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In regional elections in Andalusia on December 2, the outgoing government of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) was defeated after 40 years in power. Defeat came at the hands of a fractured yet radicalising right and high levels of abstention on the left.

On January 5, convicted neo-Nazi criminals Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson, and their followers, gathered on the foreshore of St Kilda beach to vilify Sudanese Australians and once again scapegoat that community as “African gangs”.

In late December Green Left Weekly spoke to Younis Hamad Birama and Khalid Hassan from the Democratic Consciousness Forum, a Perth-based democratic and secular organisation founded by Sudanese refugees, about the wave of protests sweeping Sudan following the dramatic increase in the price of bread. Despite a brutal crackdown by security forces, including the killing of at least 40 people, the protests have spread an

A long-running debate over strategy and tactics inside The Greens NSW has resulted in one state MP resigning and three others publicly supporting his campaign as an independent for a seat in the next NSW Legislative Council. The truce inside the party seems precarious, at best, writes Pip Hinman.

Australia is sweltering through another summer heatwave, with disastrous consequences for many vulnerable people. Walgett, in north-west NSW, ran out of water and catastrophic fires are threatening communities in Victoria and Tasmania.

The Dungay Family supported by the Indigenous Social Justice Association (ISJA) has invited all to attend a rally on December 29, the third anniversary of David Dungay’s death in Sydney's Long Bay Jail.

Street protests have broken out in at least seven cities across Sudan, beginning on December 19, in response to the price of bread increasing nearly threefold. They are rocking the repressive regime of Omar al-Bashir and echoing the protests against austerity and price rises that swept the country in January that were brutally repressed.

It takes some Orwellian chutzpah to label the Greens NSW anti-democratic. That hasn’t stopped anti-socialist Greens MPs Jeremy Buckingham, Cate Faehrmann and Justin Field from doing just that.

Bahraini refugee Hakeem Al-Araibi has been held in detention in Thailand since November 27, facing the terrifying prospect of deportation to the country where he was tortured.

Bill Shorten surprised no one with his laughingly tiny reforms at the Australian Labor Party National Conference over December 16–18.

If you expected debate, let alone proposals to stop the Adani coalmine or refugee boat turn-backs or the closure of off-shore detention centres, then you would have been disappointed as these things did not happen.

Rex Rumakiek

Rex Rumakiek, a veteran campaigner for independence for his homeland of West Papua, lives in political exile in Australia. He serves as secretary of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP). On the eve of West Papua Flag Day, an annual commemoration of the declaration of independence by the Free Papua Movement on December 1, 1961, Rumakiek was part of a group that raised the Morning Star flag over Leichhardt Town Hall in Sydney.

Many "yellow vest" anti-government protesters in France vowed to press on with their demonstrations on December 11, a day after wringing out fresh concessions from President Emmanuel Macron. SBS.com.au reported that Macron announced a series of measures the previous night in an address to the nation, including a hike in the minimum wage and tax relief for pensioners and on overtime work.