Among the 5 million emails and documents leaked by WikiLeaks from the US-based private intelligence firm Stratfor are details of some of its secret media partners. The company’s “Confederation Partners” are spread across four continents.
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A rally to oppose the Western Australian government's plans to redevelop the Perth city foreshore attracted about 1000 people on February 26.
The Colin Barnett government plan would involve flooding the Esplanade and building large high rise developments on the new water's edge.
Speakers at the rally said there was no public consultation about the plan before it was presented, that the plan involves cutting Riverside Drive leaving only one east-west thoroughfare through the city and that the heritage value of the Esplanade will be ruined.
The crackdown on whistleblowers to protect national security is "neo-McCarthyist hysteria" and Julian Assange says he has the emails to prove it.
The WikiLeaks founder hit back hard at critics at London's Frontline Club on February 27 as his site unveiled an extraordinary cache of five million emails yanked from the servers of transnational spies-for-hire Stratfor.
See also:
WikiLeaks publishes Global Intelligence Files, exposes Stratfor
Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks released the statement below on February 27.
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Today, Monday February 27, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files -- more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011.
Among the 5 million emails and documents leaked by WikiLeaks from the US-based private intelligence firm Stratfor are details of some of its secret media partners. The company’s “Confederation Partners” are spread across four continents.
Stand for Freedom and the Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney released the statement below on February 28.
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At noon on Tuesday February 28 at Parliament House in Canberra a strong coalition of human rights, community sector and Aboriginal organisations will demand the Senate reject “Stronger Futures” legislation, which passed through the House of Representatives yesterday.
Vultures’ Picnic
Greg Palast
416 pages, 2011
Penguin
www.gregpalast.com
Investigative reporter Greg Palast is back ― and this time, it’s personal.
The former United States corporate crime investigator, who exposed the 2000 and 2004 elections of George W Bush as frauds, has gone for a more intimate feel in his latest book, Vultures’ Picnic.
The Stop the War Coalition Sydney released the statement below on February 26.
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Stop the War Coalition opposes sanctions against Syria – steps towards a military intervention – by the United States, Israel, NATO or any other foreign power.
We oppose the violence by the Syrian state and the armed mercenaries and agent provocateurs, which, in many cases, are being supported by foreign powers.
Colectivo Mujer and the Addison Road Gallery in Marrickville, Sydney invite you to “Latinas: Our Origins, Our Voices”. This cultural event will celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8.
Colectivo Mujer is a group of women from Latin America and elsewhere who strongly identify with our cultures that recognise the contribution of women and men to ever-evolving feminisms.
The Egyptian revolution has mobilised millions of people. It brought down the United States-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak. The struggle for democracy and equality continues.
Countless songs dedicated to the uprising rocketed around the internet. Two of these songs, "Rebel" and "Not Your Prisoner" from hip-hop trio Arabian Knightz, quickly became anthems of the revolution. Arabian Knightz released their new album Uknighted States of Arabia on January 25 ― the one-year anniversary of the protests that sparked the revolution.
The US response to the uprisings in the Arab world remains deeply hypocritical.
“It is time to stop the killing of Syrian citizens by their own government,” US President Barack Obama said at a February 24 meeting in Tunis of the representatives of 60 countries, led by the Western powers and their Arab allies.
The group cynically called itself the “Friends of Syria”.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the opportunity to lash out at the US’s main global competitors, Russia and China.
German President Christian Wulff resigned on February 17 after prosecutors applied to have his presidential immunity stripped in a corruption scandal.
Wulff has been accused of having received kickbacks from businessmen, including a home loan of 500,000 euros (paid via an anonymous bank cheque) in 2008.
When German tabloid Bild threatened to publish the allegations, Wulff left voice messages on the editor's phone threatening "war".
Two decades after the demise of Soviet bureaucratic “socialism” and the onset of its “Special Period” crisis, Cuba is immersed in an ongoing debate on the future of its socialist project.
When Raul Castro became interim president in August 2006, he called for free and frank debate. He launched a series of nationwide consultations in the lead-up to the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) in April last year.
Intersecting with these organised debates is a wider discussion in Cuba’s revolutionary press, academic journals and other institutional spaces.
Len Cooper, the secretary of the Victorian Telecommunications Division of the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union, wrote to Victorian unions last August inviting them to take part in a discussion “aimed at leading to the formation of a campaign on the right to strike”.
The Victorian Trades Hall Council (VTHC) endorsed the campaign as a sub-committee of the hall on February 10. It committed to back a motion on the right to strike at the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) national congress, which takes place in Sydney in May.
The abridged statement below was initiated by the British Coalition of Resistance and signed by dozens of groups and individuals around the world ― including Australia's Socialist Alliance. See Coailiast of Resistancefor the list of signatories and to add your name.
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If the uprisings of last year have proved anything, it is that progressive change is not out of reach, even in the most unlikely of circumstances. In the face of overwhelming odds, the Arab Spring has brought changes in the region that were unthinkable 18 months ago.
However, it is still common for people advocating radical change to be sneered at, regarded as naive fools or dangerous loonies.
But when you take an honest look at the state of the world today, it is those who think things should not change are the ones that start to look foolish or crazy.
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