Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Dec 13, 2011, 1:43 am
Fiji Interim Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama. Credit: ABC. By Alex Schlotzer: An Australian and New Zealand union delegation heads to Fiji next week to investigate first hand abuses of workplace rights within the island nation. The delegation comes on the back of moves this week by the Internatio...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Nov 20, 2011, 4:02 pm
  By Dr Tim Themi: Fresh from a solid live-to-air on 3CR, local guitar-artist Nicholas Ogburn launched his new album – a fifth – with great aplomb last Friday night at the Acoustic Café in Collingwood. Surrounded by vintage guitars for sale, mounted on the walls – and ably supported by th...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Nov 15, 2011, 11:25 pm
By John O’ Driscoll Each night a small contingent doggedly remain under constant police surveillance. A disparate group – pensioners, students, bushies, Koories from the tent embassies, the odd other longtime activist, and some new-minted. Early in the evening there are more of us, the busker o...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Nov 8, 2011, 12:47 am
By John O’Driscoll The small group who gathered on (2 Nov) at my first Occupy Sydney GA (General Assembly) at Town Hall, maybe 50 people, was dwarfed by the attendance at the Noam Chomsky screening inside, let alone the crush of commuters and shoppers. The local expression of the Occupy Wall Stre...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Nov 6, 2011, 3:00 pm
By Dr Tim Themi: Myths about the benevolence of Anglo-American foreign policy were utterly exploded last Friday night in Melbourne, as Professor Noam Chomsky thundered out his latest critique of the changing contours of global order. Invited out for the second time by Deakin for only his second ev...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Oct 30, 2011, 3:01 am
By Rich Bowden: Wind turbines have, in recent times, attracted negative publicity in Australia with a number of people living near wind farms reporting health problems as a result of the constant low level noise emitted by the three-bladed turbines. Consequently a number of anti-wind farm groups ha...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Oct 24, 2011, 2:51 am
By Dr Tim Themi: The IPA’s Tim Wilson was allowed to dominate on a Q&A panel including the Green’s Adam Bandt, shaming the Humanities & Social Sciences department of Melbourne relative to the intellectual standards properly required of the Tertiary sector. On a night which saw police outside l...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Oct 23, 2011, 12:14 am
By Alex Schlotzer: The Occupy Melbourne movement is pretty much dead in my opinion. Though it really didn’t come alive as was promised. On Friday morning the police moved in to remove the Occupy Melbourne protesters that had been occupying Melbourne’s Town Square. Unfortunately as those assemb...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Oct 6, 2011, 4:15 pm
By Rich Bowden The debate over water reform has received less scrutiny of late with the drought broken in much of the country and national attention turning to matters such as the carbon tax debate, the bankrupted Malaysian refugee solution and of course the coverage of the footy finals. However a...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Oct 4, 2011, 12:27 am
  By Dr Tim Themi: US hegemony, hypocrisy, and capitalist imperialism in the Middle East finally came under fire last night on the ABC’s Q&A. Filmed as part of the Sydney Festival of Dangerous Ideas, and featuring the radical Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, late capitalism was spoken of a...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Sep 29, 2011, 11:49 pm
By Alex Schlotzer Four years ago the United Nations acted on almost 30 years of advocacy by Indigenous Peoples around the world and adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, but Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda says progress on its implementation has been slow. Commissione...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Sep 24, 2011, 5:21 am
By Alex Schlotzer Throughout the entire region the environment continues to face growing pressures. It comes from a growing range of converging issues like urban expansion; destruction of native forests; rapidly expanding populations; growing inequality and poverty; water, soil and air pollution; a...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Sep 10, 2011, 7:12 am
By Alex Schlotzer In recent weeks the premiers of three states have started to sound like mini-Tony Abbotts. On issues like industrial relations, the environment and health we’ve seen a convergence of rhetoric that sounds remarkably like that coming from the federal Opposition Leader. For Wester...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Aug 22, 2011, 1:57 am
Fiji's Parliament House, Suva. Credit: timoshea95/flickr By Alex Schlotzer Workers in Fiji may enjoy a reputation as being super-friendly and bursting with positive vibes and good will. The reality though is that they have no rights. The ruling military regime under Frank Bainimarama has recently...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Aug 17, 2011, 2:46 am
By Rich Bowden: A key report released yesterday by the Australian Government’s Climate Commission has served a grim warning to coastal regions of Western Australia about the effects of climate change.  The Critical Decade study has singled out coastal areas such as Mandurah, Busselton, Rockingha...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Aug 11, 2011, 7:25 pm
  The humanitarian crisis in the Horn continues to escalate. EPA/DAI KUROKAWA While droughts are caused by weather – the failure of the rains – famines are invariably political. The current famine in southern Somalia should have come as no surprise. Aid agencies have been warning of the conse...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Aug 3, 2011, 6:06 pm
