With presidential elections imminent Scott Hamilton looks at the role of Australian 'security forces' in East Timor. East Timor’s Fretilin party has revealed that Australian troops stopped a convoy of its election campaigners at gunpoint and threatened to kill one of them last week. The convoy of Fretilin vehicles was on its way back from an election rally in the eastern town of Gleno on March 26 when an Australian army vehicle appeared...

David Hicks's conviction is a ludicrous political stitch-up. We will never accept it, writes Mark Kelly. David Hicks is the first person from Gitmo to be tried. There is no obvious procedure for trying people, nor for meting out the sentences handed down from any trial. Hicks is unique, however, in the fact that he is the subject of a significant campaign with majority support in his homeland to have him returned.

Kevin Rudd, ALP national conference and uranium mining. By Marcus Strom Kevin Rudd is gearing up for his first ALP national conference as party leader. Labor loves a winner and the boy from the back blocks of rural Queensland seems to be the party's best hope to take the required 16 seats from the coalition at year's end.

Tristan Ewins calls on socialists to join the Fabian Society to prevent its statement of purpose being stripped of its socialist objective. Editorial note Labor Tribune welcomes Tristan Ewins call to fight for socialism throughout the movement and for the unity of socialists. However, the Fabian tradition was always about trying to marry the impossible: socialism for the working class with a reliance on the capitalist state. We believe a radical rebirth of the democratic core of Marxism - and the radical transcendence of the state from below - is required to overcome the liberal and anti-working class traditions in our movement.

Socialists must take a more active approach if it wants to push the NSW ALP out of its managerial rut, writes Marcus Strom It's no wonder that the good burghers of New South Wales are underwhelmed by the impending state election. What is on offer is more of the same bland managerial capitalism from Morris Iemma's ALP.

While there is room for people like Joe Tripodi in the ALP, it cannot be a genuine workers' party, writes Marcus Strom. If you close your eyes till your vision goes blurry and you conjure up a parallel universe, you can just about imagine that Joe Tripodi is part of the labour movement. I mean, he is a member of the Australian Labor Party after all - formed by the unions during the heroic struggle of the shearers, miners and wharfies in the 1890s to pursue the light on the hill for the labouring masses. Open your eyes, clear your head and move back into the real world and the likes of Joe Tripodi clearly have no place in our movement. Self-serving hacks that ride on the back of the working class are the kind of crust that gives Labor a real stink among voters.

It's easy for the Australian and New Zealand left to call for troops out of Iraq. Scott Hamilton says we should be looking a little closer to home.

Geoff Drechsler wonders if reform is simply a case of just-add-policy. He calls for an end to the mantra of neoliberalism and a fight for the democratic-socialist heart of the labour movement.

The brutal Israeli assult on Lebanon is a direct result of the failure of the US plan for the Middle East, writes Noah Bassil. Horrific images of the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of Israeli-US military force in Lebanon and Gaza are a reminder not only of Israel’s disregard for civilian casualties in its role as the "strong man" of the Middle East but also of the failure of the US project of "refashioning" the region.

Labor's immigration spokesman says there is "no such thing as an illegal human being". Marcus Strom finds it hard to disagree. In the context of the refugee movement the slogan, "no human being is illegal" has traditionally been adopted by the radical left that supports an abolition of all immigration controls. In France, such a slogan is used by the leftists involved in the National Coordination of Sans Papiers; in Britain it is activists involved in groups such as No Borders and No One Is Illegal that use such language. It was therefore quite surprising to hear such sentiment come from the mouth of Tony Burke, shadow minister for immigration.

Jack Conrad questions the romantic image of prehistory presented by green thinkers Almost without exception, greens of virtually every stripe, variety and hue display a half-dreamy, half-atavistic tenderness for the pre-capitalist past. They did things better then. Feudal greens such as Edward Goldsmith imagine England returned to the social stability and ecology of contented serfs, loyal vassals, chaste damsels, gallant knights, christian alms-giving and strong monarchs. Essentially, a dull-witted repetition of Young England in the 19th century: “The greatest owned connexion with the least; from rank to rank the generous feeling ran, and linked society as man to man” (Lord Manners England’s trust 1841). Everyone has their place and everyone is in their place

Condemning Israel is not the same as anti-semitism, writes Marcus Strom. Mel Gibson's anti-semitic rant while drunk and under arrest will not come as a surprise to anyone who has seen The Passion of Christ. The film, which has grossed more than $US620m at the box office, repeats the lie that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ, the Christian and Muslim saviour-cum-prophet. And while Mel Gibson's views on Judaism may be reprehensible, what is most shocking about them is that they express a view held by many conservative Catholics.

