue, Australian Security around the Indonesian Archipelago during he American Century

Heinemann, 1991, pp.  285-94.

    ... the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.

            Wellington recalling Waterloo

Linked to the conviction that the Imperial Japanese Army intended to invade the mainland of Australia in 1942 is the belief that only a US naval victory at the Battle of the Coral Sea, fought between 7 and 8 May that year, prevented invasion.

Despite the vaunted position that the Battle of the Coral Sea occupies in Australian consciousness, there is no clear-cut answer to who won that engagement. All that can be given with certainty are the losses suffered at the time. The US Navy lost the carrier Lexington, the destroyer Sims and the supply tanker Neosho; the carrier Yorktown was badly damaged but capable of repair after forty-eight hours intensive labour. (Spector, 1987: 162) The Imperial Japanese Navy lost the small carrier Shoho and had its fleet carrier Shokaku so badly damaged that it was not able to rejoin the fleet at Midway f our weeks later. Japan also lost irreplaceable planes and pilots. On the ships sunk or disabled, the Japanese narrowly won the Battle of the Coral Sea, a fact which Allied naval historians have never denied, equivocate though they do about the strategic significance of Japan’s win.

Read more: Battles for the Coral Sea