By Ingrid Landau: Last Friday the Australian Government ratified three International Labour Organisation Conventions. This is a significant and welcome development as all three conventions provide important safeguards for workers’ rights. The ILO is the specialist UN agency responsible for setti...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Jul 23, 2011, 2:39 am
By Rich Bowden: Despite being two years away from an official federal election, the government’s knife edge majority has seen us move to an apparent permanent election footing. However while hard hat-wearing, baby kissing politicians are becoming more visible on our news screens, quality policy d...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Jul 22, 2011, 2:39 am
By Alex Schlotzer: Now that the phone hacking scandal involving the now-defunct News of the World has well and truly broken and authorities are looking for answers, it’s not surprising that they are finding it difficult to get answers. Or that anyone is willing to take responsibility for the phon...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Jul 16, 2011, 5:36 am
By John O’Driscoll: Can we slay the tyrant, here? The News of the World hacking scandal that I wrote about in April has become a worldwide phenomenon. The whole world knows how murder victims phones were hacked. More revelations will follow, with other tabloids, including News’ other tabloid, ...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Jul 4, 2011, 5:05 am
By David Bowden: Australia isn’t known for being generous to eccentrics, especially in the music industry. That’s one of the reasons Jeff Duff isn’t popular. Another is his own maverick streak that resists pigeonholing quicker than most critics can listen to a thirty second soundclip and pron...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Jul 2, 2011, 9:25 pm
By John O’Driscoll: Beware misleading advertising. It may have dire effects. In recent times we have seen the debauch of the welfare state, the expansion of cartels, extortionate rent-taking from the financial sector, and the wholesale capture of regulators, the executive and most of parliament ...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Jun 28, 2011, 5:28 am
By Alex Schlotzer The Australian conservative movement was extremely busy during the Howard era.  The used the time to create a plethora of think tanks and activist groups; akin to those that Liberal Senator Eric Abetz complains about being for Labor and the Greens but more about that later. Duri...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Jun 10, 2011, 4:32 am
By Alex Schlotzer: The Australian environment movement along with the union movement organised some of the biggest rallies Australia has seen in some time last weekend. Sure they weren’t the epic sizes of the anti-Iraq war and anti-WorkChoices rallies – something that a few commentators have p...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - May 29, 2011, 5:50 pm
By Kim Sauberg: For those who arrived on the last train from the Herald Sun building, there’s something wrong with society today. In as short a time as possible I’m going to attempt to draw you an extremely quick diagram of some of the key points which outline where our society is going wrong e...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - May 25, 2011, 4:45 am
By John O’Driscoll: In Madrid and Seville protestors have occupied a square and are refusing to leave despite the threats of the interior minister, in an echo of protests that overthrew the regime in Egypt and Tunisia and that continue there and elsewhere in the Arab world and beyond. Spain, lik...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - May 23, 2011, 11:02 pm
By Kim Sauberg: A lot more could be done if the technology was properly put to work. Imagine if we combined some of Wikipedia’s “fact fussy” technology strategies with some of the profiling abilities of Facebook, and invented Votebook, a site which gives excellent biographical and political p...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - May 22, 2011, 10:40 pm
By Kim Sauberg: When I was a child, and the internet was just a bizarre U.S. military experiment, I looked hopefully to computers as a possible future solver of all things factual. This wasn’t just because because of some childish science fiction fantasy of magical computer droids, but because I ...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - May 18, 2011, 3:50 am
  Indonesian terrorist networks are often cited as likely to bring terrorism to our region through the links they have with organisations such as Al-Qaeda and those in the Philippines and throughout south-east Asia. And there have been a couple of big events that have happened for these networks i...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - May 15, 2011, 9:33 pm
By Alex Schlotzer: Many commentators have pointed out how “soft” the Budget was compared to all the “tough” hype however despite this, it still failed to add additional funds into key areas. Swan started by harking back to the values of the Labor Party saying there are values like greater ...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - May 3, 2011, 6:18 pm
By Tristan Ewins: The following essay (first published in Tristan’s blog Left Focus) is a response to Australian Treasurer, Wayne Swan – who has recently written a Fabian Essay - whose obvious significance concerns the coming Australian Federal Budget for 2011-12.  While the author is highl...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Apr 20, 2011, 6:24 pm
    Outgoing senator Guy Barnett chairs an inquiry into film and literature classification, and hopes to extend the scheme to all “artwork”. This perhaps on the pretext that children are being damaged by the artwork they are forced to see by their chardonnay-swilling parents at art openings,...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Apr 19, 2011, 5:39 pm
By Alex Schlotzer: Saturday last saw the finals of Deadly Funny for 2011 which saw more amazing comedic talent emerge from Australia’s Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander communities. In the lead up to these finals there were workshops and previews. There were also a large amount heats and st...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Apr 18, 2011, 6:46 pm
