The September 5 student strike against US President George Bushs visit, initiated by Resistance, has triggered a wave of anti-war activism on high schools across Sydney. Students from more than 20 high schools, including Mosman High, Pennant Hills High and North Sydney Girls High, have pledged to walk out of classes to protest Australias involvement in the Iraq war, to call for genuine action against climate change and to defend the right to protest.
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The September 1 Daily Telegraph published the names and photographs of all but two of the 29 people who have been put on the NSW police commissioners list of people to be excluded from much of the Sydney CBD during the APEC summit, and who will even be banned from flying into or out of Sydney airport.
Green Left Weekly is taking a one week break as our staff will be attending the APEC protests. The next issue will be dated September 19. However, coverage of the APEC protests will be posted on our website, http://www.greenleft.org.au.
Victorias new Labor premier, John Brumby, has asked the Victorian Law Reform Commission to advise on how to reform abortion law. The commissions report is due in March 2008, after the federal election. The move came right before a private members bill was to be put to parliament by ALP member Candy Broad.
Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union (TCFUA) Victorian secretary Michele O’Neil was so furious when she heard the Labor Party’s reworking of its industrial relations policy that she penned an open letter to Labor leader Kevin Rudd and deputy leader Julia Gillard in protest [see page 8].
Prime Minister Gordon Brown looks set to break Labours 2005 election manifesto pledge to hold a referendum before Britain signs up to a new European Union constitution. At an August 22 press conference with German leader Angela Merkel, Brown announced that there was no need to hold a referendum and that the matter would instead be decided by parliament.
Over the course of more than 10,000 years, the rich biodiversity of the Andes-Amazon region has created a culture that is closely interlocked with Pachamama (Mother Nature). This culture is marked by deep knowledge of nature and is highly agricultural. Ours is one of the seven zones of the world to have originated agriculture. It has yielded the greatest variety of domesticated species. This has given rise to a cosmic vision different from the Western outlook that views the creator as a superior immaterial spirit who created man in his image and likeness and created nature to serve him. For the indigenous cosmic vision, humanity is a daughter of and part of Mother Earth. We must live in her bosom in harmony with her. Each hill or peak, each river, each vegetable or animal species has a spirit.
Whenever a socialist from the generation whose political ideas were shaped by involvement in the global movement against the US-led Vietnam War pay their first visit to Vietnam, it is a bit like a pilgrimage. It is an encounter with a symbolic home of our political hopes and convictions.
“The internal situation will intensify over the next months, more contradictions will emerge, simply because we have no plans to hold back the march of the revolution”, said Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on March 24, speaking to more than 2000 promoters of the new socialist party being constructed in Venezuela. “These contradictions”, he said, would “intensify, because we are dealing with the economic issue, and there is nothing that hurts a capitalist more than his pocket, but we have to enter into this issue, we cannot avoid it”.
A new assessment by the CIA and 15 other US spy agencies of Washingtons counterinsurgency war in Iraq, released on August 23, argued that the addition since early February of 28,500 US troops to the 134,000-strong US occupation force has brought measurable, but uneven improvements in security. However the report provided no statistics to support this claim.
A leaked document outlining PM John Howards climate action plan for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit to be held in Sydney on September 8 and 9 once again confirms the Coalitions dangerously cavalier approach to global warming.
On July 17, Chris M, a union delegate at the NSW State Transits Port Botany depot, was sacked by the State Transit Authority (STA), which is the government owned authority responsible for the operations of Sydney Buses and Newcastle Buses & Ferries. The sacking occurred four days prior to M becoming a permanent employee and thus having access to unfair dismissal protection.
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