In a spectacular workplace accident at a University of Technology Sydney (UTS) construction site on November 27, an intense fire broke out in the cabin of a crane before the arm collapsed onto scaffolding below. No one was injured, but hundreds of people were evacuated from nearby office buildings.
The incident took place next to Broadway, one of Sydney’s busiest roads. The November 28 Sydney Morning Herald reported that the crane’s driver swung the arm away from the street before escaping from the fire.
It is believed the fire was started from leaking diesel fuel.
949
The Wikileaks Tapes
Directed by Cathy Vogan
Featuring John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, Christine Assange, Daniel Ellsberg, Mary Kostakidis, Senator Scott Lundlam, Julian Morrow & many more
Dual-layered DVD
Thing2Thing.com
Environmental campaigners have won a reprieve from plans by the federal government to hand environmental protection powers to state governments and fast track applications for some developments.
A discussion paper by the Business Council of Australia, prepared for the Commonwealth of Australian Government (COAG) meeting on December 7, made several proposals. These included:
The Queensland Nurses Union (QNU) published this statement on December 4.
***
The state government’s budget and job cuts across Queensland Health are out of control, are not based on any serious clinical plan, have been announced without proper consultation with nurses and midwives or their union and are starting to threaten patient safety.
QNU secretary Beth Mohle said the likelihood that nurses and midwives will have to take action to protect patient safety, in many Queensland Health facilities and services, is increasing by the day.
Activists rallied in Melbourne on December 8 to defend and extend public housing.
The Victorian government and housing minister Wendy Lovell are attempting to privatise public housing and give greater power to the non-transparent Housing Associations. These Housing Associations have been criticised for not being accountable to the people and communities they claim to serve.
Friends of the Earth released this statement on December 5.
***
Friends of the Earth's Radioactive Exposure Tour will take place from Friday March 29 to Sunday April 7 next year.
These tours have exposed thousands of people first-hand to the realities of “radioactive racism” and to the environmental impacts of the nuclear industry.
The Support Assange and Wikileaks Coalition released this statement on December 7.
***
Wikileaks supporters in Sydney and Melbourne staged sit-ins in Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) buildings on December 7, to mark the second anniversary of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s detention without charge in Britain.
They demanded that the Australian government seek a guarantee from the US that Assange will not be subjected to prosecution there.
Sam Wainwright is a Socialist Alliance councillor in Fremantle. Below is a talk he gave on the topic of how to achieve social change in Australia.
* * *
It's pretty obvious for anyone that cares to look that capitalism is a socially destructive and ecologically unsustainable system.
Based on the unequal distribution of wealth, it condemns billions to living in poverty worldwide.
In the week Lord Leveson published almost a million words about his inquiry into the “culture, practice and ethics” of Britain's corporate press, two illuminating books about media and freedom were also published. Their contrast with the Punch and Judy show staged by Leveson is striking.
For 36 years, Project Censored, based in California, has documented critically important stories unreported or suppressed by the media most US people watch or read.
Refugees coming to Germany right now are largely from known regions of crisis. They come from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, many African countries and the Turkish-ruled part of Kurdistan.
They also include many Roma who want to escape extreme poverty and racial discrimination in Kosovo and other East European countries.
It’s a warm night in the small village of Chuao in Venezuela. Dozens of children are playing in the square in front of the old colonial church, and a local man, beating a drum he holds between his knees, sings: “This is the taste of my cocoa. This is what we have, we black people of Chuao.”
The people of Chuao, descendants of Africans brought to Venezuela’s coast as slaves by the Spanish, have been growing cocoa for more than 400 years.
Sydney's prestigious Hilton Hotel hosted the “PNG Chamber of Mines and Petroleum Investment Conference” over December 3-5. The event summed up the nature of the resource industry in PNG.
PNG Mine Watch said on December 1: “The Papua New Guinea Mining and Petroleum Conference in Sydney will be a room full of white men dicing and slicing PNG’s assets with little or no participation or informed consent from the people of Papua New Guinea.
Protesters have taken to Tunisia's streets to insist the transitional government of Hamad Jebali fulfill the demands of the January 14 revolution that overthrew dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.
The regional city of Siliana, located 130 kilometres south-west of the capital Tunis, was rocked by days of protests over the lack of investment and jobs in the region.
One year has passed since the community of Cajamarc, in Peru's northern highlands, rose up against the “Conga” copper and gold mine, a US$5 billion mega-project proposed by the World Bank-backed Newmont-Buenaventura consortium.
The unified cry of the protesters is still: “Conga no way!”
The region bordering the mine site is home to an agricultural population that relies on the natural highland water system. Destroying this precious and fragile asset would end the viability of their existence.
In the recent elections, Latinos, Asians and Blacks voted against the extreme racist policies and rhetoric of the Republicans.
A central plank in the Republican onslaught has been attacks on immigrants who lack documents. Romney said he would make life so miserable for them they would “self-deport”.
In the aftermath of the elections, immigrant youth without papers have remobilised to fight for their own rights and for citizenship for all of up to 12 million undocumented migrants working in the US.
At a one-day assembly of more than 500 delegates on November 28, the militant socialist Party of the Labouring Masses (PLM) introduced its candidates for national elections scheduled for May 13 next year.
The PLM, which now holds positions in several Barangay (neighbourhood) councils, is running 20 candidates for municipal councillor, vice-mayor, mayor and Congress. They include candidates in Negros and Iligan, in the Philippine archipelago’s south. Most candidates, however, are in Metro Manila or the semi-urban provinces surrounding the capital: Cavite, Rizal, Bulacan and Laguna.
Pages
