Socialist Alliance launched its NSW election campaign at a night of speeches, drama and music at St Lukes hall, Enmore.
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Stop the massacre in Libya! Power to the people
A February 26 statement by the Socialist Alliance in solidarity with the people's uprisings in Libya and the Arab world
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The Socialist Alliance extends its full solidarity to the people of Libya now being brutally repressed for demanding an end to the corrupt and unjust regime of dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
If you have consulted Karl Marx for an answer to the recent global economic crisis, you are not alone. Google has confirmed the popularity of Marx’s writings is booming as people around the world try to make sense of increasingly harsh economic conditions.
The phenomenon was reported in an article posted at Time.com by Rana Foroohar, who said: “I consulted Google to see if the term ‘Marxism’ was trending upward. It was and has been ever since the end of December.”
About 200 people rallied in Brisbane's King George Square on February 25 to show solidarity with the people of Libya resisting the oppressive regime of Muammar Gaddafi. A banner proclaiming "Free Libya" was fixed to a wall, together with photos of victims of the Libyan military and police.
Placards carried by members of the Libyan community, many of them students, read "Stop using mercenaries to kill our people" and "Please help our country".
Forty-five pro-democracy activists, students and trade unionists were arrested in Harare on February 19 at a meeting to discuss the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.
On February 23, the activists were charged with treason, which risks the death penalty.
It is believed that security forces loyal to President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF infiltrated the meeting at the Labour Law Centre in Harare, which was themed “Revolt in Egypt and Tunisia: What lessons can be learnt by Zimbabwe and Africa?”
The national and state elections results for the Rail Tram and Bus union (RTBU) have been partially counted.
In New South Wales, the incumbent right-wing Labor leadership team, called Unity, was challenged by Members Voice, a broad united front of those who advocate increased funding and staffing, and a clear strategy to reverse privatisation. This was the first challenge to the incumbents since the 1980s.
Popular uprisings in the Arab world have challenged a political landscape dominated by undemocratic regimes and fronted by dictators, a panel of academics and journalists said at a Sydney University forum on February 15.
Speakers discussed the regional and international ramifications of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt as part of the forum on people's power and change in the Arab world.
In 1987, I visited Libya as a journalist for the left-wing newspaper Direct Action. I visited Gaddafi’s bombed-out home — attacked by the United States one year earlier.
In the 1980s, the Gaddafi regime came under attack from the US government because it took an anti-imperialist line and gave financial and material aid to many national liberation movements at the time.
The article below is based on a December 16 speech by Canberra-based freelance historian Humphrey McQueen. McQueen spoke at a Canberra rally organised to defend WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief Julian Assange.
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By what right are we here today? Why are we confident that we can protest and not be shot at by the political police on the fringes of this crowd?
We take it for granted that we won’t be arrested as we leave. We do not expect to lose our jobs by speaking out for WikiLeaks.
Tasmanian Greens leader and state corrections minister Nick McKim has come under fire from unions after he stood down 56 guards at Risdon prison without pay on February 21.
McKim brought in police officers as scabs to replace the guards. The prison has been in partial lock-down due to the lack of staff.
McKim said he stood down the guards because they were preparing to take industrial action.
Landlord and tow truck operator Frank Cassar owns rental properties and rooming houses around Fitzroy, Clifton Hill and Elsternwick.
He has ignored dozens of fines and orders imposed by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal and the Magistrate’s Court since 1999 for his flagrant violation of the Residential Tenancies Act 1997.
Consumer Affairs Victoria, the government body with the power to prosecute, has vowed to take him on. But so far, there has been no action.
On February 22, Muammar Gaddafi boasted on state TV that the Libyan people were with him and that he was the Libyan revolution.
His comments came as his dwindling army of special guards and hired mercenaries tried to drown the popular revolution in blood.
AlJazeera.net reported on February 21 that civilians were strafed and bombed from helicopters and planes. Snipers with high-powered rifles fired into unarmed crowds.
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