Public displays of sexual desire, sex and agency are almost synonymous with the broad Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex (LGBTI) rights movement.
Positive displays of queer sexuality challenge narrow and dominant ideas about "acceptable" sex and sexuality. They play an important role in the struggle for democratic rights and against persecution; and in exploring sexual pleasure and desire.
Sections of the women's liberation movement investigate and promote women's sexuality and sexual pleasure for similar reasons.
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The United Nations global climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, looks set to repeat the failures of Copenhagen. The chances of Cancun producing a binding agreement that would avert climate disaster are next to zero.
Many world leaders have not even bothered to attend the summit, which runs from November 29 to December 10.
Leaders of rich nations and the media talked much about the “low expectations” of an agreement in the lead-up to the conference.
The Venezuelan government released a statement accusing the United States of provoking the ongoing conflict between North and South Korea to further US interests in the region, Venezuelanalysis.com said November 26.
The statement came amid escalating tensions, as the US and South Korea carried out military exercises in disputed waters North Korea claims as its own.
The Socialist Alternative
Michael Lebowitz
Monthly Review Press, 2010
pp 192; US$15.95
The onset of the global economic crisis in mid 2008, symbolised by the collapse of some of Wall Street’s most iconic companies, led to soaring sales of Karl Marx’s seminal work Das Kapital, as many sought explanations to the tumultuous events unfolding.
Although written more than 100 years ago, this devastating and insightful dissection of how capital functions is still a powerful tool for people looking to understand and change the world.
Anti-war activists salute Wikileaks’ courage and determination in exposing the lies about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the ruthlessness with which the biggest imperial power — the US — seeks to maintain its global dominance.
Many liberal environmentalists say that people must sacrifice some luxuries to save the environment and/or help the world’s poor. A more equitable sharing of the world’s resources means some will have to give up a bit.
For the well-off, sacrifice is like charity: giving up a few privileges to make themselves feel better. For such people, the idea of sacrifice tends to reinforce an elitist mentality.
But for poorer, working-class people, sacrifice has a different connotation.
I do not support women being forced to wear the burqa. I see it as one manifestation of the myriad of ways women are oppressed in this patriarchal society.
But I want to make it clear that I do not support a ban on the wearing of a burqa. Banning the wearing of a burqa would simply mean that the person who wears it — voluntarily or otherwise — is criminalised. It would not, as some female supporters of the ban argue, help women extricate themselves from patriarchal control over their lives.
A common right-wing perception is that one either is, or is not, a member of David Hicks’ “cheer squad”.
Chris Merritt, reviewing this book in the October 22 Australian, actually referred to a Hick’s “cheer squad”. Merritt lamented: “The whole appalling story of his treatment by the US military commission would be trotted out.”
Trotted out? A clever way to admit that what Hick’s says is true, but at the same time trivialise the details.
I am not sure what Hicks’ personal views have been on a number of issues, and not addressing them is perhaps a weakness of the book.
Manic Street Preachers
Postcards From a Young Man (Sony, 2010)
From its opening strains, the Manic Street Preachers’ 10th and latest album, Postcards From a Young Man, is clearly the successor not only to 2007’s Send Away The Tigers, but also to their critically acclaimed 1996 success Everything Must Go.
In the lead-up to the March NSW elections, the Socialist Alliance will campaign under the slogan: “NSW — not for sale! Community need not corporate greed.” It sums up the radical shift in priorities needed in the interest of environmental sustainability and social justice.
Labor will get trashed in these elections. The Victorian election result confirms that. The Keneally Labor government is much more on the nose than the Victorian Brumby government was.
Sydney is the “sex capital” of Australia, said an article in the November 12 Daily Telegraph, which called the city the “Amsterdam of the South Pacific”.
The article reported recent figures from the Government Interagency Brothels Taskforce that showed 271 legal brothels in the state, as well as claims that “the industry is being infiltrated by organised crime”. The figures, which were labelled “shocking”, were blamed on “dysfunctional planning laws and legislation” by one figure quoted.
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