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The Socialist Alliance is joining the growing number of people and organisations campaigning for a big increase in all pensions and other welfare benefits. It is outrageous that people on welfare were almost totally ignored in the recent federal budget.
@9point non = BRISBANE — “Get on the phone to all your relatives, friends and those you know in El Salvador to urge them to vote for the FMLN in the elections in 2009\", Jorge Shafik Handal Junior, a leader of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, told a 60-strong audience of mainly El Salvadoran migrants at a public meeting on May 17. He also called on Australian supporters to visit El Salvador next year as international observers, to limit the right-wing ARENA government’s attempts to use fraud to prevent an FMLN victory in the January parliamentary elections and the March presidential election.
The Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP), the group that initiated Green Left Weekly in 1991 as a broad left newspaper, has suffered a political split with minority critical of its continuing support for the Socialist Alliance as a new party project. This follows a nearly three-year internal debate in the DSP.
@9point non = BRISBANE — High work pressure, staff turnover, intrusive management monitoring of workers’ performance and alienation were identified as major issues facing call centre workers, at a May 22 forum organised by Worklife.
@9point non = MELBOURNE — Fifty people attended a rally on May 17 at the Victorian Trades Hall to demand freedom for US political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mumia, a former Black Panther and still a revolutionary, was jailed in 1981 in Philadelphia for allegedly killing a police officer. He remains in jail despite inconsistencies in the police evidence and another man confessing to the murder.
A pile of bags and clothing on an old shopfront verandah on Cuff Road in Singapore’s Little India is “home” to a group of about 50 migrant workers who have been spat out by an economy that relies heavily on so-called “guest workers”.
@9point non = On May 19, the Fairfax media empire issued a notice to 1200 editorial staff whose collective agreement is up for renewal that requires staff earning more than $100,000 per year to individually renegotiate their agreements.
On March 1, the Colombian military (with US Special Forces help) illegally attacked a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP) rebel camp inside Ecuador.
The Combined Rail Unions in NSW are recommending industrial action to force the NSW Rail Corporation (Railcorp) to back away from plans to cut 400 jobs on stations, along with rail workers’ conditions of work.
Cuban officials have produced letters that demonstrate “irrefutable evidence” of the channelling of funds from a convicted anti-Cuban terrorist to Cubans the US has termed “dissidents” and “independent journalists”.
The Connex ticket inspectors, who already have a reputation for violent and thuggish behaviour, are pushing for the right to carry handcuffs. Julian Burnside QC, president of Civil Liberties Victoria, has described the plan as “insane”.
According to a May 19 report by Latin American TV station Telesur, Venezuela’s defence minister Gustavo Rangel Briceno, denounced the fact that a US fighter jet violated Venezuelan airspace — around the La Orchila island, which houses a Venezuelan military base — two days earlier.
“Macquarie Bank bosses’ pay cut after profit cut warning”, was the headline of an article by Michael Sainsbury and Katherine Jimenez, in the May 21 Australian.
On May 6, five major construction unions met in Brisbane to plan a national campaign to abolish the draconian Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC).
Victorian Premier John Brumby announced on May 5 that a deal had been struck with the Australian Education Union. While Mary Bluett, AEU branch president, described it as “the deal we were fighting for”, many union members are furious with the agreement made on their behalf.
The Pacific Calling Partnership (PCP) is a response to the calls of people on low-lying islands in the Pacific about the ravages of climate change — more storm surges, longer droughts, tides rising higher, shores eroding, coral reefs bleaching, water supplies and soils becoming contaminated by salt water, breadfruit and banana trees dying and taro pits being destroyed.

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