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Palestinians in the West Bank burn the Israeli flag.

Papers leaked to Al-Jazeera, as well as secret US cables published by WikiLeaks, have exposed how Israel and the United States have used the Middle East “peace process” to push total capitulation on the Palestinian side.

About 40 people attended a ‘Hands off WikiLeaks’ rally held in Franklin Square, Hobart on January 29. Speakers from the Greens, the Socialist Alliance, the Secular Party, Young Libertarians and unaligned individuals addressed the rally. They called on the Australian government to support Julian Assange, defend WikiLeaks and support the right to free speech and freedom of information.
The world’s largest workforce is on call 24-hours-a-day and receives no wages. Domestic workers and carers for children, ageing or ill members of society or those with disabilities are usually women living within family units. They are most often the partners, mothers or daughters of the people for whom they provide this care. Most of these tasks are performed out of love for their family members. But female carers and domestic workers are often deprived of freedom of choice in their living and working conditions.
A group of 30 Perth-based activists from the Refugee Rights Action Network (RRAN) travelled to Leonora detention centre on January 21 in solidarity with the hunger strike at Curtin detention centre and to call for an end to mandatory detention. The group, which included teachers, students, tradespeople, social workers, as well as teenagers and children, had requested to fly kites and play cricket with the 55 children held in Leonora detention centre. Serco, the private company that runs the detention centre, denied the request.
On January 3, when Donna Macklan went to visit a friend, two people viciously assaulted her, knocking her out of her wheelchair and hitting her with a shovel. While they were doing this they screamed “you hermaphrodite” — she was beaten and abused in our community because of her gender identity. This is completely and totally unacceptable. Or it should be. We live in a community where lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LBGTI) people have a well founded fear for their safety in public.
The NT government has failed to change its policy of "First Four Hours" of English in remote Aboriginal schools, despite the trial period expiring in January. The policy was introduced in January 2009, supposedly as a way to improve English literacy for Aboriginal students. The policy mandated that schools teach only in English for the first four hours — the most productive hours — of school, leaving teaching in local language to the last two, least productive, hours of the day. It effectively banned Aboriginal language in the classroom.
Newcastle and the Hunter region have a proud history of energy-related manufacturing. However, since the 1990s the sector has experienced a steady decline, born of decades of neoliberal, free trade policies that encouraged companies to move offshore. Presently, only 10% of the Hunter workforce is employed in the manufacturing sector. But climate change and the need for clean energy alternatives are opening new doors.