GLW issue 712, published 2007-06-06.

Come to the Resistance conference!

“These are exciting times for Resistance”, Emma Clancy, a member of the socialist youth organisation’s national executive, told Green Left Weekly. “In the past year we have gone from strength to strength.” Clancy is helping to organise the 2007 national conference of Resistance, which will be held at Sydney’s Glebe Town Hall from July 5 to 8. The conference will involve “in-depth strategic discussions about all of the protest movements in Australia”.

Student activists to target Bush, Howard

A June 1 student conference held at Sydney University resolved to make George Bush’s visit to Australia and the September APEC summit in Sydney a focus for the anti-war and environment campaigns on campus.

Unions must act to end ALP backflips on Work Choices

The union movement must take urgent action to end the ALP’s backflips on industrial relations.

Hard Rain hits home

KATOOMBA — David Bradbury’s latest anti-nuclear documentary, Hard Rain, attracted more than 40 people to a screening in the Blue Mountains on May 28. Bradbury’s film thoroughly debunks the many myths now being pushed hard by big business and the major parties, and documents how immensely dangerous and destructive to human beings and the natural environment both uranium mining and nuclear power are. The film prompted a wide-ranging discussion about alternatives to nuclear power and solutions to global warming. The event was organised by the Socialist Alliance and Green Left Weekly.

Further

Australian News

Toyota's way? Sack unionists

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and Electrical Trades Union (ETU) have established an ongoing protest embassy outside the front office of Toyota’s Altona assembly plant to protest the dismissal of AMWU delegate Tony Carvalho and Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) representative Shane Blackney.

APEC energy summit pursues oil security

Environmental activists, excluded from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation’s May 27-30 energy summit, erected a large inflatable cooling tower outside the fenced-off security zone surrounding Darwin’s Parliament House. Energy ministers from the US, Australia and the Pacific rim failed to come up with any solutions to the global warming crisis, reaffirming instead the dominant role of fossil fuels in future energy supplies.

Further Australian News

International News

What future for Palestine?

June 5 marks the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War, during which Israel attacked and defeated the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria, seizing the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank from Jordan.

Iraq: US troops no longer believe in 'the mission'

“We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us”, the May 27 New York Times reported being told by US Army Staff Sergeant David Safstrom, who was commenting on the US-recruited and trained Iraqi Army.

Further International News

Comment and Analysis

Don't be fooled by the two-party con trick

Therese Rein has done very nicely under the Coalition government — particularly since its 1996 decision to privatise the Commonwealth Employment Service and set up a private Job Network to steamroll the unemployed into often underpaid and unrewarding jobs. From humble beginnings in Brisbane in 1989, Rein has built up an international employment business with an annual turnover of $175 million. She should be a poster child for the benefits of the Coalition’s privatisation drive for business, except that she is also the wife of federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd.

Moving Victoria to zero greenhouse emissions

The following is an abridged version of the Beyond Zero Emissions stationary energy plan for the state of Victoria. It is reprinted with permission from MATTHEW WRIGHT of Beyond Zero Emissions, a non-profit, volunteer-run campaign set up under Sustainable Energy Future Inc. The full version can be read at http://www.beyondzeroemissions.org.

Further Comment and Analysis

Letters

Letters to the Editor

Indigenous health The bland comments made by Hamish Chitts in his article, 'Australia's Indigenous health shame' (GLW # 706), on the Close the Gap report without any questioning repeats the usual familiar lines of reporting on Indigenous health

General

Green Left Weekly's $250,000 Fighting Fund: We're one third of the way!

The good news this week is that the Green Left Weekly Fighting Fund has reached a third of the way to its $250,000 target for 2007!

Cultural Dissent

Epitaph: for the well-springs of climate change

Rest in peace, carbon profits, bathed in blood. Before you drown us in your flood, we will rise to bury you. Tremble in fear, carbon merchants, profiteers. You refuse to lift Earth's shroud, your carbon mushroom cloud. A people's fire

The Italians do it best!

The Weird Mob 2: The Italian Invasion
June 4 to 9, Parliament House of NSW and Chauvel Cinema, Paddington
http://www.theweirdmob.com, 0406 135 607 or info@theweirdmob.com

Further Cultural Dissent

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