The statement published below is a call for protests when US President Barack Obama visits Guam, Indonesia and Australia in late March. It was released by the Working Peoples Association (Indonesia), Socialist Alliance (Australia), Socialist Workers (New Zealand), Power of the Masses Party (PML — Philippines), Solidarity (Australia), Labor Party Pakistan, and Socialist Alternative (Australia).
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A petition signed by 35 distinguished Australian Jews rejecting the automatic right of Jews from anywhere in the world to settle in Israel is printed below. Under the racist “law of return”, Jews do not need to have any connection with Israel to obtain citizenship.
Signatories include ethicist Peter Singer, feminist campaigner Eva Cox, author and journalist Antony Loewenstein and writer Sara Dowse.
Western Australian public servants are mounting an important battle to stop the government terminating their job security as part of an overall government assault on community services. Unionists say thousands of jobs are in danger and public services are threatened.
My hands began to shake
And my tears were held by my fight for strength
As my body turned to ice
They began with the story they were about to make
Like a novel they began to tell what my ears could not bear to hear
Their mouths moved but I
In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, Republican President George W. Bush launched illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush enacted “anti-terrorism” policies under which people could be labelled “terror suspects” without evidence and abducted, jailed and tortured in secret.
The article below is by Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a member of the socialist Turn Left Thailand group. He was forced to leave Thailand after being charged under Thailand's anti-democratic lese majesty (insulting the monarch) laws. Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who despite his corrupt record still enjoys support from much of Thailand’s poor, was overthrown in a 2006 coup by royalist army officers. For more information, visit Wdpress.blog.co.uk.
The article below from a statement released on February 28 by Chilean socialist organisation Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) about the earthquake that hit Chile the previous day. It was translated by Earl Gilman.
According to the Reserve Bank of Australia, the future of the Australian economy is so bright we should all start wearing shades. Justifying the RBA’s decision to lift official interest rates a further 0.25% on March 2, governor Glenn Stevens said, “the risk of serious economic contraction in Australia [has] passed”.
Green Left Weekly reported in its last issue (#828, March 3) that the immigration ombudsman was about to visit the Christmas Island Immigration Detention Centre, and that coincidentally, construction of a gym in the alpha compound had commenced.
Last year’s national Climate Action Summit was groundbreaking. It set a national grassroots movement on its feet, something I haven’t seen on such a scale in my two decades of activism. A new ongoing network has been set up, with more than 100 groups now signed onto the initial structure.
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