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Refugee activists in Melbourne organised a candle lit vigil on November 30 to condemn the federal government's racist policies against refugees. Mohammed Bakhtiari, a former detainee on Nauru, said: "We need to demonstrate to people that we have rights too". Photos by Ali Bakhtiarvandi:
Protesters holding a banner

Upcoming rallies for refugees. Save Omid! End offshore processing!

A selection of this week's celebrity news... Country singer Trace Adkins in Hot Water For Confederate Flag Earpiece. http://bit.ly/115BnCt Tycoon Donald Trump says Chinese invented global warming to damage US business. http://on.fb.me/11xeFSY Randy Blythe, singer with anti-Iraq war band Lamb of God, indicted for manslaughter. http://eonli.ne/SIjxR9 Chris Brown Returns to Twitter, Posts Scantily Clad Photo of Rihanna on Instagram. http://eonli.ne/QYzg1J
A group of 57 refugees, mainly from Africa and the Middle East, have pushed the plight of the more than 100,000 asylum seekers in Germany into the national spotlight. In September, they rejected regulations that constrain their movement and began a long march to the German capital, Berlin. They came from as far as Wuerzburg, a Bavarian town in Germany’s south. Some of them completed the 600 kilometre journey on foot over 29 days. Arriving in early October, the refugees and scores more German supporters established a tent city in the Berlin suburb of Kreuzberg.
Cartoon by Carlos Latuff

A major theme of this year’s US presidential election campaign was the threat to world peace allegedly posed by Iran’s nuclear program. Democrat President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney competed to take the hardest line.

I Believe In Revolution Darah Darah Music 2012 www.darahmusic.tumblr.com Darah says it was a fellow Aboriginal rapper who inspired him to take a more radical direction on his latest album, I Believe In Revolution. "This whole album was largely inspired by Big Luke’s album Message From A Black Man," the Victorian emcee tells Green Left. Just as Big Luke took a no-holds barred approach on that album, so Darah has come out with both guns blazing on his latest effort. But Big Luke is not just an inspiration to Darah.
The Marx Dictionary By Ian Fraser & Lawrence Wilde Continuum, 2011 223 pp., $39.99 “A is for Alienation, that made me the man that I am, and B's for the Boss who's a Bastard, a Bourgeois who don't give a damn.” So goes Scottish folk singer Alex Glasgow’s witty song, “The Socialist ABC”, which is a succinct introduction to Marxism. However, for a slightly more rounded alphabetical introduction this volume is very good. In it the authors manage to condense quite readable explanations of some of the Western intellectual tradition’s most challenging concepts.
Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littin By Gabriel Garcia Marquez New York Review Books, 2012 116 pages, $19.95 (pb) “The most hated man in my life,” declared the casual-dressed, bearded, non-conformist Chilean film director, Miguel Littin, was the balding, near-sighted, clean-shaven, Uruguayan business tycoon who accompanied Littin’s every step on his secret return to the Chile of military dictator, Augusto Pinochet, in 1985.
Despite securing a comfortable victory in October's presidential elections, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) is set for a harder struggle in crucial regional elections on December 16. However, even opposition polls show PSUV is likely to keepcontrol of most governorships. The issue is whether the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) can win or hold key seats, or the PSUV can build on the momentum from the presidential vote and important social gains.
A United Nations review into its handling of the Sri Lankan government's war against Tamils in 2009 has revealed the UN deliberately ignored Sri Lanka's huge-scale human rights violations. Up to 50,000 Tamils were killed by Sri Lankan military forces in the final stage of the conflict between the Sri Lankan government and armed Tamil independence groups, the most prominent of which was the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). After the defeat of the LTTE in May 2009, about 300,000 Tamils were forced into prison camps, where mass executions, torture and rape allegedly took place.
Ecudor says Assange has chronic lung condition Ecuador's ambassador to Britain, Ana Alba, told Ecuadorian TV that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has a chronic lung condition after spending months in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, ABC.net.au reported on November 30.
West Papuans and their supporters rallied in Melbourne on December 1. They raised the Morning Star flag, a symbol of independence, and demanded self-determination and an end to Indonesian occupation of West Papua. The rally was part of an international day of action. The speakers addressed the brutal human rights violations committed by the Indonesian army and urged the Gillard government to break with over 40 years of successive Australian governments' support for the Indonesian occupation.