With the city of Geelong still reeling from Ford’s announcement that by 2010 it will shut down its V6 engine assembly plant and dismiss 600 workers of the company’s 2600 Geelong employees, another manufacturer has announced that it is reviewing its operations.
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British scientist James Lovelock, famous for his Gaia theory of the earth as a self-regulating organism, was in Adelaide on July 7-8, speaking at the Festival of Ideas. He has researched across a range of disciplines and has much of interest to say. But on the topic of nuclear power, Lovelock is inaccurate and irresponsible.
On July 28, 45 people attended a seminar on Peoples Power in Latin America: rebellion, workers control and 21st century socialism. Held at the Princess May Community Centre, the forum was a joint initiative of the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network (AVSN) and the Australia Cuba Friendship Society (ACFS).
Planning is well underway for the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network’s sixth brigade to Venezuela, to be held from November 23 to December 3, and registrations are open to everyone interested in this unique opportunity to witness firsthand a revolution in the making.
The front page of the July 25 Australian gushed with a headline making the astounding claim that the Australian Building and Construction Commission(ABCC) had delivered a $15 billion boost to the economy by improving productivity as a result of reining in thuggish union behaviour.
What do Victorian Labor Premier Stephen Bracks, his successor John Brumby and former Liberal premier Jeff Kennett have in common? A love for neoliberal politics.
When it emerged that Kafeel Ahmed, one of the men implicated in the June 30 botched terrorist attack in Glasgow, had a second cousin working in the Gold Coast Hospital in Queensland, it must have seemed to the Howard government that its election worries were over. Racism, xenophobia and the manufactured threat of terrorism have served Howard well in previous elections. However this time it backfired, with more public anxiety about the frame-up of Dr Mohamed Haneef than about supposed terrorists in our midst.
One of the leaders of demonstrations in Gaza calling for the release of the BBC reporter Alan Johnston was a Palestinian news cameraman, Imad Ghanem. On July 5, he was shot by Israeli soldiers as he filmed them invading Gaza. A Reuters video shows bullets hitting his body as he lay on the ground. An ambulance trying to reach him was also attacked.
On July 22, 1987, Palestines most famous cartoonist, Naji Salim al-Ali, was shot in London an by unknown assassin. He lapsed into a coma and died five weeks later on August 29.
In Australia, as in other major capitalist countries, the official response to global warming is to deny or gloss over the utter catastrophe confronting human society and try to carry on with business as usual, making only a few relatively minor adjustments here and there.
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