Mohamed al Brmawi, a Syrian community activist spoke to Pip Hinman and Peter Boyle after the 2011 May Day march in Sydney.
Peter Boyle
The ABC’s Q & A program on October 24 was the first to discuss the Occupy movement sweeping the world. Reportedly there are now occupations in 2200 cities. It revealed why the politicians that represent the richest 1% have no credibility any more.
Occupy Sydney protesters joined trade unionists in support of Qantas workers' fight for jobs and decent pay rise at the companies Annual General Meeting on October 28, 2011.
Simon Butler, co-editor of the independent media project Green Left Weekly and an activist in #OccupySydney speaks about the global Occupy movment and the climate change emergency.
Many commentators and politicians have argued that the global movement of occupations that followed the Wall Street occupation against the rule of the richest 1% will not take root and grow in Australia, which has so far escaped the current global recession. Simon Butler, an activist in #OccupySydney and co-editor of www.greenleft.org, disagrees.
Stuart Munckton, co-editor of Green Left Weekly/Green Left Online, speaks on a new flowering of independent media and activist journalism in the global movement of occupations against the tyranny of the world's richest 1%.
Socialist Alliance national convenor Peter Boyle gave the speech below at the recent Climate Change Social Change activist conference, held in Melbourne over September 30 to October 3.
This is the 900th issue of Green Left Weekly. We are very confident that we will get to the 1000th issue and beyond. We know we can continue to be the most-read environmental and left campaigning newspaper and website in Australia.
The fact that we reach this milestone amid a still-growing global movement of occupations against the tyranny of the world’s richest 1% goes some way to explaining our confidence.
Several prominent Australian human rights advocates have called for protests when Sri Lanka’s “war criminal” president, Mahinda Rajapaksa comes to Perth in late October to attend the Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting (CHOGM).
As the world watched the Egyptian people overthrow the hated dictator Hosni Mubarak earlier this year, there would have been many who asked themselves: Could it happen in my country too?
Some did more than wonder, they took to the streets and tried to “walk like an Egyptian” and a wave of people’s power began to sweep the Arab world. But this wave of revolt didn’t stop there.
There were powerful reverberations in Spain, Israel, Malaysia and even in the United States, the world’s richest country.
Recent polls in Australia now show that Kevin Rudd is the preferred prime minister of 44% of those surveyed, but the guy is just another right-wing creep swanning around the world, giving the world unsolicited advice in Ruddese while living it up in presidential hotel suites costing up to $2700 a night.
This is a country in serious denial. Australia is a world leader in per capita greenhouse gas pollution and in fossil fuel exports. It produces 30 tonnes CO2-equivalent a person a year and 54 tonnes if Australia’s exported CO2 pollution is included.
Pakistan produces 0.9 tonnes and Somalia produces 0.1 tonnes. Yet in these two countries people are dying from climate change as we speak.
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