The results September 8 NSW local government elections have not been finalised yet, but results showed a 7% swing to the Liberals across the state. Many more Liberal councillors will take office than were elected in 2008.
The ALP suffered a statewide 6% swing against it and the Greens vote dropped 1%.
The Liberals picked up the most positions in former ALP strongholds in Sydney's west.
Peter Boyle
The Communist Party of Australia's (CPA) Tony Oldfield was elected to Auburn Council in the NSW local government elections on September 8. He became the fourth socialist to be elected as a local councillor around the country. The others are Sam Wainwright (Socialist Alliance, Fremantle Council) and Steve Jolly and Anthony Main (Socialist Party, Yarra City Council, Victoria).
In richest-woman-in-the-world Gina Rinehart's twisted moral universe, workers in Australia need to work harder for less to compete with African mine workers (including an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 child miners in West Africa) who slave for $2 a day. She says that's what competition in the “global market” dictates.
The sleepy central Malaysian town of Raub was the focus of a 15,000-strong Himpunan Hijau (Green Gathering) national convergence of environmental activists on September 2.
The immediate focus of the convergence was to support local community opposition to the use of cyanide in gold mining operations near the town by the Raub Australian Gold Mine. But activists also came from another major environmental campaign, against a toxic rare earths refinery in that has been built by Lynas, an Australian corporation, near the city of Kuantan.
Despite Labor's defeat in the NT elections after governing there for 11 years, Labor Party supporters are taking heart at the modest improvement in the party’s standing in the latest Newspoll and Herald/Nielsen poll.
The latest Newspoll survey, taken for the Australian over August 18-19, showed the ALP's primary vote at 35% up from its low of 28% in mid-July, while the Liberal-National Coalition stayed at 45%.
The desperate millions than comprise Manila's urban poor settlers were the worst hit by the recent floods but the government has scapegoated them for the ongoing disaster and threatened to "blast away" the shanty homes of 100,000.
Jade Lee, a residents' rights and environmental activist, explains why there is powerful community opposition to the commencement of operation of a rare earth refinery in Malaysia by Lynas, an Australian company.
Resident group activists in Malaysia who have been campaigning to stop an Australian corporation, Lynas, from building a highly toxic rare earth refinery near Kuantan, Pahang, celebrated a little victory after Justice Mariana Yahya of the Kuantan High Court agreed on August 28 to hear their application for two judicial reviews.
On December 9, 2011, in the military-occupied Jafna, in the north of Sri Lanka, left-wing activists Lalith Kumar and Kuhan Muruganandanin were “disappeared” in the area of Neerveli while the two were riding on a motor bike.
Like many other activists and reporters who have “disappeared” in that country, witnesses say the two were abducted by an armed gang in a white van. However these witnesses were too terrified of retribution to make official statements.
Five words sum up federal opposition leader Tony Abbott's response to some sharp questions put to him by journalist Leigh Sales in the August 22 episode of ABC TV's 7.30: Liar, liar, pants on fire!
If you need a good example of a person with a chronic disposition to lie, this is it. Read the transcript or watch the video, then imagine the same interview — except conducted after Abbott was given a dose of truth serum.
Perhaps it would go something like this.
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"Why is it that an Australian, facing prosecution from a European country, decides to appeal for asylum to a South American republic?" Tariq Ali posed and eloquently answered this important question when he spoke outside the Embassy of Ecuador in London on August 19, 2012.
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