July 7 proved to be an excellent day for the Australian business community. Citing the economic downturn as a key factor in his decision, Fair Pay Commissioner Ian Harper announced that there will be no increase the minimum wage.
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Indigenous Affairs minister Jenny Macklin was advised by her department against formally consulting with Aboriginal people over the compulsory acquisition of their land because it would be too expensive, tie up too many resources, and was unlikely to get the outcome the government wanted, leaked documents reveal.
Street protests and blockades occurred throughout Peru on July 8, in the middle of a three day strike against the neoliberal policies of President Alan Garcia.
Nazy (a pseudonym) is an activist with the Voice of Freedom and Democracy in Iran, which organised a protest outside the Iranian Embassy on July 9. She came to Australia on July 6 after attending the pro-democracy protests in Tehran that were organised in response to the Iranian regime’s repression of the mass demonstrations alleging vote-rigging in the June 12 presidential elections.
>Graham Brown is a retired coalminer and climate change activist. He’s also a member of the Upper Hunter Greens in NSW, and is helping build a union and community alliance aimed at creating a “just transition” to a carbon-neutral economy. Such a transition would ensure workers in the coal industry move into alternative employment. Green Left Weekly’s Zane Alcorn spoke to Brown, and this is the first of three parts of the interview.
Echoing some of the slogans of protesters in Iran, about 80 Iranians from Melbourne and Sydney chanted “Rockets, guns and Basiji [state-run militia] do not scare us anymore” and “Khomeini you are Pinochet, Iran is not Chile” outside the Iranian embassy in Canberra on July 9.
Mr Ward and police brutality
Last year's death of Aboriginal elder Mr Ward in the back of a prison van is the tip of a larger problem, which those who say "it must never happen again" actually avoid looking at.
The problem is exposed by a
On July 5, hundreds were killed in the East Turkestan capital, Urumqi, after protests by Uyghurs against racism and discrimination were attacked by Chinese security forces.
The annual student environment conference, Students of Sustainability (SOS), was held at Monash University from July 6 -10, attracting 450 participants to workshops on climate change, activism, Aboriginal rights, uranium mining, and other social justice and environmental issues.
Public broadcaster ABC has entered into a controversial joint venture with Australia’s largest regional commercial television network, WIN TV, to run the ABC’s master control centre to send out television and radio signals. WIN TV’s transmission spans the largest geographical area in the world, reaching more than 5.2 million viewers across Australia.
In his July 1 article in the Australian, Ilan Grapel, researcher with the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), accused Green Left Weekly and Resistance of supporting terrorism and violence by calling for Palestinians to resist oppressive Israeli rule.
A boat carrying 74 asylum seekers disappeared en route to Australia near the Komodo island in Indonesia last week. The boat was believed to have women and children on board and had vanished — feared to have sunk — when the Australian Federal Police was notified by a refugee rights advocate, Ian Rintoul, on July 7.
The modern history of Sri Lanka represents “the wrecking of a country: from the ‘pearl of the Indian Ocean’, to ‘the killing fields of South Asia’”, Dr Brian Senewiratne told a meeting of the Brisbane city Amnesty International group on July 8.
An appeal for action from US-based anti-racist group Colour of Change reported on the actions of the Vally Club just outside Philidelphia. The appeal said that “65 children from a summer camp tried to go swimming at a club that their camp had a contract to use. Apparently, the people at the club didn't know that the group of kids was predominantly Black.”
The following is an abridged speech given by Judith Le Blanc, a Native American activist and organising coordinator for the US peace group United for Peace and Justice (UPJ). Le Blanc is touring Australia to campaign against the 2009 Talisman Sabre joint US-Australian military war games focusing on a Peace Convergence Weekend on July 10-12, at Rockhampton, central Queensland. She was speaking at a July 7 forum in Brisbane.
“The acquisition of farmland from the world's poor by rich countries and international corporations is accelerating at an alarming rate”, the July 3 British Guardian said.
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