962

Greening The Media Richard Maxwell & Toby Miller Oxford University Press, 2012 246 pages, $44.80 (pb) There is a reason why the typical electronic product warranty lasts only 12 months, say Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller in Greening the Media. Most digital devices are designed to “break or become uncool” after just a year, requiring regular product replacements or upgrades.
The New York-based National Lawyers Guild released a statement on April 16 on the Venezuela elections it helped monitor. An NLG spokesperson said: "The U.S. would do well to incorporate some of the security checks and practices that are routine in Venezuela to improve both the level of participation and the credibility of our elections." The full statement is below. * * *
To mark the one-year anniversary of the shooting of four Aboriginal teenagers in Kings Cross, a rally will be held on April 26 to demand an end to police investigating cases of police violence. The rally will gather outside the Kings Cross police station to voice disapproval of the police involved in the shooting of the unarmed youths in April last year. Since January 1, 1980, over 200 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have died in police custody.
50 people rallied on April 18 to save the gender studies department from being cut at the University of Queensland. UQ has been teaching gender studies for 41 years and it is the only university in Queensland that still does. The university has announced it will discontinue the gender studies major from this year and has plans to cut all gender studies courses by 2018. Students marched from the great court to the UQ senate meeting where they were barred from personally delivering a petition signed by hundreds of students.
On April 2, 1911 women all over Britain were holding all-night parties, staying out at concerts and late-night restaurants, skating at ice rinks until the morning and generally having a very good time. But this was also a huge act of civil disobedience because the April 2 was Census night and these women staying out all night were refusing to have their details recorded in protest at the government’s refusal to grant votes for women.
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.
The NSW Coalition government’s decision to privatise two large ports was announced in July last year. It expected to receive $3 billion from the sale. NSW Treasurer Mike Baird said on April 12 that the consortium NSW Ports would buy 99-year leases for two of the state’s international ports — Port Botany for $4.31 billion and Port Kembla for $760 million. The total cost of the sale would be $5.07 billion. An additional yearly lease payment of $5 million would be paid to the government and the annual on cap container movement of 3.2 million would be abolished for Port Botany.
Hundreds of working-class people waiting outside of a closed grocery store for the possibility of getting the remaining food is not the picture of the “American Dream.” Yet on March 23, outside the Laney Walker Supermarket in Augusta, Ga., that is exactly what happened.
“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.
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.