All the children come back
The children come back
The children come back
Yes I came back
– Archie Roach, ‘Took the children away’

When Kevin Rudd made his sorry speech to the stolen generation in the Australian parliament on 13 February 2008 they should have played Archie Roach’s song ‘Took the children away’.… Go to Article

“We are not wankers, the supply crisis is due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine“.” – spokesperson for the Lamborghini Association of Australia (LAA).

Editor’s Note: The following story by Michael West is not satire or parody; it is based on actual events.

Business is calling for urgent government intervention to address crippling shortages of Lamborghinis on the East Coast of Australia, according to an exclusive report in the Australian Financial Review.… Go to Article

“Il sòcul dal civàl al tociarà la ciera, lizèir coma ‘na pavea, e al recuardara se ch’al è stat, in silensiu, il mond e chel ch’al sarà.

“The horse’s hoof will touch the ground, light as a butterfly, and it will remember what the world has been, in silence, and what it will be.”… Go to Article

This is the official announcement to tell you that the next 17 Group talk will occur at 7 pm on Wednesday the 3^rd of August.  It will once again be at what used to be called the Paddo Workers’ Club, and is now called the BWCC – 2 Latrobe Terrace ( cnr Given Terrace), Paddington. … Go to Article

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
– Samuel Coleridge, Kubla Khan

I like the good professor’s answer to the question: “Why do people take drugs? The most obvious and natural answer is because they like them.”… Go to Article

The Big Ride for Palestine 2022 is to be held throughout Australia between 13th August and 28th August 2022. This year, I intend to do a virtual ride from Nablus on the West Bank up to the Lebanese border and back to Jerusalem, a distance of 329 kms. I will be riding around Brisbane/ Meanjin the country of the Jagera and Torrubul people.… Go to Article

“Those children who looked at me smiling cheerfully… they were beautiful because they radiated from their carefully patched clothes and shoes a kind of absorbed dignity that sparkled from their eyes and spread like an aura around their person.” – Tito Maniacco

I had the good fortune to be present at a conversation between an author, Valentina Maniacco, and Stephanie Green at the Dante Alighieri Society in Brisbane on Friday 29 July 2022. … Go to Article

FOCO NUEVO Asleep at the Reel / Jumping Fences Friday 5th August 31 Arras Street, Yeronga Doors open 6.00 p.m. Music starts 6.30 p.m. $10 admission  (Eftpos available)

Click here to reserve seats at Foco Nuevo

This month Jumping Fences will be joined by guests Asleep at the Reel, for our next house concert in our inviting garden setting.

… Go to Article

“The world was created in six days, and nothing has ever been on schedule since.” – Young Irish forester, Dermot Mangan, sent to buy timber poles in Finland for the Irish Rural Electrification Scheme.

This is Part II in a series dealing with the political economy of electricity in South-East Queensland and beyond.… Go to Article

Registration

Opening ceremony and Prologue… Go to Article

The Peoples Forum on the war in Ukraine gave perspectives from people as far away as Australia. The views expressed were critical of both Russia and NATO. Little was said about the security forces and spy agencies embedded in Ukraine by the United States and other NATO countries. This is a shame because mainstream media has been silent on foreign interference in that country.… Go to Article

This is part of a series about the political economy of electricity, an invention of the 19th century that eventually penetrated to most towns and villages around the globe and even to the west of New South Wales during the Great Depression. This story begins in a small town to the west of the Great Dividing Range, further out than the fertile Bathurst Plains stolen from the Wiradjuri people by the first wave of settlers during the Homeland Wars of the 1820s.… Go to Article

Raymond Evans has sent in this review of Stephen Gapps first comprehensive account of the Bathurst War, 1822–24 in Gudyarra: The First Wiradyuri War of Resistance – the Bathurst War, 1822-1824. This book is interesting because it increases the case for a re-evaluation of Australia’s colonial history. It may be no accident that while the Black Wars were raging in the colony of Van Diemen’s Land the colonists from Port Jackson were murdering Wiradyuri people on the fertile plains around Bathurst.… Go to Article

We publish this research paper by Vivien Fleming about the Catholic Workers in Brisbane/Meanjin. Vivien is now embarking on a PhD to provide a comprehensive history of Brisbane’s CW from the 1980s to date. Any assistance that you can provide Vivien would be greatly appreciated.