Ian Rintoul of the Refugee Action Coalition says it's time to overhaul the ALP's refugee policy at next year's national conference Until June 2002 when legislation was introduced excising thousands of islands from the effects of the Migration Act, federal Labor had supported all of the Howard government’s changes to refugee policy: from the One Nation policy of temporary protection visas (TPVs) to the Tampa legislation. Thanks to Labor’s bipartisan support for Howard’s policies, the refugee movement has suffered under an effective senate majority for almost the entire period of the Howard government.

Should a democratic republic maintain common law or seek codifcation of law? Mike McNair argues that codification gives more power to the working class. Labor Tribune “stands for the immediate abolition of the monarchy system and its replacement with a democratic republic”. Marcus Strom, Labor Tribune editor, asked me as a Brit communist and advocate of a democratic republic in Britain, who is also an academic lawyer, if creating a democratic republic involves breaking with the common law.

Demonstrations against Israeli aggression were the largest Arabic-Australian mobilisation for years, writes Caine Grennets. Demonstrations were held in Australia's state capital cities on July 22 against Israel’s war on Lebanon and on the occupied Palestinian territories. The largest by far was in Sydney, called by more than 50 groups under the umbrella of the Australian-Arabic Committee for Solidarity with Palestinian & Lebanese People. Between 15,000 and 20,000 people assembled at Town Hall, spilling out to fill not only the square, but across all lanes of George Street.

While Big Brother may be crap television, it isn't up to John Howard, the state or the Christian right to decide what we watch, writes Kelly Boundary.

Philosophy of the Encounter: Later Writings, 1978-1987, Louis Althusser, edited by Francois Matheron and Oliver Corpet, translated by GM Goshgarian, Verso, London/New York, 2006 Scott Hamilton asks if there is life after death for Althusser and his last minute discovery of the anecdote Twenty five years ago, at the beginning of a particularly cold northern winter, an elderly man strangled his wife in the Paris flat they had shared for many unhappy years. November 16, 1980, marked not only the end of Helene Althusser's life but the end of her husband's career as an academic philosopher and communist political activist.

Labor Tribune Editor, Marcus Strom, originally produced his review of David McNight's Beyond Right and Left for the reborn Australian Marxist Review (AMR) The AMR is produced by the Communist Party of Australia as something of a theoretical journal. At least it encourages "Ideas, Theory, Policies, Experience, [and] Discussion" and "welcomes articles from readers and contributions to AMR Dialogue"

Marcus Strom calls for open debate and disciplined unity in the labour movement, not sect intrigue and split fever. Well who woulda thunk it? Six Melbourne-based members of Democratic Socialist Perspective have hived off to become MSN - the Marxist Solidarity Network. (I wonder what Bill Gates thinks of that?) Further, they have also resigned from the Socialist Alliance, declaring it merely the public face of the DSP and a dead-end for left regroupment.

"They reckon we used to run the country a while back … I reckon it wouldn't be bad if we did run it." Greg Combet, ACTU secretary Mike Newman looks at the June 28th day of protest and rejects both the official 'waiting for Beazley' and the impatient-left's 'mass-strike' strategies.

Labor Tribune welcomes this Melbourne roundup from Anthony Main, leader of the new retail union body, UNITE. While we do not agree that "more strikes" are the answer in themselves or that significant space is opening up outside the ALP for a "principled left opposition" at this time, we welcome his call for a serious discussion on the future of the campaign against WorkChoices.

Vibrant Day of Action Gives Local Movement a Bounce Dan Murphy reports from Adelaide... Organisers were probably pleasantly surprised with the healthy turn out at the four rallies held around Adelaide.

