In 2002, the CityPass consortium was awarded the contract to build and run the Jerusalem light rail. Amnesty International, the Arab League, and unions, church and community groups worldwide have condemned this project as another step in Israel's annexation of Palestinian land.
Australia
In the late evening of March 15, the NSW correctional services department used management personnel to transfer 107 prisoners from the Cessnock jail in preparation for its privatisation.
Australian agriculture both contributes to climate change and is adversely affected by it. Any campaign in to force urgent government action on climate change has to include a demand for the radical transformation of rural land use and farming systems to be ecologically sustainable.
Climate activists have been campaigning against the governments so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) long before the exposure legislation was tabled in parliament on March 10.
The federal ALP government’s Fair Work Bill passed through the Senate on March 20 after intense wheeling and dealing with Family First Senator Steve Fielding and independent Senator Nick Xenophon.
A March 18 emergency community meeting called by the Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Watch Committee attracted more than 35 people.
NSW police have entered an out-of-court settlement with anti-war activist Paddy Gibson after he sued them for wrongful arrest during the APEC protests in Sydney in September 2007.
The VicTec apprentices committee has organised a rally on Victorian parliament steps to protest the increasing number of retrenchments of apprentices, to take place on March 19.
After the Australian Jewish News decided on March 11 to pull a paid advertisement for the upcoming lecture tour by Professor Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, the Emanuel Synagogue, which had agreed to have Halper speak to a class of 12 people, suddenly withdrew its invitation.
A protest was held outside Rio Tinto’s Melbourne offices on March 13 to launch a campaign against multinationals investing in Colombia. Rio Tinto has several exploration projects in Colombia and it plans to start mining next year.
On March 12, the maintenance crew from Fosters Brewery, sacked by the company in February, set up a protest outside their old workplace in Abbotsford, Melbourne.
The Australian Financial Review doesn’t mince words, nor does it try to conceal reality from its readership.
A debate is underway in the Australian Greens about how the party should respond to the Rudd government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS).
On the same day March 12 that PM Kevin Rudd was talking turkey (or literally: wheat) with Iraqs puppet prime minister, Nouri al Maliki, Muntadhar al Zaidi, who became famous after throwing shoes at US President George Bush, was sentenced to three years jail.
Except for a two-year blip from 1996 to 1998, the Australian Labor Party has ruled Queensland for the past 20 years. Following 32 years of successive conservative coalition governments, Labor was elected in a landslide in 1989.
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