Comment and analysis

Several recent scientific reports on climate change have warned we are headed for disaster, giving frightening evidence of just how bad things could get. It’s just as frightening how little world governments intend to do about it.

But it’s maddening to think how easy it would be to take serious action on climate, and staggering to add up the benefits of doing so.

For a brief moment last month, as the bombs fell and destruction spread, Gaza was a lead story for the world's media. But now the plight of 1.5 million people living in an over crowded open-air prison, routinely attacked and denied essential medicines, has made way for a far more important story: an English aristocrat is knocked up.

The Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney released this statement on November 26.

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The Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney (STICS) will hold a major forum on the NT intervention to mark Human Rights Day on December 6.

The meeting will also mark 20 years since Paul Keating gave his famous "Redfern Speech" which recognised the destructive impact of colonisation on Aboriginal people.

An article published by Socialist Alternative titled “Jill Meagher, Reclaim the Night and the political right” on November 22 said: “The horrible rape and murder of Brunswick woman Jill Meagher has been successfully used by the media and authorities to promote a right wing political agenda.

Federal independent MPs, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, have put pressure on the Julia Gillard's government to raise the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and to slash so called “middle class welfare” entitlements.

A recent speech by a leading member of the US International Socialist Organisation, Sharon Smith, represents an important contribution the discussions of socialists and activists on women’s liberation.

The struggle for socialism is a unifying struggle that encompasses many other movements to end all forms of oppression and exploitation. All progressive struggles are the business of socialists and socialist parties. At the same time, all struggles are strengthened by Marxist-educated, highly conscious activists.

The mining industry in Australia has boomed from about 4% of GDP in 2004 to about 9% today. Mining exports in the year to March last year were worth $155 billion, or 53% of Australia's total exports. Mining profits in 2009-10 amounted to $51 billion, and the estimated pre-tax profits over the next 10 years will be about $600 billion. 

But who is the wealth benefiting and what are the costs of mining? And who makes the decisions about if, where and under what conditions mining takes place, and how the wealth is distributed?

Green Left Weekly has been flooded with pleas for help and support from several men on hunger strike in the Nauru detention camp. The two letters below are from 35-year-old Iranian Omid Sorousheh, who has been refusing food the longest, and Amin, who was on his fifth day of hunger strike on November 26.
 
Both men say they will refuse medical treatment until Australia accepts they have a right to asylum.
 
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Dying asylum seeker sends plea to world
 

Groups campaigning to stop the roll out of coal seam gas (CSG) mining have slammed federal resources minister Martin Ferguson for his attack on two Southern Cross University scientists who released results of their research into the CSG industry’s greenhouse gas emissions.

In the dead of night on November 22, 100 containers of concentrated rare earth ore mined in Western Australia began to be transported, under heavy police escort, through the port of Kuantan to a new refinery built by Australian company Lynas.

This took place just two days after 19 local residents travelled to Sydney to protest at the company's annual general meeting and while another group of protesters were on a 300 kilometre protest march to Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur over the issue.

Socialist Alternative has sparked a debate about whether socialists should be involved in feminist campaigns in an article published on its website on November 22 "Jill Meagher, Reclaim the Night and the political right". 

Jews Against the Occupation (JAO) respond to their critics on everything from claims that 'Israel is a democracy' to 'you are not real Jews', from why they support BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) to why they see Israel as an 'apartheid state'.

They also explain where their anti-occupation stance came from and why they started to question Zionism (support for an exclusively Jewish state).

Contact Jews Against the Occupation at jao.org.au

Hundreds of childcare workers rallied on the steps of the Victorian state parliament on November 17. The rally was organised by United Voice as part of its Big Steps campaign, a national push to improve wages and conditions in the childcare industry.

After speeches from union delegates and the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the crowd marched to the Victorian Treasury gardens.

Simon Butler, coauthor with Ian Angus of Too Many People? Population, Immigration and the Environmental Crisis, gave the speech below to a November 17 seminar in Sydney, “Sustainable population: towards a meaningful dialogue,” organised by the Nature Conservation Society of NSW.

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In last month’s Victorian local council elections, the Socialist Alliance’s Sue Bolton was elected to Moreland City Council in Melbourne’s north. Green Left Weekly’sSusan Price asked Bolton about her immediate plans for the council and what sets her apart from other councillors.

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We are going to organise a meeting in Moreland of members of Socialist Alliance, plus other people who supported the campaign or support the victory that we’ve had, to work out a plan of action.

This statement was released by Socialist Alliance on November 16. Click here for details of protest rallies against Israel's war across Australia

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“Civilians were the overwhelming majority of the more than 1400 people Israel killed in it’s 2009 assault on Gaza. Today, Israel is beginning another assault. A quarter of the Palestinians killed so far are children, including babies,” Sue Bolton, newly elected Socialist Alliance member of the Moreland City Council said.

