Just after 3pm on October 27, the Catalan parliament voted to ratify the results of the country’s October 1 referendum on self-determination, proclaiming Catalonia “an independent state in the form of a republic”.
Outside parliament the vote was greeted with cheers from the tens of thousands of people who had gathered for this historic moment.
Winners of the 2017 Whitsundays Tourism awards, held last month at Hamilton Island, have rejected the prize and threatened to quit the organisation because it was sponsored by the mining giant Adani.
In November 2015, the NSW government sold the old, coal-fired Vales Point Power Station for $1 million, about the price of an average Sydney home.
Then-NSW treasurer Gladys Berejiklian said it would save the taxpayer from "ongoing losses" and "significant liabilities, such as costs associated with decommissioning, estimated to be in the tens of millions".
Fast forward two years.
It seems that every other month we have another parliamentary inquiry into the banks. With so many regular appearances you’d think it would start to get boring.
More than 200 people attended the first rally organised by the Public Housing Defence Network in Debney Park, Flemington on October 15.
The network was established to fight the Daniel Andrews Labor government’s plan to privatise 11 public housing estates across Melbourne. The government wants to sell the current walk-up blocks of flats to private developers who will replace them with some social housing and high rise private developments.
Climate & Capitalism editor and author of A Redder Shade of Green: Intersections of Science and Socialism Ian Angus takes a look at six new books on Marx’s ecosocialist views, climate change and health, theory and action, inevitability versus contingency in evolution, new politics and the meaning of Marx’s Capital.
Colombian indigenous leader Aulio Isamara Forastero was assassinated on October 24, close to the Catru Dubaza Ancoso shelter, shortly after armed assassins reportedly forced him out of his home.
Forastero, from the Pacific province of Choco, is among more than 150 activists killed in Colombia since the beginning of the year.
I was in Honduras last October visiting Azacualpa, a municipality under threat from Canadian corporate mining giant Aura Minerals and its San Andres mine in La Union, Copan.
At the time, residents from the rural municipality were successfully holding off the combined forces of the mine management, its security forces, the regional police, the local mayor, the provincial governor, the regional military commander and the Minister for Homeland Security (who arrived in the community by helicopter with his own entourage of state security bodyguards).
A year on, Aura Minerals, with the collusion of the post-coup Honduran regime, is moving to break the stalemate.
As we go to press, the federal employment minister Michaelia Cash is being hounded — rightly — for yet another gross breach of her parliamentary office.
While Cash continues to deny she has done anything wrong, one of her staffers has resigned for allegedly tipping off the corporate media on October 24 that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) were about to raid the Melbourne and Sydney offices of the Australian Workers Union (AWU).
The Hobart City Council has officially joined the campaign to change the date of Australia Day.
It will also provide support for the annual Invasion Day march, organised by the Indigenous community, and back councillors who take part.
On October 23, the council passed a four-point motion seven votes to two.
It also called on other local governments to lobby the federal government to move Australia Day from January 26.
But it will not stop holding its citizenship ceremonies and celebrations on Australia Day.
The decision by the Australian Football League (AFL) to refuse to allow transgender woman Hannah Mouncey to nominate for the Australian Football League Women (AFLW) draft has drawn widespread criticism as a reflection of the AFL’s lack of real commitment to inclusion.
The federal government has awarded a lucrative contract running refugee facilities on Nauru to a Queensland-based engineering firm, despite the company having no experience in providing refugee services.
Canstruct International Pty Ltd has won the $8 million contract to run “garrison and welfare services” from November 1.
The move has been slammed by human rights groups.
Amnesty International accused Canstruct of taking up a “toxic contract” that profits from the abuse of asylum seekers.