NSW firefighters went out on strike for the first time in 56 years to protest against attacks on workers' compensation rights by the O'Farrell Liberal-National state government. They converged with their firetrucks on Macquarie St, Sydney, and turned the hose on Parliament House to "wash away the stench" of this anti-worker government.
Peter Boyle
Afrodity Giannakis, Green Left correspondent in Greece and an activist in SYRIZA, gives her first impressions of the result of the June 17 election where the conservative New Democracy beat the left coalition SYRIZA to the highers vote by just 3% of votes.
Heavy rain did not deter workers across NSW from turning out in their thousands today to protest against the Barry O’Farrell Liberal-National government’s attack on hard-won workers' compensation rights and entitlements. There were firefighters, nurses, construction workers, factory and office workers recalling workplace casualties and angrily shouting out: "Shame, Barry, shame!" The workers later left flowers outside Parliament House gates to remember those killed and injured.
Australian mining companies, already ravaging the traditional land of Indigenous peoples in the Philippines, are now pushing for ratification of a military agreement that would allow Australian troops to enter the Philippines for "combined training, exercises, or other activities mutually approved by the Parties". Protests broke out in Manila on June 6, 2012 as the Philippines Senate was deliberating the ratification of this controversial 'visiting forces' military pact with the Australian government, signed by the disgraced former President Gloria Arroyo in 2007.
Anti-war and progressive groups in the Philippines have requested Australian solidarity against a Status of Visiting Forces Agreement between Australia and the Philippines currently before the Philippines Senate for ratification. On June 6 there were two anti-war demos against this Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) which is seen as part of a US-led military build up in the Asian region aimed at China.
Anti-war and progressive groups in the Philippines have asked for Australian support against a Status of Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) between Australia and the Philippines currently before the Philippines Senate for ratification.
On June 6, there were two anti-war protests against the VFA, which is seen as part of a US-led military build up in the Asian region aimed at China.
The US used to operate huge military bases in the Philippines under the Marcos dictatorship. After Marcos was toppled by peoples power uprisings, these agreements were revoked.
How outrageous is this story?
Just days after International Monetary Fund boss Christine Lagarde lectured Greek people to pay their taxes or not expect any sympathy from the rest of the world, the British Guardian revealed that her salary of US$467,940 a year, plus US$83,760 in additional allowances, is tax-free. What a bloody hypocrite.
Like top United Nations officials and the Queen of England, the IMF chief enjoys tax-free status.
Election pundit Peter "Mumble" Brent has accurately summed up Paul Howes as “not so much a person as an ever-evolving script”. He became chief of the right-wing run Australian Workers Union five years ago but clearly has much higher political ambitions.
The Party, The Socialist Workers Party 1960-1988, Volume II: Interregnum, Decline and Collapse, 1973-1988, A Political Memoir
By Barry Sheppard
Resistance Books (London), 2011
345 pages.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States Socialist Workers Party (SWP) was one of the most promising socialist organisations in any imperialist country.
Formed in the 1930s, it survived the isolating conservatism of the '50s to play a key role in building many progressive movements, particularly the fight against the Vietnam War.
Bahraini democracy activist Zainab Abdulnabi, representing the Bahraini Australian Youth Movement, delivered an impassioned speech at the end of the Sydney May Day march on May 6, 2012
Is there a surplus or is there not? Does delivering a $1.5 billion surplus in 2012-13 make Wayne Swan a “good economic manager”? Are you a winner and grinner or a loser soon to be driven to the boozer? Blah, blah, blah. Enough, enough already with the budget spins and counterspins.
You want something real to worry about from the budget? Worry about your job if you are lucky enough to still have one, and worry about what will happen to you if you lose it.
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