A community protest and picket has been set up for a second time outside the Little Creatures Brewing factory under construction in Geelong. The picket began on October 22 but was lifted after 7 days so that negotiations could take place. The talks broke down and the picket has been reimposed since November 14.

Up to 50 Geelong workers have protested every weekday about the use of “sham contracting”.

Reporting on the release of the mid-year budget update in the Canberra Times on October 22, Peter Martin wrote that “Tax collections from both wages and the GST are running ahead of projections. Dramatically lower company tax collections account for most of the $21 billion write-down.”

Included in that $21 billion is a revenue downgrade of $4.3 billion dollars over four years in resource rent tax from petroleum and mineral extraction from a projected $13.4 billion.

“The time has come for judgment to begin in the house of the Lord,” said the Apostle Peter to the early Christian Church (1 Peter 4:17). Very different issues were being faced then, but not too different. The church was facing intense public scrutiny and Peter said that the suffering would be a cleansing experience. Those who were guilty (murderers, thieves and criminals, v. 15) would be exposed for what they are, and the innocent (v. 16) would be vindicated.

An Iranian man known as Omid, who is held in the Nauru detention camp, has been on hunger strike for 33 days. Refugees said medical staff had told Omid his kidneys and brain were going to fail and he would be moved to hospital “in the coming days”.

The rest of the group decided to end their 13-day hunger strike this morning, said, after Amnesty International said it would visit the island on a fact-finding mission next week.

This month is the start of the wet season on the tiny island of Nauru, where more than 370 refugees are being detained in Australian army tents that leak and do nothing to keep mosquitoes out.
 
In these appalling conditions, more than 300 men are refusing food and some are refusing water in a bid to have the department of immigration hear their claims for asylum.
 
That’s right — people that came to Australia exercising their legal and moral right to seek protection are on a hunger strike because the Australian government has decided to make an example of them.
 

Did you think there is a housing bubble in Australia? Not so, according to the chairperson of Aussie Home Loans, John Symond, who said last month: “I am confident, notwithstanding a lot of hype from offshore analysts about a housing bubble, of Australia’s fundamentals.”

Symond wants us to trust him, not those offshore analysts, because it's not as if the owner of a home loans company has any interest in the maintenance of an overpriced property market.

The Infrastructure NSW chair, former Liberal premier Nick Greiner, delivered a vision for the state for the next 20 years on October 3. For the 4.5 million people living in Sydney, the State Infrastructure Strategy, titled First Things First, will mean more roads, more congestion and more transport frustration for years to come.

The Australian Secretariat of the 2012 International Year of cooperatives co-hosted a National Co-operatives Conference in Port Macquarie over October 24 and 25. More than 250 delegates attended, representing cooperatives of all shapes and sizes and across many different sectors, including agriculture, retailing, credit unions, building societies, housing, medical practices, automobile associations, renewable energy projects and food .

Last week, Green Left’s fledgling video project, Green Left TV, was forced to take down a video about protests by asylum seekers jailed on Nauru by the Australian government, because it was threatened with imminent legal action.

But we have persisted in getting out the desperate messages from these victims of a brutal and ultimately racist policy, as you can see in this week's issue and in a Green Left TV interview with a refugee from Nauru: “Nauru hunger striker calls for freedom.”

So if the government's bill excising the entire Australian mainland from the migration zone is passed in parliament, I guess we will all be unAustralian.

That is one insult used by politicians to describe anything they don't like will now lose its force. Forget Aboriginal people protesting on Australia Day, logically there can surely be no more unAustralian act than legally declaring Australia unAustralia.

“Now there’s two of us,” declared Alex Greenwich, after he won the NSW seat of Sydney in the October 27 by-election. Greenwich received just under 65% of the two-party preferred vote: a 12% swing to Clover Moore's independents.

The by-election was held because of the NSW government’s “Get Clover Bill,” which banned MPs from sitting on local council. Sydney mayor Clover Moore then had to resign from her seat in state parliament.

In his victory speech, Greenwich stood with Moore and spoke of how the attempt to rob Sydney of its independent voice had backfired on the government.

The Sydney Stop the War Coalition released the statement below on November 2.

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Prime Minister Julia Gillard made her annual report on the war in Afghanistan to an almost empty Parliament House on October 31.

After 11 years, she insists that the International Security Assistance Force counter-insurgency strategy against the Taliban is “working” and the Afghan National Army is on track to take over security in 2014 — when the Western forces “leave”.

Refugees on Nauru have staged several peaceful but desperate protests in recent weeks to call attention to their worsening conditions. Several refugees have attempted suicide.

