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The current issue of Green Left Weekly is a two-week issue, so that GLW staff may participate in the "Turn anger into action" national Resistance conference in Sydney from June 27-29. (Visit http://resistance.org.au for full details.) The next issue
Here is a good news story.
The National Front (BN) government led by PM Abdullah Badawi has been shaky since the March general election that returned a much stronger parliamentary opposition — now largely united in a new People’s Front (Pakatan Rakyat).
Contaminated wells, dying marine life and crops being destroyed by extreme weather are just a few of the challenges facing the 11,000 residents of Tuvalu, a Pacific nation that is the second smallest in the world.
“Speeding towards dangerous climate change” was the name of the public forum at which the Public Transport Users Association (PTUA) launched its “Every Ten Minutes to Everywhere” campaign on June 15.
Despite raids by Israel that left six people dead in the Gaza Strip and numerous rockets launched by Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad the previous day, a ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas government in Gaza took effect on June 19. At the official start of the ceasefire at 6am, both sides appeared to be holding the truce.
At the end of May, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) logged all but three universities with a bold set of claims.
It started out as a good day for justice and rapidly became a good day for democracy too.
Noel Washington, vice-president of the Victorian branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), is to appear before the Geelong Magistrates Court on August 8 for refusing to attend a compulsory Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) hearing.
Workers in Iran face massive repression when attempting to organise to defend their rights.
On June 21, protest actions were held around Australia on the first anniversary of the federal government’s “intervention” into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, demanding an immediate end to the racist invasion of Aboriginal land that it entails.
On June 11, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s proposals to extend the time that police are allowed to detain “terrorist suspects” without charge narrowly scraped through a vote in the House of Commons. The MP vote was 315 to 306 to back Brown’s proposal to extend the limit on detention without charge from 28 to 42 days.
The Rudd Labor government has abolished the hated temporary protection visas (TPVs) that left refugees in limbo for years despite having their refugee status confirmed, and it has scrapped the “Pacific solution” — the shipping of asylum seekers to prison camps on Nauru and Manus Island. However, the bulk of the Howard government’s refugee policies remain in place.
Below is part two of a special feature on the global food crisis. Green Left Weekly published the first part in #750. Both parts are reprinted from http://socialistvoice.ca. The author edits http://climateandcapitalism.com.
On June 12, the South Australian-based manufacturing company Clipsal announced it would sack 200 permanent workers and close its Nurioopta plant based in the Barossa Valley. The company indicated that there would likely be unspecified “flow on” job cuts in its labour hire workforce.
‘Last Drinks: the impact of the Northern Territory intervention’, by Paul Toohey
Quarterly Essay, Issue 30, June 2008
Black Inc., $15.95

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