GLW issue 762, published 2008-08-13.

Fight for same-sex rights continues

The fourth annual Equal Love rally and exchange of “Midwinta” vows was held in Melbourne on August 3.

Breaking Queensland's coal addiction

“Queensland is the biggest coal producing state in the biggest coal producing country in the world”, John MacKenzie of Friends of the Earth told an August 6 Socialist Alliance forum.

Our Common Cause: Dealing with the global warming challenge

How do we act on the need for urgent action to solve the climate change challenge?

Australian News

Keep Australia nuclear free!

“If only 0.3% of the world’s current nuclear armaments were used, it would create a nuclear winter, and the end of humanity on this planet”, Dr Marianne Hanson, senior lecturer in international relations at the University of Queensland, told the Brisbane Hiroshima Day rally on August 3. The rally attracted 100 people.

Climate justice seminar calls for action

With the impact of global warming already being felt, it can be hard to feel positive about the future. However, an August 2 “climate justice” seminar at Melbourne University provided some positive directions for the 140 people who attended.

Further Australian News

International News

Inter-Palestinian strife as Israel continues attacks

A bombing that killed five Hamas members and a five-year-old girl on July 25 in the Gaza Strip has escalated tensions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories between the Hamas government in Gaza and the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA), based in the West Bank.

Schwarzenegger's wage cuts condemned

Unionists protested on July 20 in San Francisco against the decision by Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to cut the wages of more than 200,000 state workers to the federal minimum wage of US$6.55 per hour, alleging he must do so because the state legislature has not passed a budget.

Further International News

Comment and Analysis

Fanning the flames of climate change

“As near as we can tell looking at the historical record, there’s been ice in the Arctic in the summer for at least 16 million years”, Don Perovich, a geophysicist with the US army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, told the August 4 Four Corners program. Arctic ice melt over this year’s northern summer has been at record levels, leaving the amount of ice remaining alarmingly low.

Sewerage reform: concrete sustainability ideas

Hydrologists such as professors Peter Cullen, Richard Kingsford and Derek Eamus, speaking at public forums in NSW earlier this year, warned that Australians are extracting water from stressed rivers and artesian systems faster than it is being replenished.

Further Comment and Analysis

Letters

Write On: Letter to the editor

Work Choices @letter =What rock was Nick Everett hiding under during last year's federal election? (Write On, GLW #761) You couldn't move without a Labor political hopeful promising to "tear-up" Work Choices through the campaign. Rudd promised it

General

Green Left Weekly $250,000 Fighting Fund: We're more than half-way there!

Having raised a total of $129,040 for the 2008 Green Left Weekly Fighting Fund, we are now more than half-way to our $250,000 target. Our supporters raised $5440 over the last week through donations and several successful fundraising events around the country.

Resistance!

Why are politicians so scared of same-sex marriage rights?

In August 2004, around the same time as the Howard Coalition government banned same-sex marriage, the religious right held an anti-gay marriage forum at Parliament House in Canberra. It was attended by about 2000 people.

Hillsong's miracle make-up cure

The conservative Christian group Hillsong has launched a controversial new youth program “Shine”, aimed, it says, at “promoting self-esteem” in teenage girls considered to be “at risk”, due to personal problems or behavioural issues.

Cultural Dissent

Venezuela: a revolution in motion

Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Politics of the Chavez Government
By Gregory Wilpert
Verso, 2007
352 pages, $49.95

A life-long fighter for women's equality

Cups with no Handles: Memoir of a Grassroots Activist
By Carolyn Landon
Hybrid Publishers, 2008
288 pages, $29.95 (pb)

Further Cultural Dissent

FEATURED CONTENT

Lib-Lab budgets: Following the dodo on a race to extinction

Support glw

"Australia has the most restrictive media in the western world. Censorship by omission denies Australians their democratic right to make sense of whole stratas of political and foreign policy. That's why Green Left Weekly is a beacon, doing a job of honourable journalism, as an agent of people, not power."
John Pilger

Donate securely online - every cent you donate helps us to keep going.