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On June 10, the federal government’s new occupational health and safety (OH&S) peak body — the Safe Work Australia Council (SWAC) — held its first meeting. Workers in Australia took one more step towards eroded and unsafe working conditions.
Twelve emergency services officers (ESOs) who work at the Hazelwood power station suspended a 12-week-long strike at Hazelwood Power Station on June 26. However, their employer, contractor Diamond Protection, has refused to allow the workers to return to work.
The coup against Honduras President Manuel Zelaya is a last-ditch effort by Honduras’s entrenched economic and political interests to stave off the advance of the new left governments that have taken hold in Latin America over the past decade.
The first person in Australia to die from H1N1 virus (or "swine flu") was an Aboriginal man from a remote community.
Fifteen hundred trade unionists and supporters marched through the streets of Brisbane to state parliament on July 3 to oppose the ALP state government’s planned selloff of public assets.
Protests against the June 28 military coup that overthrew elected President Manuel Zelaya are continuing on the streets of Honduras, amid international condemnation. Zelaya, who was kidnapped and flown to Costa Rica, is refusing to accept his overthrow and announced plans to return the Honduras on July 5 with the Organisation of American States (OAS) head Jose Miguel Insulza, Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez, Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa and Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo.
The July 1 Australian carried an extraordinary attack by Ilan Grapel on Green Left Weekly and its monthly Arabic insert the Flame titled “A willing ally to Hamas’s hatred”. Both publications are guilty of a “radical anti-Israel stance”, Grapel said.
Eighty people attended an afternoon rally in Sydney's Martin Place on July 3 to show solidarity with the people of Iran in their struggle for democracy.
The Socialist Alliance and Green Left Weekly have upset the apple cart again! While articles in the Australian accuse GLW of being in bed with the “hate-filled” Hamas, the muck-raking ALP factional blog Vexnews blasts an “extreme left ALP candidate” for being a secret member of the “virulently leftist and anti-semitic” Socialist Alliance.
Within minutes of the first reports, it was clear the world was going mad.
When Rupert Murdoch’s Australian published a racist and malicious attack (see page 8) on Green Left Weekly and particularly its Arabic-language supplement, the Flame, I rang the Flame
The US House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act on June 26. The bill, commonly known as the Waxman-Markey bill and supported by US President Barack Obama, will now go to the US Senate.