Perth Indymedia

Bradon Ellem is a Professor of Employment Relations in the University of Sydney Business School, and the author of The Pilbara: From the Deserts Profits Come, a rich and engaging single volume history of trade unionism in the Pilbara iron ore industry.

Professor Raymond Evans taught for many years at the University of Queensland and is the author of many texts on the history of both frontier and post-frontier Queensland, including the seminal A History of Queensland, published by Cambridge University Press, and short-listed for the inaugural 2008 Prime Minister's Literary Awards for Non-fiction. One of his long term research interests is the history of frontier violence in the Queensland colony.

Identity politics. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you’ll have at least heard the term. One particular version of identity politics featured heavily in Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the American Presidency. And if you spend so much as five minutes in left wing circles on social media, you’ll be guaranteed to encounter another, especially strident version of it. But what does the term identity politics actually mean? And why has it taken hold of the political left throughout the Western world in such an extraordinary way? Alex Whisson spoke to Asad Haider, author of Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump.

Author and researcher Chris Owen speaks to Indymedia's Raymond Grenfell about the dark history of policing and frontier violence in the Kimberly region of Western Australia.

Lizzie O'Shea is a human rights lawyer, author, board member of Digital Rights Watch, and newly appointed spokesperson for the Alliance for a Safe and Secure Internet. The Alliance has been formed in response to proposed anti-encryption legislation being put before the federal parliament. If its passage through the parliament isn’t thwarted by campaigning efforts, the Assistance and Access Bill 2018 may well come in to law before the end of this year. Lizzie spoke to Alex Whisson late last week and began by explaining why anyone concerned about online privacy, and digital rights more broadly, should be opposed to the bill.

Richard Seymour is a founding editor of Salvage magazine, creator of the popular blog Lenin's Tomb, and the author of many books, including Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics. He joined Alex Whisson to discuss the remarkable phenomenon that is Jeremy Corbyn's continuing leadership of the British Labour Party.

Director, writer and author Benjamin Gilmour speaks to Indymedia's Raymond Grenfell about his most recent film Jirga. A film that challenges the notion of our supremacy in the middle east and asks: what would restorative justice look like for the people of Afghanistan who have suffered so much under occupation?

Described by the New York Times Magazine as "America's most prominent Marxist economist", Richard Wolff is the author of many books, including Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It, and is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He joined Alex Whisson to discuss the causes and consequences of the Great Recession.

It's been ten years since the US investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed. History records Lehman's fall as the event which catalysed the Great Recession of 2008-9. Various theories have been postulated as to the cause of that recession, but the overextension of the American property market, in the form of sub-prime mortgages, and the uncontrolled growth of so-called financial instruments invented by Wall St bankers, are seen as the primary factors. Economist and author Michael Roberts argues there were much deeper reasons for the Great Recession. He addressed those underlying causes in discussion with Alex Whisson.

We speak to longtime commentator, author and activist Helen Razer on the #SerenaWilliams cartoon, racism in Australia, the #metoo campaign and the changing nature of political discourse. Helen is a regular contributor to publications such as New Matilda and The Age and is the author of four books. Her latest is titled Total Propaganda: Basic Marxist Brainwashing for the Angry and the Young.

Ian Rintoul of the Refugee Action Coalition on the weekend protests at the Yongah Hill detention centre, which followed the attempted suicide by a 22-year-old Iraqi refugee. Ian began by discussing the man's welfare.

"Alcoa's got a lease for the bauxite for the next 40 years and they want to give us a one year contract each, which to me seems a bit unfair." Alcoa workers at the Kwinana alumina refinery shared their thoughts on day 25 of their strike.

Co-coordinator of 350 Perth Franca Gilissen talks to Alex Whisson about the Rise for Climate Action. She began by addressing the question of widespread indifference to the climate crisis.

Ride share drivers took strike action on Monday the 6th of August calling for better pay and conditions from Uber. Indymedia's Raymond Grenfell spoke to Ride Share Drivers United spokesperson Max Marino about why they had decided to take industrial action.

As the Israeli Air Force bombed Gaza last week, killing several Palestinians and wounding many others, a tweet from the United Nations envoy for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, neatly summarised the gross distortions of the way Israel’s criminal occupation is so often presented to the world. “Everyone in Gaza needs to step back from the brink”, wrote Mladenov, thus repeating, yet again, the tired old lie of moral equivalence between an occupying force and the resistance forces opposing it. Depressingly, it seems nothing ever changes for the long-suffering Palestinians. Yet many commentators believe the Israeli massacre of 60 Palestinians on May 14th may yet prove to be a historical turning point in the struggle for Palestinian national liberation. Palestinian-American human rights lawyer, activist and writer, Noura Erakat, spoke to Alex Whisson on the back of her Australian speaking tour.

Have you heard of the Defence Amendment (Call Out of the Australian Defence Force) Bill 2018? Chances are you haven’t. It was recently introduced into the federal parliament with scant attention from the media, and scarcely a whimper from the public at large. One of the few people paying attention was freelance journalist Paul Gregoire. Alex Whisson spoke to him late last week.

Earlier this month human rights lawyer Lizzie O'Shea wrote an article for Eureka Street that ought to trouble anyone concerned about the expanding power of the surveillance state in this country, as well as the grotesque hypocrisies that lie at the heart of the Australian political class. A former intelligence officer, known only as Witness K, and his lawyer, potentially face up to two years in jail, for exposing a 2004 operation to bug the cabinet offices of the East Timorese government. O'Shea spoke to Indymedia's Alex Whisson.

Recent months have seen a wave of protests against Daniel Ortega’s government in Nicaragua. Picking up where a similar set of student and pensioner-led protests in 2013 left off, the growing movement has been met with brutal repression, with hundreds killed and injured. Famous for leading the Sandinista National Liberation Front, first in overthrowing the Somoza dictatorship in 1979, and then resisting US-backed death squads throughout a decade-long civil war, Ortega’s political legacy is now, to say the least, a contested one. Alex Whisson caught up with long time Nicaragua solidarity activist, Lori Hanson, and began by asking if it was accurate to describe Ortega’s government as a form of neoliberalism with an ostensibly left wing face.

As grassroots protests against Trump’s detention of migrant children spread across America, one of the striking things about the outrage from the liberal press and Democratic Party politicians is its shameless hypocrisy. These are pundits and politicians who, in many cases, supported President Obama's deportation policies, as well as the detention of unaccompanied children who had family members in the United States. What accounts for this selective, blatantly partisan outrage? Alex Whisson put this question to New York-based author, journalist and commentator Doug Henwood.

In the grand chessboard of geopolitics, Turkey plays an important role. Its fate could have a significant impact on the wider region. The path it’s heading down at present is one of authoritarian nationalism and war. In the 24th June elections, incumbent President Tayyip Erdogan secured 52.5% of the vote, and his AK Party 42.5% of the parliamentary vote. Alex Whisson caught up with Turkish writer, poet and activist Ron Margulies and began by asking about the apparent coup attempt of July 2016, and the repressive measures Erdogan took in its wake.