This year marks the 40th anniversary of the introduction of the Racial Discrimination Act in Australia, yet we still live in a country where racism runs deep. Legislative change, which was won as a result of the movements for black liberation and for women's liberation, was a step forward.
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The agreement to end the longstanding dispute between Hutchison Ports and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) appears near to resolution after nearly four months of conflict.
The dispute began on August 6 with the sudden sacking by text and email of 97 waterfront workers at Hutchison's two facilities at Port Botany and Port of Brisbane.
The fight to stop WestConnex intensified in November with the release — finally — of the motorway's Strategic Business Case.
Four months after roads minister Duncan Gay's promised release date, a heavily redacted Strategic Business Case for WestConnex was released. This was testament to the ongoing pressure of campaigners.
The 38 crew of the Victorian ship MV Portland docked in Portland, in south-west Victoria, have refused to sail the vessel to Singapore on a one-way journey.
The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) is demanding the Federal Government and aluminium producer Alcoa reverse a decision to sack the workers and allow a foreign-crewed ship take over its route between Western Australia and Victoria.
The Butterfly Prison
Tamara Pearson 343pps
Open Books
www.open-bks.com
In her debut novel The Butterfly Prison, Tamara Pearson, an Australian journalist working for Latin American news site TeleSUR in Quito, uses a poet’s sensitivity and language combined with a journalist’s eye for reportage. She weaves storylines that situate the poor and alienated as actors in resisting the living prison which dehumanises them.
Israel has detained at least 1200 children since October 1.
As the latest upsurge in mass Palestinian resistance to Israel's occupation entered its third month, the world marked the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on November 29.
The statement below was released by four mayors of cities in the Spanish state — Barcelona, Cadiz, Zaragoza and A Coruna — and signed by many well-known figures from Spanish media and culture. It was translated for Green Left Weekly by Dick Nichols.
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The brutal attacks in Paris on November 13 were designed to install a climate of terror in the population, raising walls of suspicion and hatred between neighbours, shattering community life and bringing the politics of fear into our daily lives.
When the First Fleet sailed into Port Jackson on January 26, 1788, it carried more than the physical paraphernalia for European settlement. Along with tools, agricultural implements, chains, handcuffs, the cat-o'-nine-tails and gunpowder, the colonists brought with them an entrenched world-view.
Armed thugs, some with signs supporting Republican presidential candidate, Ted Cruz, intimidate worshipers at a mosque in Irving, Texas. November 21.
In her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine, Canadian author Naomi Klein discusses how capitalist governments and corporations exploit disasters to further their interests against the rest of us.
West Papuans, Aboriginal activists and supporters held a midday vigil outside the Indonesian consulate in Perth on December 1 to mark West Papuan Independence Day. The action also called for the end of the military occupation by Indonesia that has killed more than 500,000 West Papuans since 1961, when West Papua was annexed by Indonesia.
During the 1890s the Australian colonies were ravaged by unemployment, industrial conflict and misery. Economic conditions became so bad there was a determined attempt to create a different society, a society that was protected from the ravages of capitalism.
One such attempt was by journalist William Lane who, in 1893, had little difficulty in recruiting members to his new utopian society in distant Paraguay. This attempt was ultimately a failure, mainly due to Lane's demanding personality, but the idea of a new, fairer society lingered.
He fell in Afghanistan
Sometime the day before
The Major from the New Mexico National Guard
couldn't find my house
and it was a stormy night in Albuquerque
So we talked by cell phone instead--
No dress uniforms at my door--
It was a clean three shots
Straight through the heart
He was dead before he hit the ground
The Major was a father himself he said
I could hear his kid behind the phone
I could see my own son reaching up to his dad
The Major called back later
The government could fly me
the Major said
to the Dignified Transfer at Dover base
I asked where that was
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