1206

 In an exclusive broadcast, US-based independent news outlet Democracy Now! broke the media blockade and visited the occupied Western Sahara in the northwest of Africa to document the decades-long Sahrawi struggle for freedom and occupying power Morocco’s violent crackdown.

The Turkish state’s hostility towards the Kurdish people continues, having now escalated its threats against Rojava.

The NSW Greens appear to be heading for a split, with the right wing of the party initiating a McCarthyite campaign to purge socialists from its membership.

Reliable research into safe and healthy childbirth is being ignored by maternal hospitals in Australia. 

Linda Pearson, anti-nukes activist, says that Members of the Scottish Parliament are effectively profiting from Trident due to the Scottish Parliament’s pension fund investments and that they should re-invest the money into projects which make Scotland a better place to live.

The latter part of 2018 will be remembered for the re-emergence of climate action on the national agenda.

The death of George H.W. Bush has dominated the U.S. news for days, but little attention has been paid to the defining event of Bush’s first year in office: the invasion of Panama. On December 19, 1989, Bush Sr. sent tens of thousands of troops into Panama, ostensibly to execute an arrest warrant against its leader, Manuel Noriega, on charges of drug trafficking. General Noriega was once a close ally to Washington and on the CIA payroll.

The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on November 22 that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was wrongly on its list of terrorist organisations between 2014-17.

NSW Supreme Court judge Lucy McCallum discharged the jury on December 6 after it failed to agree on a verdict in the trial of Kurdish journalist Renas Lelikan on “foreign fighter” charges under Australia’s draconian “anti-terrorism” laws.

Adani CEO Lucas Dow’s November 29 declaration that work on a scaled-down coalmine in Queensland's Galilee Basin would begin before Christmas was met with one of the most powerful nationwide protests against it so far as primary and high school students walking out of class the next day for the Student Strike 4 Climate Action.

As part of #16daysofactivism, a global campaign to highlight gender-based violence, Domestic Violence NSW (DV NSW) hosted a panel of journalists and rights advocates to address the difficulties in reporting sexual assault and domestic and family violence on November 29.

Ferry workers went on strike on December 6 in a bid to secure a fair wage and job security which, until now, their employer Transdev has refused to guarantee in enterprise negotiations.