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Hawkesbury Council in Sydney's far north-west voted at its January 30 meeting to reject an offer by NSW Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) to leave a "viewing platform" made from a section of the historic Windsor Bridge when the proposed Windsor Bridge Replacement Project has been completed.

Fourteen long years after young TJ Hickey was chased to his death in Waterloo, his family and the Indigenous Social Justice Association (ISJA) organised a moving rally in Waterloo, along the fence line where the young Kamilaroi man was killed.

Eighty people rallied in Dandenong, an outer Melbourne suburb, on February 11 against the planned deportation of Santharuban, a former member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who sought asylum in Australia after the defeat of the LTTE in 2009.

The LTTE fought for an independent Tamil homeland in the north and east of the island of Sri Lanka. Former members of the movement continue to be "disappeared, detained, tortured, and harassed by the Sri Lankan security forces", according to a statement by the Tamil Refugee Council (TRC), which organised the rally.

Members of the Oakey Coal Action Alliance (OCAA) gathered in Acland on February 14 for the Queensland environment department’s decision on the environmental authority for New Hope Coal’s proposed Acland Stage 3 project. 

Expecting the worst — that the department would reject the recommendation of the Land Court — local farmers and community members were overjoyed at the decision by Queensland’s Environment and Science Department to reject New Acland’s environmental authority amendment for the Stage 3 coalmine expansion. 

Faten Ahmed was a 26-year-old with a rare form of cancer. She died in August while awaiting an Israeli permit to travel for chemotherapy and radiotherapy not available in the Gaza Strip, which has been subjected to a crippling Israeli siege since 2007.

She had previously missed eight hospital appointments after Israeli “security approval” was delayed or denied, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Ahmed was one of five women who died from cancer in that month alone while waiting for Israeli permission that never came.

Norwegian parliamentarian Bjornar Moxnes has officially nominated the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights for a Nobel Peace Prize. The leader of the left-wing Red Party explained that the BDS “should be supported without reservation by all democratically-minded people and states”.

A man waves over a roughly boarded fence, as a guard walks intimidatingly in front of it. A group of refugee protesters, sweltering in the hot sun in Leonora — a two day drive from Perth into the desert — wave back and yell “azadi”, the Farsi word for freedom.

I am one of the protesters and I am filming the protest.

One week earlier, just before the start of my second year at university, I opened an email from an activist group advertising a “Caravan of Compassion” to Leonora detention centre.

A few days later I was on the bus, barely knowing one other person.

Last year was the year of women’s truth-telling about sexual and domestic violence. It was also the year that 49 Australian women met violent deaths.

In the second month of this year, there has been no respite from the unceasing onslaught of violence against women and the resulting murders.

To study these deaths is to uncover a blunt, chilling fact: the most dangerous place in Australia for a woman to be — and the most dangerous company for her to be in — is at home with her male intimate partner on a Saturday night.

Cape Town — in which some of Africa’s most affluent live — is rapidly running out of water. Population growth and a record drought, exacerbated by climate change, are creating one of the world’s most dramatic urban water crises.

Ireland’s Dail Eireann (its lower house of parliament) voted by a large majority on February 8 in favour of a bill to ban the government issuing new contracts for oil and gas exploration.

The announcement on February 9 that Aurizon will withdraw its application to the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) to construct a rail link between the Abbot Point coal terminal and the Galilee Basin was welcomed by opponents of the Adani Carmichael coal project.

Coordinator of Farmers for Climate Action Queensland Michael Kane was heartened by the setback to the rail line. He said graziers across central Queensland had been put through the wringer over this mega coal mine project.

Australian group the Socialist Alliance released the statement below on February 1.

Greens MP Adam Bandt was forced to apologise twice to new Liberal Senator and renowned fan of British neo-Nazi’s social media work Jim Molan, after Bandt called the former Australian general a war criminal.

The following statement by a group of international socialist feminists in solidarity with Iranian women’s struggles was initiated by the Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists on February 10.

The Socialist Alliance in Australia is among the signatories.

A brand new World Bank report, The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018, offers evidence of how much poorer Africa is becoming thanks to rampant minerals, oil and gas extraction.

Yet World Bank policies and practices remain oriented to enforcing foreign loan repayments and transnational corporate (TNC) profiteering — thus maintaining the looting.

The Next Generation (TNG) wants to build the biggest waste-to-energy incinerator in the world at Eastern Creek in Sydney’s west. Local residents are defiantly opposed and have organised for more than a year to bring Labor and the Coalition onside.

At a rally outside NSW Parliament on February 6, Labor pledged it would oppose it. Tanya Davies, the local Liberal MP, told the rally that while she was concerned, the decision was a planning issue, not a government one.

After 1000 submissions were made — mostly opposed — to the proposal, TNG has submitted its third revision.

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