By Simon Hukin: It is testament to man’s tremendous ingenuity that we can harness forces of nature so mighty and terrible they threaten not only humanity, but the very survival of every organism on this earth. However, the fact we have done so, the fact we have proceeded to provide a simple means...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Apr 17, 2011, 5:48 pm
By John O’ Driscoll: The News of the World phone hacking scandal is going ballistic in the UK. In 2006 a private investigator and a ‘rogue journalist’ from the paper (as NoW and News Ltd - and implicitly the police – insisted at the time) were jailed for hacking into the voicemails of peop...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Apr 13, 2011, 5:57 pm
By Alex Schlotzer: Alex Schlotzer spent the weekend at the Climate Action Summit as someone committed to seeing political action taken on climate change. More specifically he was there in his voluntary role as coordinator of the Brimbank Climate Action Network (BrimbankCAN). This is his account of ...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Apr 12, 2011, 5:42 pm
By NZADDS: The recently appointed panel to determine how grassroots aid funding will be spent in New Zealand is being criticised as poorly qualified and politically driven. Criticism of the three-member panel comes from a newly formed international development think-tank called NZ Aid and Developm...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Apr 11, 2011, 6:37 pm
By Nick Toscano Bail hostels should be set up in Victoria to stem the high number of juveniles remanded in adult prisons before facing court, according to a Melbourne social services group. A new report from Jesuit Social Services called on the Baillieu Government to buy 20 properties in a sche...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Apr 10, 2011, 5:35 pm
For me what most illustrates the moribund nature of Sydney’s administration is not the public transport(try Melbourne’s). It’s that sad old dowager, the Art Gallery of NSW, with its gappy 140 year old facade, with empty panels which should contain bronze friezes of the 19th century pantheon of...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Apr 4, 2011, 9:51 pm
By Tom Goodwin: Years ago, there was a landmark Australian TV serial called number 96. It was famous for taking a slice of Australia that wasn’t the bush, yet wasn’t suburbia to our lounge rooms and serving that slice with a dash of nudity, neo nazi bikers, homosexual relationships and machine ...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Mar 31, 2011, 4:29 pm
By Matthew Price: In a cynical yet unsurprising move, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has decided that the time is right to play the ‘crackdown on welfare recipients’ card. It’s a tried and true favourite of conservatives everywhere, and still has the simplistic rhetorical force to engage voter...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Mar 28, 2011, 10:15 pm
By Warren Ross: I can remember living in Clovelly 30 years ago. Every Saturday morning, along with about 20 other locals, we came together for a game of touch football. No-one kept score and a hangover wasn’t allowed to stop you. It was unstructured and great fun.  However since then the game o...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Mar 20, 2011, 4:50 pm
By John O’Driscoll: While Japan is visited by cruel calamity(and the consequences of disastrous nuclear planning), in geopolitics too a great earthquake is underway. American, or western, hegemony, backed by Australia and New Zealand, is shaking. Half-finished revolutions in the middle east annou...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Mar 17, 2011, 4:42 pm
By Tom Goodwin: …or I’m Interested in Apathy. Politics North Coast style. OK, I come from an area that used to be known (in the good old days before hydro houses and the drug squad discovered helicopters) as a prime dope growing area. Our local member is even named Stoner.  So it’s easy ...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Mar 16, 2011, 5:16 pm
By Matthew Price: Despite having ironed out some significant flaws of late, it seems that the PM’s leadership is in terminal decline. Her performance on Q and A (ABC) on Monday was actually reasonably good. In fact it got better as the show went on. It appears that she has made a conscious decis...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Mar 15, 2011, 4:45 pm
By Rich Bowden: RB: What have you found to be the single most important issue facing NSW voters in the upcoming election? JM: Who to vote for when we have an incompetent 16 year old Labor Government and a lack of vision and policy articulation from the Liberals. After a year of minority parli...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Mar 9, 2011, 2:15 am
By Rich Bowden: NSW Premier Kristina Keneally has called Pauline Hanson “a racist” after the announcement of the controversial former One Nation leader’s decision to contest a seat in the NSW Upper House. Speaking on Sydney radio 2UE, Ms Keneally said her Labor party would not direct prefere...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Mar 7, 2011, 4:00 pm
By Hayley Crane: Victoria’s alcohol and drugs treatment services are failing to keep pace with the growing substance abuse epidemic after a decade of neglect, a report released by the auditor-general has revealed. The report, which reviewed the Department of Health’s $136 million alcohol and p...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Mar 7, 2011, 4:35 am
By Rich Bowden: The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) has said uneven indexation increases to pensions aimed at meeting increases in the cost of living will see more than 300,000 unemployed slip further into poverty. According to a March 5 ACOSS press release, there exists a widening ...
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Rich Bowden posted an article on theangle.org - Mar 2, 2011, 3:36 pm
By Alex Schlotzer: The recent announcement from the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee on a carbon price and mechanism, is as the Australian Council of Trade Unions said last week, a vital step forward. No prizes for guessing that Heather Ridout, the boss of the powerful business lobby group Aust...
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