The federal government rejected bids to protect James Price Point from gas development when it announced its National Heritage Listing of almost 20 million hectares of the iconic Kimberley region in Western Australia last week.
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What began several months ago with students taking over their high schools and universities has swelled into one of the largest protest movements in Chile’s history.
Student protests, involving tens of thousands of students and teachers, have dovetailed with angry demonstrations of workers in other sectors.
The education protests swelled to 600,000 on August 25, the second day of a 48-hour general strike called by a confederation of 80 unions.
The announcement by BlueScope that 1100 workers will be sacked from the local steel industry has sent shockwaves through the community and much of the country.
Another 200 people could be sacked from the Port Kembla wharves and at least 100 more local workplaces will be seriously affected.
Many of the sacked workers have been at the steelworks for decades. They are now being told to get out of town, to move to Queensland or Western Australia, to forget about their ties to Wollongong, because other corporations may need them somewhere else.
The legal team of former Guantanamo Bay prisoner David Hicks submitted a communication to the United Nations Human Rights Committee on August 23.
It argues the Australian government treatment of Hicks has violated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Australia is a party.
“It’s just a great honour to be here,” iconic singer-songwriter Paul Kelly told Green Left Weekly. “What happened here is a fascinating and amazing story.” Kev Carmody, another legend of Australian music, added: “It’s brought all these people together from diverse backgrounds and from all across the country and it’s an honour to the strength of Gurindji people.”
A poll commissioned by new online campaign NewsStand found 61% of Australian people agreed a “public inquiry into the Australian media is necessary so the public can better understand the relationship between politicians, corporations and media outlets”.
NewsStand, backed by GetUp, then launched an online petition on August 11 calling for parliament to “publicly scrutinise the media landscape as a whole”, which quickly gathered almost 30,000 signatures.
1. Profit maximisation is the iron rule of capitalism, setting limits to ecological reform. A profit-based economy that requires continuous economic growth makes ecological catastrophes inevitable.
2. Voluntarism, technological fixes and market incentives as they have been constructed cannot achieve even the weak greenhouse gas targets governments have committed to. Even so, many governments, such that of the US, haven’t even initiated these market mechanisms like carbon taxes or cap and trade.
Dismissive letter on depression not helpful
Mark Harris’ well-balanced and thoroughly materialist short analysis of depression “Capitalism is just depressing” (GLW #888) did not warrant Dr David Faber’s dismissive comment (GLW #892): “If you want to be Marxist, demonstrate a little historical materialism please.”
A dozen members of Darwin's legal community presented a letter to ALP MP Warren Snowdon on September 2 calling for the federal government to comply with the High Court's recent decision on the "Malaysian Solution".
The High Court said the ALP government's plan to deport refugees to Malaysia was illegal. The letter called on federal politicians to ensure the speedy resolution of asylum seeker claims, universal access to legal representation and an end to mandatory detention.
Fred Magdoff co-author, with John Bellamy Foster, of What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism: A Citizen’s Guide to Capitalism and the Environment, spoke to Scott Borchert of Monthly Review Press.
Foster is a featured speaker at the Climate Change Social Change activist conference in Melbourne over September 30 to October 3.
* * *
Why did you decide to write a book like this, and why now?
According to Australia’s outgoing discrimination commissioner Graeme Innes, racism is still a big problem in Australian society.
This is nothing new. Racism has been an issue in Australia since the very beginning of white colonisation, when Aboriginal people were forced from their lands to make way for the new colonial Australia.
But racism, like our society, has changed with the times. This throws up new challenges in tackling it.
“We are not evacuating Rikers Island,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a news conference on August 26.
Bloomberg announced a host of extreme measures being taken by New York City in preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Irene.
These included shutting down the public transit system and the unprecedented mandatory evacuation of about 250,000 people from low-lying areas.
But in response to a reporter’s question, the mayor stated in no uncertain terms (and with more than a hint of annoyance) that one group of New Yorkers on vulnerable ground would be staying put.
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