Last year, multi-award-winning playwright Angela Betzien undertook a three week residency in the Queensland town of Mt Morgan where she researched and developed a play exploring the impact of mining. Tall Man, a 50-minute two-hander, received standing ovations when it toured for one night only in three mining towns in Central Queensland.
“The play made us cringe and laugh,” said one Mt Morgan resident. “It challenged a room to acknowledge its story.”
Green left Weekly's Brianna Pike talked to Betzien about the play.
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The federal government’s plan to cut $2.3 billion from university funding is wrong. The government should end public funding to private schools and make mining companies and banks pay instead.
It makes no sense for Julia Gillard’s government to fund primary and secondary education by cutting $2.3 billion from the budget of university education.
Described as a “razor-gang”, the cuts to universities will turn a student scholarship scheme into a loans scheme, disadvantaging thousands of students.
An emergency speak-out: "Hands off Venezuela" was called by the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network (AVSN) at Sydney Town Hall on April 19. Almost 100 people attended the rally, plus a small counter-protest of about a dozen Venezuelan supporters of the right-wing opposition.
The rally called for "an immediate end to the opposition-initiated violence [in Venezuela], and to demand that the US and Australian governments come out and recognise [Nicolas Maduro] as Venezuela's head of state."
The dead. The injured. The anguish. All the result of bombs that were set to explode at the finish line just over four hours after the start of the Boston Marathon.
There will be time to mourn. We will mourn the dead and injured. I also mourn the Boston Marathon, and how it's now been brutally disfigured.
The Boston Marathon matters in a way other sporting events simply do not. It started in 1897, inspired by the first modern marathon, which took place at the inaugural 1896 Olympics. It attracts 500,000 spectators and over 20,000 participants from 96 countries.
The average worker in Britain's south-west has lost ￡1522 a year ($2255) in earnings since the coalition came to power, new research from the Trade Union Congress (TUC) showed, Morning Star said on April 19.
The figures, which do not take into account rises in consumption taxes or cuts to benefits, came to light at the start of the South West TUC annual conference.
N THE 60 years since the end of the Korean War, U.S. policy toward North Korea has fluctuated between the options of "containment" and "rollback."
Sometimes, the policy has shifted in the course of one presidency. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both started out as advocates of rollback--regime change, either by military force or by provoking an internal collapse--but ended as caretakers of containment.
“We want our country to be alive. We don't want it to be dead because that’s our country, that’s our spirit country, we come from that country,” said Aboriginal traditional owner Teresa Roe to a crowd outside Woodside's office on April 12.
The gathering was a celebration after the announcement that Woodside Petroleum has shelved plan to build a liquid natural gas hub at James Price Point in Western Australia’s Kimberley.
Ever since Malaysia was granted independence in 1957, the party that the British colonial rulers groomed and installed as their neo-colonial puppets, the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO), has clung on to power by hook or by crook.
At various points in history, UMNO (the central party in the governing Barisan Nasional (BN) ruling coalition) have relied on colonial military might, ethnic pogroms, jailing dissidents, media control, gerrymandering, vote rigging, corruption and patronage to stay in power.
Two years ago, refugee advocates learned five men detained in Darwin's Northern Immigration Detention Centre (NIDC) had sewn their mouths together and were protesting against delays to their cases. Advocates alerted the media of the self-harm in July, 2011.
But immigration spokespeople contacted by media denied lip-stitching had taken place. A spokesperson told AAP on July 2, 2011, that a detainee had been taken to hospital after an incident of self-harm, but: “Nobody has sewn their lips together.”
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement has the potential to become the largest “free trade” deal in the world. Negotiations began in Melbourne in March 2010, involving Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and the US. The combined GDP of these countries was about US$20.7 trillion in 2011. Japan is now close to being accepted into the negotiations.
The continued rightward shift of capitalist politics in the United States was underscored with the official release of President Barack Obama’s proposed budget.
In it, Obama proposes to cut the already inadequate pension program for the elderly known as Social Security and the medical insurance program for the elderly, Medicare.
These and other programs for the elderly and poorer sections of the working class are under attack. Both major parties claim that spending on social welfare must be cut in the current economic depression.
New research has found workers suffer many problems associated with working 12-hour shifts and rotating shifts. These problems include a disturbed body-clock, shortened and distorted sleep, and disturbed family and social life.
This resulted in acute effects on fatigue, mood and performance. Without adequate coping strategies, this leads to chronic effects on mental and physical health, including elevated risk of cardiovascular gastrointestinal problems, and heightened safety risks.
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