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The Chicago teachers’ strike entered its third day on September 12. This strike is of national significance for a number of reasons: * It is a militant fightback against the ruling class onslaught to destroy public education being carried out by Democrats and Republicans across the country. * It is aimed at the policies of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party machine in Chicago headed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, longtime aide, advisor and fundraiser for Obama. *It is being organised by a new rank-and file-leaders with a class-struggle perspective.

Billionaires and Ballot Bandits Greg Palast Out September 18 www.gregpalast.com If you really want to understand the forthcoming US presidential election, read this book. Former corporate fraud investigator Greg Palast previously showed how the 2000 US election was rigged through "purging" black voters off the electoral rolls. He showed how the 2004 election was rigged the same way. In 2008, the same thing happened again, yet Barack Obama still managed enough votes to get in.

The Indigenous Social Justice Association (ISJA) and the Support Assange and WikiLeaks Coalition released the statement below on September 9. * * *
September marks the arrival of a defining name of the 1980s British anarcho-punk scene, Subhumans, to Australia. This will be the band’s first Australasian tour and features the 1981 line-up that recorded their debut EP Demolition War and classic albums such as The Day The Country Died. Green Left Weekly's Chris Peterson spoke to frontman Dick Lucas.
Bruno Walter ― The Early Recordings EMI 679 0262 (Nine-CD set) Bruno Walter Conducts Mahler Sony 88691 920102 (Five-CD set) Mahler ― Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5 Naxos 8.110876 & 8.110896 “My time is yet to come!” Austrian composer, conductor and pianist Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) famously declared in response to the mixture of incomprehension and hostility that greeted his musical compositions. Mahler's greatness as a conductor was never seriously disputed, but his standing as a composer certainly was.
Significant regional integration efforts, independent from the United States, have been among the most striking developments in Latin America and the Caribbean this century. The most ambitious of these projects is the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), founded at a summit in Caracas, Venezuela in December last year.
Pressure from trade unions and human rights groups has stopped plans by South African authorities to charge striking mine workers with the massacre of 34 of their own comrades. Those killed had been shot by police on August 16. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) have been competing for members at the Lomin mining corporation's platinum mine at Marikana in South Africa.
Quebec’s student movement has claimed a victory with the toppling of the right-wing Liberal government in the September 4 election. The opposition Parti Quebecois (PQ) looks set to form government, winning the most seats ahead of the right-wing Liberal Party who had governed for the past nine years. Quebec's largest pro-independence party, the PQ has, in government, also implemented neoliberal policies.
Greek opposition leader Alexis Tsipras, from the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), launched an explosive attack on the government on September 7. Tsipras accused it of paying bailout officials fat-cat wages while working people face endless cuts and rock-bottom wages. The Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF) bailout fund manages the recapitalisation of Greece's banks as part of the country's €130 billion ($160 billion) bailout. HFSF managers are earning up to €22,000 a month compared with a minimum wage below €600, Tsipras said.
Fewer than 50 Hazara refugees from Afghanistan survived when a refugee boat sank en route to Australia on August 29. Amid the tragedy and horror, Australian politicians have stormed and blustered over so-called people smugglers selling refugees “a ticket to the bottom of the sea”.
Legendary anti-apartheid activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, has called for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former US president George Bush to be hauled before the International Criminal Court in The Hague in a September 2 Observer op-ed. The article came after Tutu refused to share a platform with Blair at an event in Johannesburg last month, citing Blair's role in the Iraq War.
In a remote part of Western Australia, on the Burrup peninsula near Karratha, is one of the world’s oldest and most important cultural sites. It is the world’s largest collection of rock art, dotted over an area covering 42 adjacent islands, and it is under threat from unchecked industrial development.