Vivien’s contact is vivien.fleming@hotmail.com

In 1987 I helped print the Christmas edition of Mutual Aid on the offset press of LeftPress Printing Society (which is still going).… Go to Article

__oOo__

The Solomons

“If you want peace, prepare for peace, not for war” says IPAN

Defence Minister Peter Dutton’s talk of war is dangerous to all in the Pacific

• The beneficiaries are the weapons manufacturers
• War with China is a lose-lose scenario
• Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports annual US $2.11 trillion spending on military
• Mature leadership is needed for peace and a secure environment

 
Mr Dutton today again used scare tactics in an apparent desperate bid to see his government re-elected at the upcoming federal election.… Go to Article

Postponed fundraiser back on track. Please SHARE with anyone who may be interested. Please book for catering. #FreeTheRefugee – End Temporary Visas

SATURDAY, JULY 23, 2022 AT 7 PM

Songs of Working Life Fundraiser 2022

ETU Building 41 Peel St, South Brisbane QLD 4101, Australia

EVENT – Songs of Working Life Fundraiser 2022 with Phil Monsour.… Go to Article

Europeans, you must open this book and enter into it. After a few steps in the darkness you will see strangers gathered around a fire; come close, and listen, for they are talking of the destiny they will mete out to your trading-centres and to the hired soldiers who defend them.… Go to Article

We publish this obituary for recently assassinated former Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe (安倍 晋三, Abe Shinzō) by Humphrey McQueen. It is a somewhat less starry eyed portrait than what we are hearing from the mainstream press including the national broadcaster and our own recently appointed PM, Antonio Albanese.… Go to Article

On June 2, Energoatom signed a new agreement with the US-based Westinghouse Electric Company that will enable Ukraine’s nuclear power plants to get all their fuel from Sweden instead of Russia. Where is the Ukraine going to get its uranium to fuel this project? From Sweden? I don’t think so. It takes a lot of time and capital to build a nuclear power plant.… Go to Article

POP Gallery Fortitude Valley Wednesday 6^th– Saturday 16^th July

Opening night Friday 8^th 6pm 

Principal organiser Ms Barbara Hartley available for interview: 0404 997 231

Special guests on opening night include the Japanese Consul Mr Masuo Ono, Prof Marianne Hanson ICAN, Dean St John’s Cathedral Dr Peter Catt, Councillor Jonathan Sri and Mr Robert Anderson OAM Ngugi Elder from Mulgumpin in Quandamooka.… Go to Article

NEWSLETTER July 2022

Poetry in Motion XX 6:00 for a 6:30pm start Tuesday 26th July 2022 ETU Rooms 41 Peel Street, South Brisbane. Entry via Maryvale Street. Bring a plate to share! Celebrate the 69th anniversary of the attack on the Moncada Barracks, marking the beginning of the Cuban Revolution. Now in its 20th year our celebration will feature live music, including the Combined Unions Choir, Jumping Fences, Ovidio Orellana and Musica Rebelde, and readings of poetry from the Cuban Revolution.

… Go to Article

This new Olympic flame behold,
that once burned bright in Greece of old;
with happy hearts receive once more
these Games revived on London's shore.
- Boris Johnson 

Last Saturday the London Pride march in solidarity with women suffering under the defeat of Roe v Wade in the US went right through some of the Monopoly board streets and participants got an great view of the beautiful carved stone.… Go to Article

Prisons are an attack on working class people. We provide details of the latest attempt to reform Queensland prisons below. We thank the organisers of a blueprint to break the cycle of incarceration and the follow up on Keith Hamburger’s Presentation at the Group 17 Meeting 29.06.22.

Much is made of reform to assist indigenous break out of the cycle of imprisonment.… Go to Article

Mairead MaGuire made history with the work she did to bring an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland. I met her at the Dublin conference in 2018. An amazing woman.

Annette

To: The Norwegian and U.S. Governments

There must be no U.S. bases or troops in Norway!

ADD YOUR NAME.… Go to Article

If you get a chance you have got to watch the new ABC series of Mystery Road set in WA. It is interesting in that most of episodes,  the screenplay writers are first nations people, must be a first.  Here is a wiki entry for one of the screen writers:

Kodie Bedford was born in Western Australia of the Djaru and Gija people on her father’s side and Irish and English on her mother’s.… Go to Article

ANU Chamber Choir director Tobias Cole sees parallels between Julian Assange and the persecuted Christ when he reflects on Handel’s Messiah.

POPULAR doesn’t quite say it: Messiah may well be the most performed piece of classical music. It’s certainly the most hummed – everybody must know the first 10 words of the Hallelujah Chorus – actually, it’s one word: “Hallelujah” repeated.… Go to Article

“the wage system and employment are permanent industrial relations, and within their limits the proletarian must bargain to gain a little here and forego a little there, so that the representative leader becomes the arbitrator or ‘business agent’ of the union… The union leaders have therefore used their working class as a stepping stone by which to lift themselves into a more comfortable and secure position…” – Winspear, Economic warfare.… Go to Article

Art & Activism in a nuclear age

This flyer was handed to me at Foco Nuevo last night where people braved cold and rain to hear great performances by Jumping Fences and Robin Etter-Cleave and Brian Brett singing Canadian ballads and Irish songs on Canada Day. Getting in the spirit of Canada Day Sue Monk sang a beautiful version of Joni Mitchell’s haunting Night Ride Home.… Go to Article