- The Guardian
- Issue #2009
Hedge fund shark George Soros’ speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos last week was essentially an anti-communist diatribe, seeing communism correctly as a threat to his system of exploitation and plunder. Soros made his call-to-arms to representatives of the global moneybags even as the main contradiction in the world – between imperialism and socialism – plays itself out amid the turmoil of the deepening capitalist crisis. As he told the assembly: “I became engaged in what I call political philanthropy in the 1980s, a time when a large part of the world languished under Communist rule. I established one foundation after another in rapid succession in what was the Soviet empire. The effort turned out to be more successful than I expected. Those were exciting days. They also coincided with a period of personal financial success …” Soros, whose known wealth is $8 billion, is also noted for his 1992 $1 billion profit grab in the space of one day, from short-selling the British pound.
Voters of Chinese heritage rejected the government at the ballot box, with nine of ten electorates in Victoria with the largest Mandarin-speaking population recording swings against the Liberal Party. Erin Chew of Asian Australian Alliance said Chinese voters had had enough of the Coalition government’s “us versus them” offensive. “Asking if you are part of team Australia or are you part of China? Are you on China’s side?”, said Chew. She recalled then Defence Minister Peter Dutton in April beating the war drums in reference to China and expressed concern that such remarks are incitement to racist attacks. Said Dutton: “The only way that you can preserve peace is to prepare for war and to be strong as a country, not to cower, not to be on bended knee and be weak”. I give you … the new leader of the Liberal Party!
The shocking COVID-19 crisis in aged care is the consequence of policy to privatise the system by the former Howard government. At the time of the Whitlam government in the early 1970s the aged care model was mainly comprised of non-profit community-based, local councils and involving the churches. It continued along these lines until the Howard government privatised and changed it to a majority for-profit operation (including big, listed companies), all with federal taxpayer subsidies. Some church groups also took to making profits in aged care accommodation to fund other operations.
PARASITE OF THE WEEK: The reluctant announcement by Anthony Albanese that Labor would support a 5.1 per cent pay rise for the lowest paid – an increase of $1 an hour – brought a snarl and a cry-poor from the likes of the Business Council of Australia: if you want to make a parasite jump, poke it with a pay rise.
