Peter Boyle

In this final issue, we at GLW want to thank you for your strong support in 2009.
You could be forgiven for missing the good news this month.
Most people reading or hearing the news story last week about the 12-year-old Aboriginal boy who was taken to court in Western Australia (WA) and charged with receiving stolen goods — a 70 cent chocolate Freddo — would have thought this was a sick joke.
In a recent reflection, veteran Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro noted that 237 members of the US Congress — 44% — were millionaires, including President Barack Obama.
Our Spring Offensive, which ended on October 31, took the total raised for the Green Left Weekly Fighting Fund this year to more than $200,000, and $8003 came in the last week.
Every time capitalist politicians play with racist prejudice against asylum seekers, there are violent consequences. I'm not just referring to the threatened forceful disembarkation of the Tamil refugees from the Oceanic Viking, which is outrageous. The bipartisan anti-asylum seeker rhetoric in Canberra is also very likely provoking more racist violence across Australia.
A wave of deep moral revulsion swept through everyone in this country with a social conscience after Labor PM Kevin Rudd uttered that ugly sentence: “This government makes no apology for a hard-line approach to people smuggling and border security.”
Green Left Weekly is highly valued by its many international readers. Every week, Farooq Tariq and his comrades in the Labour Party Pakistan “eagerly await” the arrival of this particular newspaper from far-off Australia. Pakistan is now a “hot-spot” in the US-led war against Afghanistan.
A fearsome maelstrom of tsunamis, earthquakes and huge floods have suddenly ended or shattered the lives of many people in the Asia-Pacific region over the past two weeks.

Green Left Weekly is planning to run ongoing coverage on the dramatic developments in the struggle for democracy and justice in Honduras over the coming days.

Reading through the messages of support coming in for Green Left Weekly’s “Spring Offensive” fundraising appeal, I was reminded of the old saying: “You don't know what you have until you lose it.”
We are letting the readers and supporters of Green Left Weekly explain why you should make a special donation for the Spring Offensive to help make our $250,000 fighting fund target.