Manchester United legend Eric Cantona, FIFA President Sepp Blatter, UEFA President Michel Platini, renowned British film director Ken Loach and US intellectual Noam Chomsky are among international figures who have joined calls for Israel to release Palestinian footballer Mahmoud Sarsak.
25-year-old Sarsak is on hunger strike and close to death. A player with the Palestine national soccer team, he has been on hunger strike almost 90 days in protest at his imprisonment without charge or trial.
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Criticism of Latin America’s radical governments has become common currency among much of the international left. While none have been exempt, Ecuador’s government of President Rafael Correa has been a key target.
But a problem with much of the criticism directed against Correa is that it lacks any solid foundation and misdirects fire away from the real enemy.
Correa was elected president in 2006 after more than a decade of mostly indigenous-led rebellions against neoliberalism.
The Irish government successfully bullied a majority of those who turned out for the May 31 referendum into voting “yes” to changing the constitution to allow the government to ratify the European Union's pro-austerity Fiscal Treaty.
But it would be a mistake to read it as a ringing endorsement for their austerity policies.
Many of those who voted did so with a gun to their head and no enthusiasm for the policies contained in the treaty. After all the blackmail and bullying, the Yes side could only manage a 60% Yes vote with a 50% turnout.
On the eve of the June 17, 2012 elections in Greece, Green Left correspondent Afrodity Giannakis reports from Thessalonika, on the hopes and fears of a people being forced to bear the burden for a global capitalist economic crisis built on the greed, speculation and corruption of the rich and powerful minority.
Twenty-seven -year-old Kwementyaye Briscoe died on January 5 while in police custody in Alice Springs, Northern Territory. Last week, the coronial inquest into his death began.
A man who was taken into custody with Briscoe told the inquest he watched police drag him through the watch-house, ABC Online said on June 13. Other prisoners saw that Briscoe was bleeding from the head, and one man told the inquest he could hear him “groaning and gasping for air”.
Tony Abbott is right: we can't allow a “Green veto” to hold back a huge expansion in the Queensland coal export industry.
Coal and gas developments proposed in Queensland are putting Australia's Great Barrier Reef at risk, says a report by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
The report, released on June 1, said there were “a number of developments that, were they to proceed, would provide the basis to consider the inscription of the property on the List of World Heritage in Danger”.
Forest conservation campaigners in the Yarra Valley, east of Melbourne, released the statement below on June 15.
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The blockade to halt logging in the mountain ash forests of Mount St Leonard continues with protesters planning to lock themselves to log harvesting machinery to delay logging for as long as possible.
The blockade is strongly supported by Toolangi and Healesville residents and business owners, more than 120 of whom turned out for a public meeting three weeks ago to ask VicForests managers why they were logging the loved and iconic mountain.
Green Left Weekly’s Ben Peterson spoke to Wellington-based student activist Joel Cosgrove about socialist organising in New Zealand. Cosgrove is a member of the Workers Party and the Mana Party. He will speak about radical politics in New Zealand at Resistance’s Time Of Revolution conference in Adelaide, July 20-22.
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What is ‘We are the University’?
The controversial introduction of income management to Playford in northern Adelaide was the subject of a thought-provoking and at times emotional community meeting hosted by Socialist Alliance on June 13.
A sizeable turnout of locals, including individuals from Anglicare, Uniting Care and the Playford City Council, discussed how this policy, to be “trialled” from July 1, will impact on the wellbeing of those on Centrelink payments and the broader community, and how people should respond.
Next week, Green Left Weekly will launch its newest project: an internet-based current affairs program inspired by shows like Democracy Now and Julian Assange’s The World Tomorrow.
The first Green Left Report will feature interviews with WikiLeaks supporter and activist Cassie Findlay and Cairo-based Australian journalist Austin Mackell.
Queensland Premier Campbell Newman said on June 12 that the government would abolish state-sanctioned civil ceremonies for same-sex couples, but still allow them to formally register their partnership.
Same-sex civil unions were introduced in February by the former Labor government.
The move follows a big rally last month to protest against plans to abolish same-sex union laws entirely in Queensland. Newman said he wanted to remove “provisions which 'emulated' marriage”, which we're opposed by Christian churches, the June 13 Courier-Mail said.
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