GLW issue number 883

United States: John Pilger film and visit banned

ZCommunications received the following open letter from indpendent filmmaker and journalist John Pilger reporting very disturbing events in progress. Visit www.johnpilger.com for more of Pilger's work. * * * Dear Noam...

Tom Morello: Welcome to Union Town

Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, who performs solo under the name The Nightwatchman, was inspired by the huge struggle in Wisconsin against a savage anti-union law to release a benefit EP of songs dedicated to workers' struggles. The Nightwatchman's Union Town EP has been released by New West Records and can be bought at iTunes. All proceeds go to the America Votes Labor Unity Fund.

Australian News

BZE wins new green award

Melbourne’s City of Yarra awarded the volunteer-run climate research group Beyond Zero Emissions its 2011 sustainability award for community action on June 2. BZE’s Melbourne group office is based in the Yarra council area. The council said: “Beyond Zero Emissions Inc. (BZE) is an independent, not-for-profit, volunteer-run organisation leading a ‘can do’ campaign for climate solutions grounded in commercially available technologies and peer-reviewed research.

Workers rally for equal pay across nation

As part of a nationwide day of action, more than 1000 people marched on the Victorian parliament on June 8 to fight for state and federal governments to back their claim for increased wages. The Melbourne rally was one of 17 across the country, organised by the Australian Services Union (ASU), which advocates for workers in the female-dominated community services sector. The national day of action comes as a response to Fair Work Australia’s finding that the sector’s workers were not being payed enough, in part, because most of them are women.

Further Australian News

International News

Unjust, unwinnable: Troops must leave Afghanistan!

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has claimed successes for the war in Afghanistan, while acknowledging growing opposition. The June 8 Age reported that Gillard said: “I understand there would be many Australians who over the past two weeks have asked themselves what are we doing there, why are we still there, should our soldiers be there? “I do want to say to the nation we know why we're there, we are very clear about our mission and our mission is being accomplished. “We are doing what we intended to do and we have a timeline for achieving our goal.”

New Zealand socialists discuss new party, rebuilding the left

The path for Maori liberation, debates on left perspectives and the 30th anniversary since the 1981 Springbok tour were some of the discussions at “Workers Power”, the national conference of the Workers Party held in Hamilton over June 3 to 5. The recent formation of the Mana Party was a focus of the discussions. Prominent Maori leader and MP Hone Harawira initiated Mana after leaving the Maori Party, frustrated over its deals while in coalition with the right-wing National Party. Harawira resigned his seat to force a by-election and stand again as a Mana candidate.

Further International News

Comment and Analysis

Carbon price: What are we saying 'yes' to?

Blind Carbon Copy, June 4 — World Environment Day on June 5 was the Say Yes Australia rally called by an alliance of unions and NGOs like GetUp. A large number of environmentalists, including the Greens party, rightly rejected the last attempt of the government to set a carbon price, the “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme”. It was shonky, riddled with loopholes big enough for a diesel-spewing truck to drive through.

Archbishop Tutu's letter to Marrickville Mayor Fiona Byrne

Marrickville Mayor Fiona Byrne has received a letter of support from South African anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The letter appears below. * * * Dear Mayor Fiona Byrne, We in South Africa, who both suffered Apartheid and defeated it, have the moral right and responsibility to name and shame institutionalized separation, exclusion, and domination by one ethnic group over others. In my own eyes I have seen how the Palestinians are oppressed, dispossessed and exiled.

Further Comment and Analysis

Letters

Letters to the editor

Opposed to carbon tax I am a committed greenie, but I was not one of the thousands who rallied on the weekend. I am opposed to the carbon tax because it hurts the poor and lines the pockets of the rich, without doing anything real for the climate. Just 10% of this tax is earmarked for funding for renewable energy, with more than this amount (the government is very coy about the exact figure) to be given to the biggest polluters, as “compensation”. This is just business as usual — lots of money for the worst polluters and a few crumbs for renewables.

Resistance!

Pro-pokie campaign not worth a punt

I was as worried as anyone when I wandered down to my local pub to find a poster over the door announcing the government was trying to shut it down. In their national campaign against proposed changes to poker machine use, Clubs Australia and the Australian Hotel Association (AHA) say “some bloke in Tasmania” (Independent MP Andrew Wilkie) is trying to push through laws that will bankrupt our pubs, destroy our communities and put us all under more government surveillance.

Cultural Dissent

Artists advocating for refugees

The Refugee Art Project (RAP) was established in 2010 by Safdar Ahmed and Dr Omid Tofighian. They run free art classes at the Villawood (NSW) and Broadmeadows (Victoria) detention centres. Some of the artworks, created by the asylum seekers, were on display at the recent Platform Art Space as part of the Human Rights Art and Film Festival. RAP is also organising the fear + hope exhibition featuring works by detained asylum seekers at the Mori Gallery in Sydney from June 20 to July 8. Visit TheRefugeeArtProject.com for more information.

Koestler — from anti-Stalinist to pro-capitalist

Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual By Michael Scammell Faber & Faber, 2011, 720 pages, $32.99 (pb) Arthur Koestler had a taste for political drama. As a communist, he spied against Franco's fascists in the Spanish civil war; as a Jew, he escaped from the Gestapo in France by joining the French Foreign Legion; he saw the inside of five jails; he wrote a famous novel of Stalin's show trials; he became a vociferous anti-communist; and he enjoyed a fashionable vogue for his 1970s books on parapsychology.

Further Cultural Dissent

Tom Morello: Welcome to Union Town

Fighting Fund

Afghanistan: Bring the troops home now

Ten years of Western military occupation and war in Afghanistan has killed hundreds of thousands of people (mostly Afghan civilians), created millions of refugees and paid billions of dollars of “aid” into the hands of brutal warlords who serve as a puppet regime for the occupiers.

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