What Women Want (Australia) is a new political party formed in April that obtained federal electoral registration in August. It currently has almost 780 members, women and men, and is standing 14 Senate candidates across every state and the ACT, plus lower-house candidates in Wakefield and Hindmarsh in South Australia, Gippsland in Victoria and Stirling in WA.
Lisa Macdonald
More than 400 people participated in around 65 workshops and 10 plenary sessions to discuss a myriad of national and international campaigns against imperialism and neoliberalism at the Latin America and Asia Pacific International Solidarity Forum held at Victorian Trades Hall and the RMIT on October 11-14. The participants included 33 activists and leaders from peoples movements and political parties in 20 countries, the most diverse left gathering hosted in Australia for years.
Hundreds of social-movement activists, trade unionists, students, Indigenous people, environmentalists and other progressive people will be gathering in Melbourne in mid-October to hear the most impressive line-up of international guest speakers to meet in Australia for many years.
Planning is well underway for the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network’s sixth brigade to Venezuela, to be held from November 23 to December 3, and registrations are open to everyone interested in this unique opportunity to witness firsthand a revolution in the making.
July 5 marked 196 years since Venezuela declared its independence following a long struggle led by the countrys Indigenous people and a black slave revolt. To mark Independence Day, the embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela hosted a public conference in Sydney on July 7.
The Australia-Cuba Friendship Society held its 2007 national consultation in Canberra on April 13-15, attended by some 60 activists from around Australia. The gathering was also attended by Cubas consul and consul general in Australia, Nelida Hernandez Carmona and Ifrahim Miranda Leon, as well as representatives of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, vice-president Buenaventura Reyes Acosta and Alicia Corredera Morales.
Oliver Ressler, an Austrian artist and co-director (with Dario Azzellini) of Five Factories Worker Control in Venezuela, hosted special screenings of his film in Melbourne and Sydney. Resslers presentations were part of the If You See Something, Say Something exhibition and were sponsored by the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network (AVSN), LASNET and the Melbourne Bolivarian Circle.
Last May 1, more than 1 million people joined the May Day celebrations in Caracas, Venezuela. Since then, Venezuelas impoverished population, led by socialist President Hugo Chavez, has taken over more workplaces, set up more cooperatives, established hundreds of free public education and health programs, organised their neighbourhoods and taken big steps towards exercising popular power in their country.
Oliver Ressler, Austrian artist and co-director (with Dario Azzellini) of Five Factories - Worker Control in Venezuela, will be in Australia in January to host screenings of his new film, followed by discussion.
Australians have joined the international campaign calling on U2s Bono who has appealed to the world for peace and poverty reduction to apply those same values to block the manufacture and distribution of a video game that promotes the invasion and destruction of Venezuela.
The Environment Centre of the Northern Territory and the No Waste Alliance have written to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) urging it not to grant a waste discharge license for a new mine near the town of Batchelor, about 100 kilometres south of Darwin.
"When hypocritical old sexists like PM John Howard, Treasurer Peter Costello and radio shock-jock Alan Jones start delivering pious sermons about the rights of women, something very suspicious is happening", Pip Hinman, the Socialist Alliance's anti-war spokesperson, told Green Left Weekly.
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