While there are treatments to slow the progression of AIDS, adding decades to sufferers lives, access to them is a case study in the vast gap between rich and poor nations. Few deny that HIV/AIDS is a massive health crisis. What is now clear is that it is also a social one, exacerbated by the contradictions of a world dominated by the wealthy minority of First World countries.
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The Socialist Alliance condemns the arrest of two Australian Tamil activists, Aruran Vinayagamoorthy and Sivarajah Yathavan, under the anti-terror laws. This is another example of the use of such laws to repress political activity of which the government disapproves.
Treasurer Peter Costello's May 8 federal budget was aimed at investing in the future of big business. It cements the government's privatisation agenda, further running down already neglected public services and throwing money at private-profit alternatives. It fails to even begin to address global warming, and contains a further major hike in military spending. At the same time, the government feathered its re-election bid with a rash of small to middling tax cuts.
Two blockades halted logging in high conservation value native forests two hours east of Melbourne on May 8, Friends of the Earth reported.
On May 5, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its final working group report, the third in a series, as a part of its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), aimed at evaluating global warming. The IPCC published its first assessment report in 1990, a supplementary report in 1992, a second assessment report in 1995, and a third in 2001.
An industrial relations forum on May 8, hosted by the Socialist Alliance, brought together trade union and political activists to discuss their responses to the ALPs recently released IR policy and the campaign against Work Choices.
Expert opinion
@column = "Insurgents in Iraq are right to try to force US troops out of the country, a former British army commander has said. Gen Sir Michael Rose also told the BBC's Newsnight programme that the US and the UK must 'admit defeat'
From the end of May to July 2, the largest military training exercise in Australian history will take place, involving 14,000 US and 12,000 Australian military personnel. The Talisman Sabre 07 war games will be held at joint US-Australian training facilities Shoalwater Bay in Queensland and Bradshaw and Delamere Range in the Northern Territory.
Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) general secretary Farooq Tariq was released from detention in the early hours of May 7. Tariq and more than 1000 others were rounded up the previous Friday in a failed attempt by the government of General Pervez Musharraf to weaken a mass reception for a visit by suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry to Lahore. Chaudhry was suspended for being too independent of the Mushurraf regime and too respectful of the rule of law.
On May 10, 60 people attended a public meeting opposing the closure of the humanities department of the Queensland University of Technology. The meeting was held at QUT’s Kelvin Grove campus.
The federal budget includes a multi-million package of extra spending on "security" during coming years, according to media releases from the attorney-general's department.
The second round of East Timors presidential elections, held on May 9, resulted in the victory of Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta. Ramos Horta, running as an independent, had won 73% of the vote with 90% of ballots counted. He won a majority in 10 out of 13 districts. However, Fretilin, the party of defeated candidate Francisco Guterres LuOlo, has alleged Australian interference in the elections, including the intimidation of two campaign rallies in the final week of the campaign by Australian troops from the International Stabilisation Force (ISF).
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