No sooner had information come out that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was undergoing surgery in Cuba than the international media was full of speculation and rumours regarding his imminent demise.
Projecting their hopes that an illness could succeed in removing Chavez where military coups and assassination attempts had failed, the right-wing Venezuelan opposition went into overdrive.
They demanded the president step down and hand over power to the vice president.
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The campaign of repression, slander and sabotage against the Freedom Flotilla II in its efforts to break the blockade of Gaza shows how desperately Israel and its supporters wish to keep the conditions in the besieged Palestinian enclave out of the world's view.
It’s the best news on climate change for years, and you’ve probably not heard about it.
Spain’s new Gemasolar power plant produced uninterrupted clean energy all day and all night for the first time on July 3. That’s 24 hours of zero emissions power, here and now.
Gemasolar is a concentrated solar thermal power plant. It uses a field of mirrors to concentrate solar radiation in a central tower.
What’s new about Gemasolar is that the plant can store solar energy for up to 15 hours. That’s baseload renewable energy, supplied all through the night.
The federal government said on June 29 it had met its “commitment” to move child refugees out of detention and into community-based accommodation.
In October last year, 738 children were held in detention. Widespread public fears for the mental and physical damage caused by long-term detention forced the government to act.
The immigration department said it would “begin moving significant numbers of children and vulnerable family groups out of immigration detention” into community detention.
The Perth community has witnessed in past weeks an inspiring mobilisation of people affected by homelessness or as they like to be called, the “streeties”.
It started as a small rally to protest against the treatment of those living on the streets during the Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting (CHOGM), and against insensitive comments made by Liberal police minister Rob Johnson. Now it has broadened to challenge the government on homelessness.
Resistance members in Perth took part in a protest outside the office of Melissa Parke organised by the Refugee Rights Action Network on July 1 to demand an end to mandatory detention and the immediate release of 16-year-old Indonesian Hadi Kurniawan from the Hakea adult prison.
Three Tamil asylum seekers from Sri Lanka detained in Maribyrnong detention centre have agreed to share their experiences with Green Left Weekly. They are terrified that talking to journalists may cause their applications for refugee status to be impeded or denied. Due to this fear, these three men have agreed to share their experiences on the condition of anonymity.
The NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) is continuing to build the Bulahdelah bypass, north of Newcastle, despite a community campaign to halt the project.
The bypass road was first proposed in 2000. Three main routes were canvassed: one to the west of the town, passing through several flat paddocks; another to the east, cutting through the foot of the Alum mountain; and an option that involved widening the existing road.
The safer, more geologically stable and slightly western route was ditched in favour of the mountain route.
Community Voice — a united grassroots ticket to contest Wollongong City Council elections — was officially launched on July 8 at Wollongong Town Hall.
The ticket is an exciting development for the Illawarra community. It will contest all positions in the September 3 election, including Lord Mayor.
Community Voice has developed a platform based on community democracy, social justice, job creation and sustainable development.
It will preselect candidates for councillors on July 24 and for Lord Mayor on July 31.
Thirty five people attended a forum on June 25 entitled “100% Equality” hosted by WA Greens MLC and spokesperson for diversity, gender and sexuality, Lynn Maclaren.
The forum discussed the campaign for marriage equality and other issues facing the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex community.
If you are reading this column, then Green Left Weekly has successfully completed its move to its new home in Sydney.
In the process, we have missed only a week of publication thanks to the volunteers who joined the ant army that carried all we needed down those flights of stairs in our old home, loaded the hire truck and emptied it into the new office — over and over again.
Our sparkling new premises is wheelchair friendly and accessible through a lift. So moving in was a lot easier than moving out — and the latter is far from over.
Plans to give refugees deported from Australia a “special barcode” when they arrive in Malaysia were revealed by the June 29 Daily Telegraph. A final refugee swap deal between Australia and Malaysia is likely to be announced this month.
More than 340 refugees have arrived since Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the plan on May 7 to “swap” 800 asylum seekers in Australia for 4000 “processed refugees” in Malaysia. The refugees affected by the deal are being held in various stages of isolation on Christmas Island.
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