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Coalition leader Tony Abbott wrote to PM Julia Gillard in March calling for a bipartisan approach to Aboriginal issues and a “second intervention” in the Northern Territory. He flew to Alice Springs in late April to further these calls. June will mark four years since former PM John Howard launched the Northern Territory Emergency Response — or NT intervention.
A march during the Rock the Gate festival

After 12 hours on the road, travelling 800 kilometres from Newcastle through Gunnedah, Narrabri, Moree and Goondiwindi, just after sundown, our big blue bus pulled into Tara showground for four days of workshops and direct action as part of the Rock the Gate festival against coal seam gas mining.

The Iran Solidarity Network (ISN) and Australia-Asia Worker Links held a meeting on May 7 to commemorate Iranian Kurdish activist Farzad Kamangar, who was executed last year. ISN member Afshin Nikouseresht told the meeting that Kamangar was a teacher, poet, author, human rights activist and unionist. He had campaigned around environmental issues, women's rights and poverty as well as union rights. He was arrested in 2006 and executed in 2010, accused of being a member of an armed Kurdish group — an allegation he denied.
Our goal, as socialists, is to raise women (and for that matter, all of humanity) to a level where they are regarded as true human beings. By that I mean, people whose ideas, opinions and desires are worthy of consideration, rather than machines which exist to provide sexual pleasure, offspring, and free/cheap labour in the form of caregiving/housework. Young women face much pressure in our society, in the form of media and pornography, which tell them how they must behave, look and relate to men.

Every once in a while a book comes along that changes a mass audience's view of the world. Naomi Klein’s 2000 book No Logo, which deconstructed consumer culture, was one. Treasure Islands, a revealing expose of tax havens written by financial journalist Nicholas Shaxson, is equally groundbreaking.

Australian born WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange, who began publishing thousands of leaked US diplomatic cables last year, received the Sydney Peace Foundation’s Gold Medal at a special ceremony at the Frontline Club in London on May 10. The award, which differs from the foundation’s annual Sydney Peace Prize, is for "exceptional courage in pursuit of human rights" and has only been awarded on three previous occasions: to the Dalai Lama in 1998, Nelson Mandela in 2000 and Japanese lay Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda in 2009.
The Feminist Futures Conference is being organised for May 28-29 by the newly formed Melbourne Feminist Collective (MFC): a group of mainly young activists who were inspired by a similar conference they attended in Sydney last year. James Muldoon from the MFC told Green Left Weekly: “We are a non-aligned loose knit group of feminists who are keen to build on the movement’s past successes by focusing on shared goals and strategies for the future. “We are seeking to move beyond the old divisions by focusing on what unites us
Sydney protest in support of the Syrian uprising

Laura’s* mother was in Dara’a in southern Syria when the military attacked youths who had graffitied anti-government slogans in mid March.

An audience of more than 600 people at a forum debate in Sydney on May 10 voted by a margin of 69% to 23%, that, "All drugs should be legalised." The forum was sponsored by Intelligence2, a project of the St James Ethics Centre. It heard arguments for and against the proposal and questions and comments from the audience. Dr Alex Wodak, president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, and a founder of Australia's first needle exchange, argued: "As a starting point, we must recognise that the ‘war on drugs’ has failed. Legalisation is the only answer.
The mining and banking companies creaming billions in super profits from the mining boom — the biggest mining boom in Australia’s history — have done very well from the federal budget that was delivered by the Gillard Labor government on May 10. The big mining companies will continue to pay the lowest ever share in tax and royalties while they make their biggest ever profits.
Tara blockade

Campaign groups Western Downs Alliance and Six Degrees combined with a number of other activists and organisations to bring us the Rock the Gates Festival at Tara showgrounds from April 29 to May 4

In the past few decades, Christian and Muslim theologies have been misinterpreted and used tactically against Middle Eastern dictatorships with no success. For instance, former US president George W Bush justified the “war on terror” as a fight against an “axis of evil” and called for a new Crusade to liberate the people of the Middle East. This use of Christian theological concepts to justify the war in the Middle East requires a lot of spin.