“China’s role in the world today is among the most hotly contested issues in international politics. How we view China and its relationships to other countries powerfully shapes how we view the future of the world — including the future of Australian society. China is the largest country by population and has become a world […]
Review Essay: The Party and International Solidarity: by Nick D.
John Percy’s book, Keeping the Red Flag Flying was published in 2020 by Interventions. It focuses on the 1990s and early 2000s when the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) was the largest revolutionary socialist group on the Australian left. As it follows Percy’s two books, A History of the Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance, Volume 1: 1965-72 (2005) and, Against the Stream, […]
Why Australia is an imperialist country by Max Lane
Australia is a small country of 25 million people. It ranks between 12th to 14th in the world in terms of the overall size of its economy. Although the gap between it and the large population, industrialised countries is substantial. Its military spending, ranking also around 12th in the world, therefore matches its ranking in […]
Article: Stopping the boats is about smashing social solidarity by Max Lane
(This article was first published in RED FLAG newspaper on June 18, 2015.) It seems fairly certain now that Australian Customs and Navy personnel paid the captain and crew of an Indonesian ship carrying 65 asylum seekers, including children and a pregnant woman, to take the Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis and Burmese back to Indonesia. Sixty-five desperate […]
ARTICLE: Widodo, the death sentence and Indonesia’s political vacuum – by MAX LANE
I do not know what the prospects are that President Widodo will stop the current implementation of the death sentence for people convicted of drug related crimes. There is nothing in any of Widodo’s statements that indicates a change of mind on this issue. In a recent interview with Al Jazeera he reaffirmed his decision stating […]
ARTICLE (Refugees): Is Australia engaging in piracy? by Max Lane
(First published in THE JAKARTA POST, February 12, 2014.) It would appear that at least three times in recent weeks, the Australian navy and also the customs service has detained Indonesian and other foreign citizens traveling on boats heading for Christmas Island, a territory under Australian sovereignty. They were people intending to claim refugee status […]
COMMENT: Refugees, burned hands and not making compromises – by Max Lane
On January 22 the Australian Broadcasting Commission radio, TV and website as well as the Sydney morning Herald and The Age published reports that refugees that had been intercepted on the sea by Australian navy vessels had been tortured by navy personnel. According to the refugees, they had been forced to hold on to hot […]
“The ‘prickly’ relationship between Australia and Indonesia”: an article from 1995 by Max Lane
“Words May Be Consensual, But The Actions Are Confrontationist.” by Max Lane Sydney Morning Herald, 19 September 1995 +++++++ IT’S SURPRISING that any observer of Indonesian society and politics could accept the official line that Indonesia’s approach to the resolution of issues is “consensual”. Indonesian politics during the three decades of the self-styled New Order has […]
VERY SHORT COMMENT: The polls, the ALP and the Greens.
With the decline of the trade union movement (primarily due to the acquiescence of its bureaucratic caste leadership to the 1980s Prices-and-Incomes Accord and consequent demobilisation) and the connected decline of ALP activist membership, there are few (if any) mechanisms to know clearly the political thinking of the “public”, the working class, who make up […]
SHORT COMMENT: On feminism and feminism
Over the course of the last twelve months, due to developments in the small Australian, British and Indonesian lefts, the issue of the Marxist orientation to feminism has become higher up in the current discussion agenda. Over the last 30 years, I have been part of a tradition that has tried to explain the origins […]
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