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Triple J did a profile on youth unemployment in Wollongong that was posted on the ABC’s website on October 29. Five young people were interviewed about the difficulties in finding work, and the reasons for the high youth unemployment rate. These are the same problems faced by young people all over Australia: a reduction in the number of apprenticeships available, the effects of the financial crisis, the lack of experience young people have and how no-one is willing to give them a chance.
Greece’s government intends to bump up sales taxes for the third time this year and slash spending on health care. The new measures were included in the 2011 budget it submitted to parliament on November 18. Prime Minister George Papandreou’s Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) government has already raised the sales tax twice this year. Papandreou had pledged not to introduce any measures that would cause more hardship for ordinary Greek citizens — such as new taxes.
"The Venezuelan revolution continues to make progress in the face of constant challenges and some setbacks”, said Coral Wynter, a Latin America solidarity activist recently returned from six months working in Venezuela. She addressed a November 18 Green Left Weekly forum on the Bolivarian Revolution. Under the leadership of socialist President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela has been transformed over the past 10 years.
The big four banks are squealing at a Greens plan to introduce bank regulation legislation to parliament and at a class action being considered against banks that gouge borrowers through variable interest rate loans. The Commonwealth Bank (CBA), Westpac, ANZ and the National Australia Bank hiked interest rates above the 0.25% rise declared by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) on November 3. The Australian Institute said on November 15 the rise would give the banks $1.2 billion more profit.
— "Queensland is now the world epicentre of pollution of our atmosphere", Greens leader Bob Brown told 200 people at a November 14 meeting sponsored by Friends of the Earth, 6 Degrees, the Wilderness Society and the Queensland Conservation Council. "We know what is coming if we don't put a stop to the use of fossil fuels. This year is the hottest ever in human existence, and it's only going to get worse if we don't take urgent action to tackle climate change."
"The main issues here at the City Hall site are wages and conditions, and safety," Peter Ong, Electrical Trades Union organiser, told Green Left Weekly on November 17. He spoke at a picket of 500 construction workers outside City Hall, which is undergoing a $215 million renovation. "The main contractors, Abigroup, are using a labour hire workforce, at pay rates at least $6 per hour less than other city sites. Last week, the workers attended a meeting out the front, and were arbitrarily sacked by the company.”
Labor special minister of state Gary Gray must be stupid if he thinks we should feel sorry for him. Gray’s pay went from $675,000 a year to $130,000 when he left Woodside Petroleum to become a politician. Gray wants to close the pay gap between corporate CEOs and politicians — and not by cutting obscene CEO pay. He would prefer to widen the gap between politicians and the people they represent.
Freedom or at least women’s freedom is still defined by men’s perspective. There’s still a patriarchal attitude towards the woman’s independent decision making. Society’s attitude towards women’s religious beliefs are defined by patriarchal values. So if we happen to cover ourselves it must be because of the men who control us, not our own choice or beliefs. If we claim that we follow our own faith, it must be us who is brainwashed by a patriarchal society — but not a patriarchal society that tries to rip our headscarves off.
SYDNEY — After the successful Latin America Solidarity Conference it organised in October, the Latin America Social Forum (LASF) in Sydney has launched a new blog, latinamericasocialforum.blogspot.com. LASF is uploading videos of plenary talks from the conference and the 20 resolutions approved in the conference’s final session. These resolutions have been translated to Spanish and sent to contacts across Latin America, many of who have expressed their appreciation for the work of LASF.
There has been a lot of discussion about the problems within Australia’s national A-League football (“soccer”) competition, with some even fearing that it is on the verge of collapse. Maybe that won’t happen, but there are signs that things aren’t looking good. In September, Newcastle Jets became the latest club to be provided with an emergency loan. The league’s governing body, Football Federation Australia (FFA) agreed to provide short term financial assistance so the club could pay its players.
Natural gas is a finite resource. Once it is depleted, it cannot be renewed. It is extracted from coal beds and consists primarily of methane. Methane is 72 times worse than carbon dioxide — the most well-known carbon pollutant — as a greenhouse gas. The City of Sydney plans to use natural gas as the primary fuel to transition away from coal-fired electricity towards low-carbon energy by using a method of energy production known as trigeneration.
Twenty-three-year-old Mariano Ferreira, a Workers Party (PO) activist, was shot dead in Buenos Aires on October 8 when a mob violently attacked protesting railway workers. The protesters, all of them labour hire workers, were demanding their reinstatement after being sacked. The attack was similar those against other workers in comparable circumstances who have demanded rights denied by the bosses. Often the bosses’ have acted with local union support.