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The Sri Lankan government’s war against the Tamil minority has again exposed the extent to which the corporate media reinforces the status quo — no matter how unjust.
More than 50 people joined a public meeting in Lawson in the Blue Mountains on May 11 and discussed a new campaign to stop plans by the Roads and Traffic Authority to upgrade the Great Western Highway.
On the night of May 9, the Sri Lankan Army conducted one of the most brutal assaults in recent history against a civilian population. Medical sources within the so-called safe zone in, told Tamilnet.com that as many as 2000 people had been killed by heavy shelling in the Vanni region in the island’s north.
Greens Senator Bob Brown moved the following motion to the Australian Senate on May 12: “That the Senate, in regard to the massacre of civilians, including hundreds of children, in the Tamil homelands of northern Sri Lanka, calls on the government to take decisive action commensurate with the need to immediately halt this unnecessary bloodshed.”
The political crisis caused by the refusal of the head of the Nepalese Army to implement instructions from the elected civilian government is continuing in Nepal.
Greens candidate Adele Carles is set to win a historic victory at the May 16 by-election – the first time the Greens have won a lower house seat in Western Australia. Carles polled 44% of primary votes and 54% of two-party preferred votes at the close of counting on election night.
A week after the Rudd government announced Australian troops would join the US and NATO-led troop surge in Afghanistan, a May 4 US air strike on two villages in the country’s south-west killed up to 150 civilians, including many women and children.
On May 16, 300 people gathered at Sydney Town Hall to demand urgent action on climate change. The rally was addressed by Cate Faehrmann from the Nature Conservation Council of NSW (NCC), Greens Senator Bob Brown and Simon Sheikh from GetUp!
“Socialism will save Venezuela; socialism will save the world”, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on May 10 during his weekly TV program Alo Presidente.
Twenty people protested outside the offices of private prison operator GSL in Perth on May 14. The protest demanded justice for Aboriginal elder Mr Ward, who died due to excessive heat in a prison van operated by GSL. The coronial inquest finished on May 1. Findings are due to be presented on June 12.
In a new lease deal proposed by Aboriginal affairs minister Jenny Macklin in early May, Aboriginal people in Alice Springs town camps could lose control over their housing.
In the early 1960s, it was the Irish of Derry who would phone late at night, speaking in a single breath, spilling out stories of discrimination and injustice. Who listened to their truth until the violence began?