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20,000 people turned out to hear the John Butler Trio, Missy Higgins and Bob Brown among others in a concert and rally and march for the Kimberley in Fremantle on February 24, 2013. It was a massive outpouring of community opposition to the Barnett government's blatant attempts to steal Aboriginal land, ride roughshod over local community opposition to the project and to trash the environmental qualities of the area around James Price Point.

WikiLeaks has published over 40,000 secret documents regarding Venezuela, which show the clear hand of US imperialism in efforts to topple popular and democratically elected leader Hugo Chavez.
France perpetrated two large deceptions in its military intervention into Mali in January. These have been universally presented as true in mainstream media reporting. The first was that the unilateral decision to invade Mali on January 11 was hastily made. France said it was prompted by imminent military threats by Islamic fundamentalist forces against the Mali's south where the large majority live.

In an attempt to avoid anti-racist protesters, the February 18 meeting to launch the Australian speaking tour of Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders, was, at the last moment, moved to a desolate, non-residential part of Somerton on Melbourne’s northern edge. More than 200 anti-racists, however, picketed Wilders’ meeting while another 100 protested in Melbourne CBD, where one of the speakers was Greens Senator Richard Di Natale.

This is an extract from Towards a socialist Australia, produced by the Socialist Alliance and its affiliate, Resistance. Read the full text online at the Socialist Alliance website. Why socialism? The rise of resistance to dictatorships, corporate rule, military occupation and corrupt politics, which has occurred in the 21st century, brings new hope for humanity.
About 120 people attended a public meeting on February 20 to discuss concerns about shale oil and gas exploration in the Northern Territory. The meeting was organised by the Environment Centre NT and brought together a broad panel of speakers — representing the breadth of concern in the community about new and controversial methods of extracting unconventional gas.
Protesters gathered outside the Federal Court building on February 19 to oppose moves by Coca-Cola Amatil to overturn recently passed Northern Territory “cash-for-containers” laws. The laws are similar to bottle and plastic container return laws that have operated in South Australia for more than 30 years. Today, 80% of bottles in SA are recycled, more than double the rate of other states. Demonstrators displayed a large banner exposing the role of the company, owners of Mount Franklin, Fanta and Coke products, in destroying wildlife and the environment.
The hottest show in Sydney has an unusual setting, a hearing room on the seventh floor of 133 Castlereagh Street. This is where the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) is investigating affairs involving former Labor state minister Eddie Obeid and his family, and former Labor minister for resources Ian Macdonald. Obeid is accused of benefiting from buying farmland over which MacDonald allegedly approved a coal mine, in return for receiving millions of dollars in kickbacks.
A civil trial expected to last eight weeks in the federal court in Melbourne was averted on February 18 by an agreement between the Victoria Police and six African-Australians suing them for racial discrimination and racial profiling. The agreement mandates an enquiry, with submissions from the public, into allegations of police racism in the Flemington-North Melbourne area, which includes culturally diverse Housing Commission estates. The agreement also permits the six complainants to publicly tell their stories using police documents obtained through the court case.
These are stills from film footage shot by Jill Hickson and John Reynolds for Actively Radical TV of the half a million-strong march on February 16, 2003 against the impending US-led invasion of Iraq.


The article below is an extract from Resistance’s Education zine, which was released on campuses this week. *** In every state and territory, at many tertiary educational institutions, students are resisting a tide of cuts, commodification and privatisation. Universities face staff, subject and department cuts, rising fees and costs, casualisation of staff, bigger classes, less class time and less face-to-face contact.
Community Action Against Homophobia (CAAH) activists are marching in Mardi Gras on March 2 under the banner “Generations of Protest”, and are inviting interested people to join their float. Mardi Gras is going to be a lot of fun this year, and already has more floats and more people marching than ever. The event stands in the tradition of the gay liberation protest in 1978 that immediately preceded the state-by-state decriminalisation of sodomy throughout the ‘80s and early ‘90s.