The letter below will be distributed at the upcoming ALP national conference, December 3-4, 2011. To add your name to the open letter please visit the Stop the War Coalition Sydney website.
We, the undersigned, call on Prime Minister Julia Gillard to rethink the government’s support for the US-NATO war in Afghanistan.
Specifically, we call on her to remove the Australian troops, and to send massive amounts of untied aid to the war-ravaged nation.
905
Councillors! We are Occupy Melbourne! We come here in peace … We’ll only take a few minutes of your time. We’ve come to speak to Robert Doyle but he refuses to speak to us.
We understand that some of the council support us. We urge you to speak out publically.
To Robert Doyle, we offer this statement: We are Occupy Melbourne. We are part of a global movement. Our movement is non-violent. Our movement seeks to reclaim our voice and democracy.
A rally to support the Egyptian revolution took place in Melbourne on November 27.
Photos by Ali Bakhtiavandi
Sydney — On November 29, inner west peace advocates gathered to give away fair trade chocolate crackles and sing freedom carols outside the Max Brenner chocolate outlet in Broadway, which is owned by the Israeli multinational, Strauss Group.
Their aim is to peacefully draw attention to the plight of Palestine and to expose companies like Max Brenner, which support Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Just a few days before his appeal hearing over his extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations, which many believe may be a prelude to Assange’s extradition to the US on espionage charges, WikiLeaks won a stunning victory for citizen journalism and a free press when it took out the 2011 Walkley award for most outstanding contribution to journalism.
On November 23, Sudan lost an invaluable activist, writer and leader.
Al Tijani Al Tayeb was one of the founders of the Sudanese Communist Party and the editor of the SCP’s newspaper Al Midan. He dedicated his entire life to the movements against colonialism, dictatorship and capitalism in Sudan and against imperialist exploitation of Africa and the Middle East.
Al Tijani was born in 1926 in a poor village near the town of Shendi in north Sudan. His father was heavily involved in the Sudanese independence movement, fighting against the British occupation.
"Lou Reed and Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello are among the first signatories of Occupy Musicians”, a November 22 British Guardian article said.
supports Occupy Wall Street and the global movement against inequality. The Guardian said the website aims to co-ordinate performances at Occupy sites and showcase new works by signatory artists.
It said: "Occupy Musicians is a sister site to the bookish campaign at Occupy Writers, the lensing of Occupy Filmmakers and the speech-bubbles atOccupy Comics."
The Beginning of the American Fall
Stephanie McMillan
Cartoonmovement.com
The Adventures of Unemployed Man
Erich Origen and Gan Golan
Little, Brown, October 2010. 80 pp.
Action Comics
Grant Morrison
Detective Comics
The worldwide Occupy protests have inspired a lot of music over the past few months. But it has also broken into artistic circles some might not know of. One such area is comics.
The Occupy movement spread to Durban for the start of COP17 (the 17th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), protesting at the perceived lack of access to the conference centre for members of the public.
The Occupy COP17 General Assembly, meeting at a designated spot just outside of the conference centre boundaries, was aimed at providing a forum for those who wanted to find new solutions to the climate change problem and discuss climate justice.
Representatives from the Latin American and Caribbean governments that make up the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) met in Bolivia on November 17-18 to coordinate their battle plan ahead of the international climate change summit in Durban later this month.
ALBA unites eight countries, including the radical governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua. It helped lead the fight at the 2009 Copenhagen summit against attempts by rich nations to impose their anti-environmental plans.
The Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), held April 17-21, coincided with the 50th anniversary of Cuba’s historic defeat of the US-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs and Fidel Castro’s proclamation of the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution.
When Fidel, 85, made a surprise appearance at the Congress closing session, many of the thousand delegates were overcome with emotion as aides helped him to his seat next to President Raul Castro.
Seven years after being launched by the Venezuelan and Cuban governments, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) has become an important voice on the global stage willing to stand up and denounce capitalism.
ALBA has grown to include eight Latin American and Caribbean countries (Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
The South Korean government is building a naval base on Jeju Island, officially named the “Island of World Peace”. The base will be one of the largest in the world. The island is located just under 300 miles from the Chinese mainland.
It will be home to both United States and South Korean warships. It will include 20 large destroyers, two aircraft carriers, two nuclear submarines, the Aegis ballistic missile defense system and 6000 soldiers.
It is part of the same process of US militarisation of the region reflected in plans for a new US military base at Darwin.
A November 8 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear regulatory authority, has been used by the United States and other Western powers as a pretext for a new round of economic sanctions against Iran and the ramping up of belligerent rhetoric.
“The phraseology is ponderous but the message is clear,” BBC diplomatic and defence correspondent Jonathan Marcus explained on November 8. “Iran, the IAEA believes, may well have been working on research for a nuclear bomb to arm one of its long-range missiles.”
The shocking image of a campus cop at the University of California (UC) Davis coldly circling in front of a line of seated protesters, taking aim and pepper-spraying them at point-blank range has now been seen around the world.
The November 18 assault has become a new symbol of the vicious crackdown on the Occupy movement, from one end of the country to the other.
In the face of widespread and growing outrage, UC officials are scrambling to explain why their police thought it was necessary to assault peaceful demonstrators with chemical weapons.
Pages
