Comedian Rod Quantock launches his new show, Bugger the Polar Bears, This is Serious, in Melbourne on July 21. He spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Jay Fletcher about climate change, government inaction and the urgent need to create a global movement to save the planet.
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Almost immediately after the Rudd Labor government’s Fair Work Australia came into effect on July 2, the Australian and other News Ltd newspapers launched a sustained attack on the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union’s (AMWU) wage claim for the manufacturing industry.
Former US congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was among a group of activists who made international news when they were seized from their boat, the Spirit of Humanity, and imprisoned by the Israeli military on June 30.
On July 1 the Age reported the federal government had understated the number of international students who had died in Australia during 2008. The government had reported 51 deaths — a disturbingly high number. But the real figure was “at least 54” and is probably higher, the Age said.
In late June, the federal government helped launch a paper entitled Bridges and Barriers: Addressing Indigenous Incarceration and Health.
On July 16, satirical ‘Billionaires for Coal’ group rallied in Wollongong Mall to welcome a raft of state government decisions that will benefit the rich. The billionaires congratulated the NSW ALP government on its plans to expand coal mining and burning.
There they all were at the recent G8/G20 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, nodding their approval as Kevin Rudd once again announced his global carbon capture and storage institute. But in truth, the L’Aquila photo-op only highlighted the chasm between the emission cuts demanded by the climate science and the steps political leaders are willing to take.
This is the second part of an interview about breaking Australia’s addiction to coal between Green Left Weekly’s Zane Alcorn and retired Hunter Valley coal miner and climate activist Graham Brown. The first article can be read here.
They discuss how a “just transition” away from coal could be made – a transition that benefits the workers and communities now dependent on coalmining and coal-fired energy plants.
We have a coal industry and a government — even some unions — that tell workers they must choose between a safe climate future and their jobs, their livelihood.
The article published below is an abridged July 10 column by former Cuban President Fidel Castro. It was originally published in Granma.
He occupied a (somewhat self-appointed) position as a hero of Australia’s environment and Indigenous rights movements for decades. Yet these days, former Midnight Oil frontman and current ALP environment minister Peter Garrett works overtime to prove his credentials as a defender of big business and the big polluters.
The article below is abridged from a July 12 column by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. In it, Chavez takes up an allegation of the Honduran coup plotters that overthrew the elected President Manuel Zelaya on June 28. They claim their action was justified because Chavez was seeking to control their country. This allegation has been used by right-wing forces across Latin America.
Cindy Shelley had worked for Thomastown-based tooling specialist Sutton Tools for more than 20 years when she was told that her job was gone.
The Sri Lankan government claims that, after its military victory against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which was fighting for an independent homeland in the island’s north-east for the Tamil minority, Tamil “terrorism” has been crushed, and that the outlook for the country is rosy.
“Is it not bizarre as well as obnoxious that the Israelis should abduct all those on that ship into a country that they had no intention of visiting and then deport them from it?”, British Labour MP Gerald Kaufman told the House of Commons on July 13.
Aboriginal leaders have questioned the motives behind the NT intervention policy after the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) failed to find evidence of organised pedophile rings — a key motivation of the policy produced by then-Aboriginal affairs minister Mal Brough in 2007.
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