Union organiser Paul Doughty, a member of Labor's rightwing Centre Unity faction, gives his appraisal of the Blacktown demonstration and argues that it really is all about reaching Latham's "outsiders" and getting Beazley elected. I was pleased to be asked by Labor Tribune to contribute a few words to report on Wednesday’s rally. With no exaggeration, it was the largest political event ever to occur in western Sydney, and the most significant since Gough Whitlam’s 1972 campaign launch in Bowman Hall in Blacktown’s Civic Centre.

Reports vary on the numbers that attended the Blacktown Rally. Labor Tribune carries comments from a selection of attendees...

Factions ensure Iemma an easy ride, while the musty smell of the Carr years lingers..... Most old hands at the NSW ALP state conference over the June long weekend reckoned it was a pretty tame affair as these things go. And that's just how the factional chiefs wanted it. The sparring warriors of the Labor tribe buried or blurred their differences to give Morris Iemma a smooth ride nine months out from a state election and embraced a federal leader that the NSW Right had been undermining for months.

Labor Tribune Reviews David McKnights Beyond Right and Left

Prime minster John Howard has wedged NSW premier Morris Iemma and Victorian premier Steve Bracks into backing down over the privatisation of the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric scheme. The federal government pulled its 13 per cent stake from sale, which would have meant Iemma would bear most of the political pain for the unpopular privatisation proposal. NSW and Victorian Labor had planned to plug their budgets with up to $3bn from the sale of the Hydro, considered by many an icon of early multiculturalism. Iemma is 10 months out from a state election.

This is the weekend (10-11 June 2006) of the NSW ALP conference. In the run up to state conference, Marcus Strom, provides a preview and Labor Tribune's commentary on what is up for discussion

Geoff Dreschler, an ALP activist in Melbourne, argues that radical changes to the way Labor chooses candidates would allow the party to reconnect with working-class Australia.

The NZ Green conference on June 3 elected a new male co-leader, Russel Norman, to fill the vacuum left by the death of Rod Donald. It also saw a jump to the right under the tutelage of David McKnight, author of Beyond Right and Left. We republish this review of the conference by Scott Hamilton from NZ political blog, Reading the Maps.

Labor Tribune reviews the response of the Left to the 2005 Cronulla Riots

Labor Tribune - the editor of the Monthly Review discussed Marxist and Green movement politics and ideas with Mark Fischer

There has been a tendency to create a false divide between rights issues like a Treaty and socio-economic issues like health. Issues of poor health in the indigenous population that are evident in our higher infant mortality and lower life expectancy rates can only be combated with a holistic approach.

For much of the left, John Howard's failure to implement the Kyoto protocols is one of his greatest crimes. And while Howard's failure to act on this displays his utter comtempt for the environment, it means that progressives have been cornered into hailing Kyoto as essential in humanity's struggle to cope and manage climate change.

Labor Tribune commissioned this interview of radical anthropologist Chris Knight. Chris explores the role of women in throwing off our pre-human chains, lampoons prudish Marxists and takes Noam Chomsky's 'anti-political' science to task.

The day after Israel bombed the beach in Gaza, killing three children and seven adults enjoying a family picnic, and wounding forty others on 9 June, the Sydney Film Festival premiered the Palestinian road-movie, “Waiting”. Caine Grennets reviews the latest work by Palestian film director Rashid Masharawi. Waiting is set around the refugee camps of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

Dan Murphy, communications co-ordinator for the Australian Education Union, South Australian branch, and a member of the Southern Adelaide Workers Defence Committee provides a primer on South Australia's labour movement.

Labor Tribune replies to OzLefts May 2006 letter to Marcus Strom

Labor Tribune responds to the Lefts shallow analysis of the Finlay Engineering workers dispute

Marcus Strom replies to Garry Wotherspoons misconceptions about Marxist approach to class and criticises Richard Florida and his "Creative Class"

Marxist audio from Labor Tribune - reports and documents from the May 2006 forum on the relevance of Marxism to the labour movement

Hillel Ticktin, editor of Critique, looks at the rise and fall of different modes of production and the problems of transition and non-transition

Hillel Ticktin, editor of Critique, looks at the rise and fall of different modes of production and the problems of transition and non-transition

Phil Sanford reports on a May 21 rally in Sydney's west to build for the ACTU day of action on June 28