In Coburg on May 28 about 400-500 people rallied peacefully in opposition to the federal government policies that promote racism towards Aborigines, refugees and Muslims. This was despite the rain.
Rally participants included the young and the old, people with children, church groups, interfaith groups, refugees, Muslims and First Nations people.
Hundreds of people lined the shores in “Hands Across the Sand” events across southern Australia on May 21 to protest BP's plans to drill for oil in the pristine waters of the Great Australian Bight.
Veteran British director Ken Loach has won his second Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for I, Daniel Blake. The film is a warm and realistic drama about a middle-aged widower who, after a heart attack, can neither work nor get benefits.
The land between the Clarence and Nambucca Rivers on New South Wales’ mid-north coast is Gumbaynggirr country. The Blood Rock massacre took place there in the 1880s, when police surrounded local Aboriginal people and shot them in the waters around Red Rock. A plaque reads: “Gumbaynggirr descendants, especially women, still avoid this headland. The significance of this place, and the rebirthing of our culture, will never been forgotten”.
The Organization of American States has announced it will hold an emergency meeting to discuss whether to suspend Venezuela for violating the OAS Charter. OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro said on May 31 that Venezuela had suffered "grave alterations of democratic order."
Ian Angus at global launch of ‘Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System’. Sydney, May 13.
Five months after the December 20 election in Spain failed to produce a government, the country is returning to the polls in the most polarised contest since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1977.
West Papuan independence leader Benny Wenda has been touring Australia, spreading awareness of the West Papuan struggle for freedom from Indonesian rule.
A community assembly as part of a communal council in Caracas. Photo by Rachael Boothroyd Rojas/Venezuela Analysis.
Leading Marxist author Michael Lebowitz spent six years (2004-2010) in Venezuela working as a director of the program for Transformative Practice and Human Development at the Miranda International Centre (CIM) in Caracas. There, he had the chance to take part in the building of socialism for the 21st century.
Anti-coup protesters on the streets of Rio de Janeiro in April.
In what has been widely condemned as a US-backed right-wing power grab to impose harsh neoliberal measures, Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT) President Dilma Rousseff was forced to stand aside by Brazil’s Senate on May 12 while she faces impeachment procedures.
Striking French workers demonstrating in in Marseille on May 26.
Mass strikes and protests continued to rock France on May 26 as trade unionists ramped up their campaign against hated new labour laws.
Ating Guro vigil outside Comelec office. Manila, May 27. Photo: Partido Lakas ng Masa.
Supporters of the Ating Guro (Teachers Dignity) partylist held a three-night vigil outside the offices of the Philippines Commission on Election (Comelec) on May 24, to protest apparent irregularities in counting votes after the May 9 general election.
“When one farmer kills themselves you can call it suicide. But when a quarter of a million farmers kill themselves, how can the government call it suicide? It is genocide. These farmers are being killed by design.”
So opens Cotton For My Shroud, a documentary about embattled Indian farmers and the assault on traditional rural agricultural life waged by Monsanto and the political class in its pockets.
The overthrow of Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff in an institutional coup by right-wing forces has been justified by allegations of corruption — even though issue Dilma is being impeached on is use of a relatively normal government spending mechanism.
