Many councils across Australia have local laws that restrict free speech. Most people are unaware of these laws, until there is an issue that engages them enough to want to exercise their right to free speech and set up a stall, hand out leaflets, get petitions signed and maybe organise a protest rally.
Only when a council officer tells them they have to pack up and leave, do they realise there are undemocratic laws on the books.
World leaders broke with the United States on climate change and reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris climate agreement at the Group of 20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany on July 8, which brings together representatives from some of the world’s largest economies.
However, a new report has exposed the strong support for large fossil fuel corporations from G20 governments as a whole.
As the battle for the right of Catalonia to vote on independence rages between the Spanish government in Madrid and the independence-oriented Catalan parliament in Barcelona, major developments have taken place in one of the most famous struggles for independence on the Iberian Peninsula — the Basque Country.
Argentine police violently evicted a group of laid-off workers from a PepsiCo factory in the capital city of Buenos Aires on July 12, after more than three weeks of occupying the plant.
Since June 20, a group of workers and labour rights activists occupied the plant to defend the 691 people who lost their jobs after an announcement made by the company confirmed that they would no longer operate.
The NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association (NSWNMA) welcomed reports the NSW government had capitulated on July 7 on the proposed privatisation of Bowral and District Hospital. This followed the announcement on July 6 that Wyong Hospital, south of Newcastle, will also remain in public hands.
NSWNMA general secretary Brett Holmes said the decision was a testament to 10 long months of campaigning with the community group Public Health First, local health workers and their supporters.
Countless abuses have occurred in the four years since then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s announcement in 2013 that no asylum seeker who arrived by boat will ever be resettled in Australia. Here are six key reasons to join the calls to evacuate all those detained on Manus Island and Nauru now and bring them to Australia.
The PNG Supreme Court declared last year that the Manus Island detention centre was unconstitutional and must be closed. The Australian government is closing the centre; however, it is still refusing to bring the 861 men in Manus Island to Australia, leaving many to live in fear and uncertainty.
Hundreds of thousands of people rallied in the Turkish city of Istanbul after a 280-mile Justice March against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The demonstration was in response to the widespread jailings and dismissals authorised by the Turkish government after last year’s failed coup attempt.
“The revelation that Sydney is set to become the ‘toll road capital of the world’ shows the madness,” said Pip Hinman, Socialist Alliance candidate for Stanmore ward in the September Inner West Council elections.
“The disastrous $17 billion WestConnex tollway is just the latest in a string of tollroads around the city, and should be halted immediately,” she told Green Left Weekly on July 15
Arab women have announced the foundation of “Martyr Amara Arab Women’s Battalion” under the umbrella of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), ANF News said on July 12.
Formed in 2015, the SDF is an alliance of progressive armed groups — the largest of which are the Kurdish-based People’s Defence Units (YPG) and Women’s Defence Units (YPJ), although including a growing number of other groups — that is subordinate to the grassroots structures of the Democratic Federation of North Syria.
In no breast did the prodigious financial corruption of world football’s administrative elite beat more vigorously than that of Chuck Blazer, the head of football in the North and Central American and Caribbean regional body.
Chuck was not called American soccer’s “Mr Big” for nothing. His bottomless appetite for high-calorie nosh gave him a gargantuan girth, which was matched financially in size by his tax-sheltered bank accounts. These bulged with millions of dollars received through fraud, embezzlement, bribes, perks, gifts and inducements.
Not only could he afford to rent an entire floor of luxury apartments in the prestigious Trump Tower in Manhattan, but he preserved one of them solely for the use of his cats.
It was in the autumn of 2014, only months after Islamic State (ISIS) achieved huge territorial gains inside Syria and Iraq, committing genocidal and femicidal massacres, that a revolutionary silver lining arose from the little-known town of Kobane in Syria’s north.
Having overrun Mosul, Tel Afar and Sinjar in Iraq, as well as a vast expanse of territory inside Syria, ISIS prepared to launch an attack on the north of Syria, known by Kurds as Rojava.
What ISIS did not anticipate in Kobane was that it would encounter an enemy of a different kind – an organised, political community that was ready to defend itself courageously by all means necessary, and with a worldview that turns ISIS’s death ideology on its head.