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Speakers from Micronesia, Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Torres Strait Islands described how climate change affects their everyday lives at meetings of 180 people in Brisbane on July 28 and 170 people in Melbourne on July 30

FigureheadBy Patrick AllingtonBlack Inc, 2009239pages, $29.95
MELBOURNE— On July 29, 40 supporters of Aboriginal rights gathered in front of the ALP Victorian headquarters in West Melbourne. They protested against the federal ALP government’s planned takeover of the Alice Springs town camps.
If the rhetoric of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission’s report on Australia’s health system is taken at face value, health care in Australia will get an impressive overhaul courtesy of the federal government.
Siddique Abdullah Hasan is on death row in Ohio. He is one of the Lucasville Five, prisoners railroaded onto death row after a 1993 prison rebellion against abuses by prison authorities. Below, he writes about the July 21 execution in Ohio of Marvallous Keene — the 1000th prisoner to be executed by lethal injection in the US since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
Slaughterhouse FiveBy Kurt VonnegutFirst published in 1969224 pages, $24.95
On July 28, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered the withdrawal of Venezuela’s ambassador and diplomatic staff in Colombia. His move was in response to the decision by the government of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to allow five US military bases on Colombian territory.
The article below is an excerpt from a speech given by a worker from the Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight. Since July 20, Vestas workers launched an indefinite occupation of the plant in response to plans to close it by Danish company Vestas Windsystems. The speech is abridged from Savevestas.wordpress.com.
The frosty relations between Colombia and Ecuador got even frostier on July 6 when Colombian officials and lawyers accused members of Ecuador’s government of working for left-wing Colombian guerrillas.
Thousands of tons of earth contaminated with radioactive waste have been identified at the site of the London Olympics at Marshgate Lane in Stratford, George Galloway, a left-wing MP for the anti-war Respect party, said on July 27.
The article below is by Jan Sithole, general secretary of the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions. It first appeared at Pambazuko News.
The article below is reprinted from the Morning Star.