Officially Leonora is not a detention centre for refugees but an “alternative place of detention”. Between January 21-23, the Refugee Rights Action Network’s second “Caravan of Compassion” made the 1660km round trip from Perth to Leonora. Caravan participant and Resistance member Zebedee Parkes describes his weekend trip to the remotely located concentration camp.
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All those scenes from Cairo of mass demonstrations look like the perfect expression of the big society. So we can only assume British PM David Cameron wants us to try something similar here. It would certainly encourage more people to take an interest in politics.
List of protests in support of Egyptian democracy movement, against Western support for regime
After as many as 2 million people took over Tahrir Square and the streets of Cairo, with millions more across Egypt, on February 1 to demand on end to the US-backed dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, the regime responded with a violent assault on protesters continuing to occupy the square.
International Socialist Review editor Ahmed Shawki reports from Cairo on the latest mass protests against Hosni Mubarak--and what the future holds for Egypt's uprising.
Based on Psalm 137
By the waterholes of Mother Country we slung down our yidakis, and cut our bodies and drugged our minds in grief, as we remembered the dreamtime.
And the settlers demanded from us a corroboree performance and a jail sentence, mutual obligation and a souvenir boomerang for the gift shop.
How could we dance and perform sacred traditions for their markets? We have become aliens and inmates, invisible in this eternal land.
When you fly over the earth’s oldest land mass, Australia, the view can be shocking. Scars as long as European countries are the result of erosion. Salt pans shimmer where once native vegetation grew. This is almost impossible to reverse.
Al Jazeera.net reported on January 29 that new protests had erupted in the Middle Eastern nation of Yemen, which sits at the bottom of the Arab peninnsular, demanding an end to the regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The site reported on January 28 that thousands had also taken to the streets in anti-government protests in Jordan, with people angry over price rises and unemployment.
Ongoing mass demonstrations, strikes and riots have rocked Egypt since January 25. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in national protests on January 25 to demand an end to the United States-backed dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak.
Up to 300 asylum seekers held in Western Australia’s remote Curtin detention centre ended a four-day hunger strike on January 21.
The protesting asylum seekers demanded the immigration department end the long delays in the processing of asylum claims. They agreed to end the hunger strike after the department agreed to speed up the claims process.
Many of the hunger strikers had fled from Afghanistan and fear they will be sent back to danger.
The councillors of Marrickville, in Sydney’s inner west, voted by a 10-2 majority on December 15 to support the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.
A month later, they have belatedly become the subjects of vilification in the Rupert Murdoch-owned media, and of death threats from Australia's lunatic fringe.
"What does the desert theocracy of Saudi Arabia have in common with Marrickville Council in Sydney's Inner West?" howled a January 13 article in Murdoch's Daily Telegraph, under a headline comparing the council to North Korea.
They are calling it Obama’s PATCO. US President Barack Obama is proposing a two-year wage freeze for 2 million federal workers.
When then-president Ronald Reagan fired 13,000 striking Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) members in August 1981, he sent a signal to other employers that it was open season on unions.
Now, local and state governments will use the president’s position to justify their own layoffs and wage freezes. Private industry will do the same.
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