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Even John Howard has got the point at last: human-made climate change can’t be denied. But the minor reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions available from existing “solutions” - from the Kyoto Protocol to Howard’s technofixes - won’t stave off further destruction. We need a radically different approach - a massive, immediate turn to renewable energy sources.
“The central message of the 2006 election was so unmistakable that even George Bush couldn’t miss it. Get. Out. Of. Iraq.” This was how the November 17 US Socialist Worker weekly summed up the results of the November 7 US mid-term congressional elections, in which the Democrats won control of both houses of the US Congress for the first time since 1994.
There are six socialist candidates standing in the November 25 Victorian state election, and we call for your support for all of them. We all stand for socialism, a society that is run by and for the vast working-class majority, a society in which the needs of the mass of people come first, not the greed of a handful of mega-millionaires. A society based on satisfying human need is totally realistic. Imagine what could be done with the tremendous wealth in Australia if workers, pensioners and small farmers had the real power.
More than 200 Aboriginal activists and other supporters of justice for Indigenous people marched through Brisbane to commemorate the second anniversary of the death in custody of Palm Islander Mulrunji. A coroner’s report found that Mulrunji was killed by Queensland police sergeant Chris Hurley.
On November 11, the state Labor MP for Prahran, Tony Lupton, said there are discussions between gay rights activists and the government about a Tasmanian-style relationship registry being established in Victoria. But Civil Union Action (CUA) spokesperson John Kloprogge said same-sex couples want to know if Premier Steve Bracks’ Labor government will commit to legal equality.
The Burj el Barajneh refugee camp in Lebanon and Doctors for Iraq will be the beneficiaries of a peace festival and benefit concert on November 25 at the Pioneer Park in Leichhardt.
Quoting New York Times economics writer Jeff Madrick, Newcastle University lecturer Chris Dorran told a November 13 meeting that “by almost any mainstream economists’ standard, the plan [for the economic transformation of Iraq] is extreme; in fact, stunning”.
As the Venezuelan presidential elections on December 3 draw closer, and the tensions grow as the revolutionary forces led by President Hugo Chavez face off against the US-backed opposition fronted by Manuel Rosales, the world is watching with huge interest. The stakes in this election are immense: the future of the Bolivarian revolution and the struggle to construct socialism of the 21st century are on the line.
A 550-strong lecture sponsored by the Australian Lawyers Alliance on November 13 heard David Hicks’ US military lawyer, Major Michael Mori, slam the Bush administration’s new military commission law, which will be used to try Guantanamo Bay detainees. Hicks is one of approximately 400 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay being held without charge.
On November 14, the federal court ordered the reinstatement of two National Union of Workers (NUW) delegates after their employer, Saint-Gobain Abrasives, was unable to prove that its decision to dismiss them was unrelated to their involvement with the union.
The new student organisation at the University of New South Wales, established as a result of the Howard government’s “voluntary student unionism” (VSU) law, is forcing staff earning $40,000 or more per year onto individual contracts (AWAs — Australian Workplace Agreements).
The Democratic Socialist Perspective will be holding its biennial educational conference at Sydney University on January 4-7, 2007. The conference theme — “Ideas to change the world” — is inspired by Karl Marx’s 11th Thesis on Feuerbach (1845): “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”