In recent years “making poverty history” has become the fashionable cause for ageing rock stars such as Bono and Sir Bob Geldof. As global poverty means that each year 9 million children die of preventable diseases, the need to achieve this goal is undeniable.
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A flotilla of waterborne vessels kayaks, rafts, canoes and even a yellow rubber duckie joined in the Peoples occupation of the worlds biggest coal port in Newcastle Harbour on February 10. The protest demanded No new coal mines, No new coal-fired power stations and No new coal loader.
The February 6 Sydney Daily Telegraph reported that Australians yet to establish a view on the Venezuelan president will have the opportunity to do so in person if the organisers of an online petition inviting him to visit get their way.
It was with much disgust and sadness that I watched the demolition, on February 6, of perfectly good public housing on the Macquarie Fields public housing estate.
Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Greg Combet expressed great pride in the role played by trade unions and union members in achieving justice for the victims of James Hardies asbestos products.
On February 2, I had a heart attack. All of a sudden, I was spun into the emergency health system. Over the next four days I received the most amazing health care from the ambos to the nurses and doctors at the public Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. It was a powerful rebuttal of the narrow-minded idea that society has to be based on material self-interest, profit and greed.
Seven-hundred people crammed into the Melbourne City Conference Centre on February 8 to hear radical journalist and film-maker John Pilgers call for mass action against the invasion of Iraq the paramount war crime against humanity from which all other war crimes follow.
An emergency February 7-8 Mecca summit sponsored by Saudi Arabia that brought together the leaders of rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah resulted in a power-sharing agreement between and a plan to form a national unity government. Palestinians hope a unity government can achieve the international recognition required to lift the crippling economic embargo against the Palestinian Authority that has been imposed by the West since Hamas won control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in last Januarys elections.
On February 6, 400 people converged on the lawns outside the national parliament building in Canberra to protest of the continued detention of Australian citizen David Hicks at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Due to mistakes introduced during the sub-editing of Lynda Hansens obituary for Phil Perrier (GLW #697), he was wrongly described as a Queensland Aboriginal activist, rather than a Queensland Aboriginal rights activist, and the concluding section of the eulogy made by Sam Watson at the February 2 Sorry ceremony were mistakenly attributed to Bernie Neville.
A report from the bipartisan US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on the costs of the Iraq war released on February 1 revealed that US President George Bushs plan, announced on January 10, to deploy an additional 21,500 US troops to Iraq this year could result in up to an extra 48,000 troops being deployed.
Fifty people heard leading Queensland Aboriginal activist Sam Watson announce at a February 7 public meeting held in the Sydney inner-west suburb of Leichhardt that Queensland Police Sergeant Chris Hurley was formally charged on February 5 with manslaughter and assault occasioning bodily harm for the 2004 death in custody of Palm Island Aborigine Mulrunji Doomadgee.
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