But allegations have surfaced that staff inside the centre have made attempts to obstruct and interrupt their bid to be heard by the Australian public. One asylum seeker held on Nauru told Green Left Weekly that Salvation Army staff stationed in the centre had torn down protest signs assembled by the detainees.

Globally, millions of women experience violence — whether in the form of intimate partner violence, rape and sexual coercion, stalking, trafficking, forced prostitution, exploitation of labour, or other violations of women's bodies and psyches.

The high prevalence of violence against women both reflects and reinforces women's lower status in society.

To end the violence against women, we need to confront both the violence directly and the structural causes of women's lower standing that makes women vulnerable to the violence.

The billionaires and their corporate courtiers had a sneer and snigger fest when BHP Billiton, Xstrata and Rio Tinto informed the Tax Office they would pay zero mining tax for the first quarter of this financial year.

The federal Labor government's mid-year budget update downgraded the tax's forecast revenue from $13.4 billion over four years to $9.1 billion. But these mining giants told the media it was not clear how much, if anything, they would pay over the rest of the financial year.

What a sorry end to the mining super-tax profits saga.

In a startling but not unexpected backflip, Queensland Premier Campbell Newman gave the green light to uranium mining on October 22, lifting a decades-long ban on the destructive industry.

PM Julia Gillard's sharp serve against opposition leader Tony Abbott’s sexism gave many, especially women, long overdue cause to fist-pump the air and think, “Finally, a point for us.”

She threw a verbal hand grenade on top of the simmering indignation that had pent up due to radio broadcaster Alan Jones’ relentless misogyny and the aftermath of the brutal rape and murder of ABC journalist Jill Meagher. The speech rapidly went viral, hit global news and connected with thousands of women fed up with being told to shut up and accept the double standards.

In 1988, then Labor Prime Minster Bob Hawke famously promised: “By the year 1990, there will be no Australian child living in poverty.”

Yet the recently released 2012 Poverty In Australia report by the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) reveals that 2,265,000 people, including 575,000 children, are still living below the poverty line in Australia.

It’s just before the turn of the 20th century, and colonial Australia is desperate to forge a “nation” and pull away from self-governing British colonies.

So-called native-born Australians are swept up in a wave of nationalism, keen to cut the apron strings of mother England. At the same time, on the southern edge of the Kimberley, another battle for independence is underway.

But this one won’t result in a constitution or the formation of a Commonwealth; it will end in rivers of black blood and the deaths of many.

A debate about sexism erupted when female prime minister Julia Gillard attacked the opposition leader in Australian parliament for his misogynist attitudes.

It was a reminder that even after all the advances in the past 40 years, many women still face high rates of domestic violence and sexual assault, they shoulder the burden of child care and housework, in the workforce they make up most casual and underpaid jobs while earning 70% of what men earn, and battle daily with sexism in culture and relationships.

Prominent Perth activist Kamala Emanuel faces court on November 28 in an important case dealing with the right to protest. She is charged with “failure to obey [an] order given by an officer”.

The charges relate to an April protest rally against coal seam gas "fracking" that was attacked by Perth City Council rangers. Rangers tried to close down the rally, claiming that it was in violation of council by-laws, including one by-law that prohibits a person from carrying a sign without authorisation.

NSW Coalition Premier Barry O’Farrell has been accused of lying about his pre-election promise to protect farmland and drinking water catchments from the burgeoning coal seam gas (CSG) industry.

The government finally released its Strategic Regional Land Use Policy on September 11. It outlines how the government will manage the CSG industry. After 18 months of promising to protect sensitive areas such as farms and bushland from the new industry, the policy revealed that no part of NSW has been ruled out for CSG mining and exploration.

Elections are coming up for local councils across Victoria. Many candidates are reflecting community campaigns, but others are reflecting the interests of developers and other business interests.

Because council ballot papers don’t identify candidates’ party affiliation, the Liberal and Labor parties often don’t endorse candidates. Instead, members of the Liberal and Labor parties run as “independents”.

On October 7, the Socialist Alliance adopted as a key focus for its next federal election campaign a call to bring the mining industry and the banks under public/community ownership and control, so they can be run in a way that respects Aboriginal rights, the environment and social justice.

The urgent need to address climate change alone demands that these industries be immediately taken out of the hands of the billionaires and their global corporations and operated as not-for-profit public services under the democratic control of the majority.

Barry Commoner, “a leader among a generation of scientist-activists” (New York Times) and possibly “the greatest environmentalist of the 20th century” (Ralph Nader), died in New York on September 30, aged 95.

The Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network released the statement below on October 8.

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Arthur Murray died the other day. I turned to Google Australia for tributes, and there was a 1991 obituary of an American ballroom instructor of the same name. There was nothing in the Australian media.

The Australian newspaper published a large, rictal image of its proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, handing out awards to his employees. Arthur would have understood the silence.