Perth Indymedia

"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.

Which country has suffered the worst ever outbreak of cholera, with more than a million cases and over 2000 deaths recorded in the past year? You’d be forgiven for not knowing the answer is Yemen. Described by Amnesty International as the “forgotten war”, Yemen is in the fourth year of a conflict which has left over 10 000 people dead, and more than 8 million at risk of starvation. The war has entered a vicious new phase, with Saudi-led coalition forces launching an assault on the port city of Hodeida. Alex Whisson had the opportunity to speak to Helen Lackner, a research associate at the London Middle East Institute in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and author of the recently published, Yemen in Crisis: Autocracy, Neo-Liberalism and the Disintegration of a State. Lackner began by outlining the 2011 protests in Yemen, which brought down the long term ruler of the country, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Last year the McGowan state Labor government announced a ban on fracking in Perth, Peel and the southwest, and a three year moratorium in every other part of the state. Yet the fight against fracking is far from over, with several corporations, including Boro and Mitsubishi, waiting in the wings and continuing to curry favour with the government. Alex Whisson spoke to Frack Free WA campaigner Jane Hammond to get a better understanding of the current state of play.

Wages paid illegally below award rates, dodgy individual contracts, unpaid penalty rates, summary dismissal. Such exploitative practices are suffered by many a worker in many an industry. But what if you’re a young worker, new to the world of work, with no understanding of your rights and entitlements in the workplace, and no knowledge or experience of what collective struggle can achieve? That’s where organisations like the Young Workers Centre have a crucial role to play, providing an entry point in to the labour movement for vulnerable and disenfranchised young workers. Alex Whisson caught up with the director of the Young Workers Centre, Keelia Fitzpatrick. He began by asking how the centre first came into existence.

Refugee advocates and activists were shocked and dismayed when the CFMEU and AWU joined forces to pass a gag motion at the recent Victorian Labor Party conference, shutting down debate on refugee policy. It was a devastating blow for those inside the Labor Party fighting for a refugee policy consistent with international humanitarian law and the basic standards of common human decency. Alex Whisson spoke to Pauline Brown, President of Labor for Refugees Victoria, and the seconder of that motion. The motion itself read, in part, “when in federal government, to close offshore detention centres, transit centres and other camps on Manus and Nauru within the first 90 days, and to bring all the children, women and men who are refugees or seeking asylum remaining there to Australia”. Pauline began by explaining the rationale behind that motion, and why it ought to be supported by a future federal Labor government.

Felicity Ruby has, to say the least, an impressive resume. The former director of the United Nations’ Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, a former senior communications adviser to Greens Senator Scott Ludlam, a founder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, an organisation which received last year's Nobel Peace Prize, Ruby is currently working on a PhD at Sydney University, on the topic of political movements resisting mass surveillance. Alex Whisson caught up with Felicity to discuss Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s proposed expansion of domestic intelligence gathering powers. Felicity began by addressing the question of the Australian Signals Directorate, the highly secretive government agency, which has historically gathered intelligence overseas.

Nationally-celebrated college football star, prize-winning orator, world-famous singer, Hollywood actor, political activist of great renown, master of a dozen languages or more with a law degree under his belt, Paul Robeson was unarguably one of the greatest figures of the 20th century. Yet today, to many people, his name is unknown, his achievements unrecognised. Alex Whisson spoke to Jeff Sparrow, author of No Way But This: In Search of Paul Robeson. Sparrow began by explaining exactly how and why he came to write a book about the great Robeson, some four decades after his death.

Russiagate, Trump, Trump and Trump. It's all we ever hear about the United States. Meanwhile, there are some amazing political developments taking place in what is still the world's only superpower. One such development, which has received virtually no media coverage at all here in Australia, is the extraordinary wave of teachers' strikes that has swept the nation, starting in West Virginia in February, and then quickly spreading to Kentucky, Arizona, Oklahoma, North Carolina and as far afield as New Jersey. Alex Whisson spoke to Attica Scott, representative of the 41st district in the Kentucky state house, and herself a former union organiser. The conversation began with the question of how, bizarrely, a bill relating to sewage in the state legislature somehow turned into a so-called pension reform bill, one designed to gut teachers' retirement schemes.

22-year-old Ahmed Alnaouq is a graduate of Al-Azhar University in Gaza City, a freelance journalist, and a project manager with We Are Not Numbers, which aims to disseminate Palestinian stories to an international audience. He was an active participant in the Great March of Return protest movement and present on the day of the May 14th massacre.

Nicolas Maduro's government in Venezuela has come under increasing attack from both Western governments and the international capitalist press. With prices doubling every month and poverty reportedly on the rise after years of social improvement for the mass of the people, the Maduro administration also faces fierce criticism from at least some elements of the left. Journalist, political commentator and co-author of Latin America's Turbulent Transitions: The Future of Twenty-First Century Socialism, Federico Fuentes, addressed the question of whether this latest election was illegitimate or even rigged, as claimed by much of the Western press.

Supporters of the labour movement across the country experienced a real shot in the arm last Wednesday, when an estimated 100 000 people marched through the streets of Melbourne in support of the Australian Council of Trade Union's Change the Rules campaign. Alex Whisson had the opportunity to speak to one of the organisers of the march, Assistant Secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall Council Wil Stracke.

A few weeks ago we promised to bring you a range of perspectives on the Syrian war. We've already spoken to Leila Al-Shami, blogger and co-author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War. We also heard from Mark Goudkamp of the Sydney Stop the War coalition. Today we speak to Jay Tharappel. Jay is a PhD researcher at Sydney University's Political Economy Department, an anti-war campaigner with Hands off Syria, and a prominent political commentator on social media. We began our conversation with the question of the recent Western bombing of Syrian government targets, in the wake of the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma by the Syrian Arab Army.