Once again the question of left unity is on the agenda in Australia. There have been exploratory talks between the Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative and also between the Socialist Alliance and the Communist Party of Australia (CPA).
The Socialist Alliance and the CPA worked together in a Housing Action election ticket in the Sydney City Council elections this year.
Peter Boyle
This is the last issue of Green Left Weekly for this year. Our small staff which works very hard, week after week, to get out this publication will take a much-needed break after a hectic political year, and get ready to relaunch in mid-January.
The 2012 Green Left Fighting Fund has now raised about $193,000 so we have to try to raise a further $57,000 by the end of the year to get to our $250,000 target — or as close as we can get.
Two spectacular banner drops on Sydney's Darling Harbour Convention Centre exposed some of the "dirty deeds" of the world's biggest mining company, BHP Billiton.
Environmentalists and Aboriginal rights supporters rallied outside the company’s annual general meeting on November 29 to highlight the billions of dollars profit BHP makes annually from the dirty energy sector, inclduing uranium, coal, oil and coal seam gas.
It's just about impossible to watch a commercial TV channel anywhere in Australia without being assaulted by slick mining company ads telling us how good they supposedly are for the community. Incredible amounts of money are being spent on these brainwashing campaigns.
One set of these advertisements more specifically targets communities that are resisting the onslaught of the coal seam gas (CSG) miners, particularly in precious water catchment areas and prime food producing regions. These ads are often more targeted in their messaging, but they have been caught out lying.
About 1500 people rallied and marched in Sydney on November 24 in solidarity with the people of Gaza and the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation and war. Speakers were: As'ad Awashra, Palestinian student from the West Bank; Ahmad Mustafa, Palestinian Cultural Centre; Ray Jackson, Indigenous Social Justice Association; Lee Rhiannon, Greens Senator; Lynda Voltz, NSW Labor MLC; Paul MacAleer, Maritime Union of Australia; Antony Loewenstein, Independent journalist and author; Fr Dave Smith, Holy Trinity Anglican church. A powerful poem was performed by Candy Royalle.
BHP used to be called “The Big Australian”. It is now BHP Billiton — a global corporation, the largest mining company in the world and the largest Australian headquartered corporation by market capitalisation.
Its CEO Marius Kloppers is described as being one of "the top 20 most powerful people in business worldwide".
In the dead of night on November 22, 100 containers of concentrated rare earth ore mined in Western Australia began to be transported, under heavy police escort, through the port of Kuantan to a new refinery built by Australian company Lynas.
An action was organised by the Refugee Action Coalition on November 23 to protest the re-opening of the Australian immigration detention camps in Manus Is (PNG) and Nauru. It was held outside the office of Tanya Plibersek, the federal minister for health, in Sydney. A letter of protest was delivered at the end of the action.
Photos by Peter Boyle.
It is an extraordinary thing for thousands of ordinary people to mob an inauguration ceremony for a new governor of Jakarta. Yet this is exactly what happened on October 15, according to the progressive Indonesian publication Berdikari Online.
It reported that thousands of people ― among them many from Jakarta's urban poor communities ― braved the scorching heat to welcome the incoming governor Joko Widodo (better known as Jokowi) and his deputy Basuki Tjahaja Purnama.
“The explosion of the rig was a disaster that resulted from BP’s culture of privileging profit over prudence,” said US federal assistant attorney general Lanny A. Breuer at a recent press conference. He was announcing that the company had agreed to pay $4.5 billion to settle criminal charges from the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. BP also plead guilty to 11 counts of manslaughter and three other lesser charges.
Abdel Jabbar Madouri has been a militant in Tunisia from his early secondary school days. He was jailed three times (in 1987, 1993 and 2002) because of his political activism. After every arrest, he was tortured, then sentenced to more than 12 years in jail.
Madouri spent four years living underground during the Ben Ali regime, which was overthrown in January last year -- sparking the “Arab Spring”. He was also deprived of the right to work or to obtain a passport.
Israel has launched a fresh full-scale war on the besieged people of Gaza. The Palestine In My Eyes website is detailed the names and ages of those killed in Israel's latest bombardment. As of the morning of November 20, 108 Palestinians were listed as killed.
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