Issue 1021

More than 200 staff and students rallied outside Fisher Library at Sydney University on August 13 to protest proposed cuts to the university's library system. The cuts will involve closures and staff redundancies.

"If the university gets its way all four libraries will lose their staff and collections. Two will become little more than post-grad only PC labs," the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) said.

Moreland residents were outraged when they heard Moreland City Council had voted to cut $100,000 from the Carbon Management Plan in the council's budget last month.

This cut the budget for climate action from $525,000 to $424,000 and would have resulted in some of the council's solar energy projects not going ahead.

The $100,000 cut came as a shock, considering the council’s previous initiatives to tackle carbon emissions.

The National Union of Students called a national day of action to “celebrate” education minister Christopher Pyne’s 47th birthday on August 13.

Students used the occasion to protest the federal government’s funding cuts to higher education, which will mean students will have to pay up to three times more for a university degree than they do now and will pay more interest on their HECS-HELP fee.

Victoria police are vetting registrants and scouting venues to try to provide security for the besieged World Congress of Families in Melbourne on August 30. The final venue for the event remains unclear as they try to avoid clashes with widespread community opposition.

Activists are already causing chaos for conference organisers Babette Francis of the Endeavour Forum (formerly Women Who Want to be Women) and John Brennan of the conservative Catholic men’s group Knights of the Southern Cross.

NOWSA, or the Network of Women Students Australia, holds a conference every year dedicated to women’s activism. More than 160 students from across Australia gathered last month for its national conference in Perth, making it the biggest NOWSA conference in many years.

The weeklong event from July 14 to 18 took place at Edith Cowan University. It featured a range of workshops and speakers, who focused on issues relating to racism, trans rights and sex worker rights.

The Victorian Coalition government faces an uphill battle to win a second term in the November state elections. Its commitment to building the controversial East West Link toll road and the impact of the federal budget cuts has made the Coalition very unpopular.

Socialist Alliance candidate for Pascoe Vale Sean Brocklehurst said the East West Link is “a huge handout to big corporations.

Since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by an unidentified police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, the majority Black city just outside of St Louis has been rocked by protests against a system that sees the lives of young Black men as disposable.

The response of authorities has been to flood the town with hundreds of police from dozens of neighbouring cities and towns, decked out in riot gear, and armed with assault weapons, attack dogs and militarised vehicles for "crowd control".

After Brown killing, LAPD shoot another Black man dead

Just two days after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, 25-year-old Ezell Ford was shot by Los Angeles Police Department officers in South Central Los Angeles, teleSUR English said on August 13.

Officers came to the scene of West 65th and Broadway on the night of August 11 to conduct “an investigative stop”. Witnesses say that Ford was complying with police and lying on the ground when he was shot in the back.

Venezuela sent its first batch of aid to Palestine on August 12, teleSUR English said. As well as government aid, Venezuela's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has collected food, medicines and clothes from a supportive population, seeking to ease the suffering of the people of Gaza.

Venezuela Analysis reported on August 14 that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said he would convene a meeting of Arab leaders to coordinate reconstruction efforts for the war-torn Gaza Strip.

I am proud to join more than 250 Jewish holocaust survivors and descendants of survivors in condemning the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.

Our statement of solidarity (published below) calls for "An immediate end to the siege against Gaza" and a"full economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel".

We believe that "never again", the often-repeated lesson of Hitler's holocaust, "must mean never again for anyone!" -- especially the Palestinians.

United States: Don’t drink Ohio’s water

“The aquapocalypse in Toledo, Ohio is now entering its third day after citizens in the greater Toledo area woke up to a stark reality on Saturday morning when city officials had issued an unprecedented, region wide water advisory warning people not to drink or boil local tap water due to toxic contamination,” said an August 4 Counterpunch article.

Police used smoke and tear gas to enforce a curfew on protesters early on the morning of August 17 in Ferguson, Missouri, where an unarmed black teenager was killed by police on August 9, Morning Star Online said the next day.

Seven people were arrested during the night. Campaign group More claimed that all seven were arrested after being “dragged out of cars, some parked in their own driveways”.

The Kurdish people are facing an unprecedented challenge. Across a vast swathe of northern Syria and Iraq, the region’s Kurds are locked in a desperate and heroic struggle with the genocidal forces of the so-called Islamic State (IS).

Fighting is raging across a huge front hundreds of kilometres wide, from Aleppo and Kobane in Syria to Mosul and Kirkuk in Iraq — and all points in between.

You can see where federal treasurer Joe Hockey is coming from with his comment about poor people not having cars and so not being affected by the rise in the fuel excise tax, can't you? On the planet he seems to be lost on, the rich are the real oppressed.

The rich are paying too much tax — or even “all the tax” according to a recent rant in the Australian — doing all the work, doing the heavy lifting, while the rest of society bludges off them.

Media reports about a deal being struck this week between the Australian government and Cambodia to resettle refugees from Nauru have been denied by Immigration and Border Protection Minister Scott Morrison. However the government has confirmed that negotiations towards a memorandum of understanding was continuing.

The federal government took the first steps towards privatising the Medicare payment system on August 8, asking businesses for expressions of interest in taking over the handling of claims and Medicare and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme payments.

This $29 billion annual operation is currently carried out by the federal Department of Human Services (DHS), the government's largest department.

The Coral Battleground
Judith Wright
Spinifex, 2014
203 pages, $29.95 (pb)

From the days when Captain Cook’s Endeavour tangled with the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland, humans had learned to fear the Reef with its “treacherous waters and weather”.

But now the reef “should fear us more”, writes Judith Wright in The Coral Battleground. It is a reprint of her 1977 account of the campaign to save the largest and most spectacular marine coral ecosystem in the world from oil drilling.