Forty protesters were met by hundreds of police including members of the riot squad and mounted police as they gathered to picket PM John Howards attendance at a $250-a-head Asia Society function on June 6.
Issue 713
News
On June 1, around 150 people, including elders, family members, Noonuccal people of North Stradbroke Island and supporters of Aboriginal rights, gathered at Queensland University of Technology to pay tribute to Oodgeroo Noonuccal. This warrior womans life as poet, political activist, artist and educator was honoured with the inaugural public lecture and awarding of scholarships in her name.
More than 500 protesters from around NSW assembled at a property near the proposed new Anvil Hill open-cut coalmine in the Upper Hunter over the June 2-3 weekend. The state government approved the mine on June 7.
Hundreds of Aborigines and community supporters will wear bright yellow wristbands to the Townsville court on June 12. They will be gathering to observe the trial of Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, who has been charged with the manslaughter and assault of Mulrunji Doomadgee on November 19, 2004, on Palm Island.
World Refugee Day will be marked in Melbourne by a rally and march to demand justice for all refugees and the scrapping of the horrific new detention centre being built on Christmas Island.
The Socialist Alliance has decided to run long-time socialist activist Jim McIlroy in Labor leader Kevin Rudds seat of Griffith in Brisbanes central-south in the federal election. Its nationwide election campaign themes are People before profits! and Planet before profits!
In what the superstitious might call natures revenge, wild seas caused a coal freighter to run aground in Newcastle on June 8, the day after the NSW Labor government approved the opening of a massive open-cut coalmine at Anvil Hill in the Hunter region.
Activists marked World Environment Day (WED) — June 5 — with a protest in Bourke Street Mall that highlighted corporate plunder of the planet.
Activists from the Stop Bush Coalition have condemned moves to make NSW into a police state during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in September. The government introduced legislation into NSW parliament on June 7 that will give police extraordinary powers for two weeks around the time of the summit.
Analysis
Under pressure to prove his government has answers to the global warming crisis, on June 3 PM John Howard backed the corporate polluter-friendly recommendations of his Task Group on Emissions Trading, set up on December 10.
The ALP deserves to be re-badged the “Anti-Labour Party” as historian Humphrey McQueen suggests, and the ALP’s public dressing down and forced resignation of Victorian Electrical Trade Union (ETU) secretary Dean Mighell reinforces this view.
Since federal ALP leader Kevin Rudd outlined Labor’s “Work Choices lite” on April 17 — promising that a Labor government would maintain the Coalition’s ban on strikes outside of bargaining periods and secret ballots — Labor’s full-scale retreat on industrial relations has continued.
The trial of the “Pine Gap Four” in Alice Springs is continuing with the Crown lawyer arguing that the jury should not be determining the reasonableness of the activists’ actions. Michael Maurice QC argued that, “Engaging in activities to disrupt the implementation of public policy can never be reasonable”.
Global warming, workers rights and opposition to the Iraq war are key campaigns this year, a Socialist Alliance state conference on May 19 decided.
Green Left Weekly is committed to social justice and environmental sustainability, speaks out against capitalism, and sides with the marginalised and oppressed. But it is silent on the plight of the most oppressed group of all non-human animals, notably those exploited by the animal agriculture industry.
Having just visited Cuba — and as a former head of public health for the Perth east metropolitan region and former chairperson of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners — it was obvious to me that the 45-year US trade embargo against the island-state has seriously affected its ability to provide health services to its people.
Former Newcastle lord mayor Greg Heys died on June 5 after a massive heart attack.
Tasmanians from all walks of life are up in arms about Gunns’ proposal to build one of the largest pulp mills in the world in the Tamar Valley, near Launceston.
The Australian government has recently come under fire for the inefficiency of its overseas aid programs, particularly in the Asia Pacific. The June 4 Sydney Morning Herald reported that more and more aid destined for the region was being lost in administrative costs or dished out to private corporations in the name of “development”.
World
Two years ago we were assaulted with the spectacle of Bono and Bob Geldof promising to help make poverty history. The two pop stars, both well past their use-by date, played leading roles in organising the 2005 anti-poverty Live 8 concerts and as a result scored a much-reported invite to address the July 2005 G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland. That summit adopted a debt-relief and aid plan for Africa hailed by Bono as a little piece of history. Geldof declared the summit a qualified triumph for the worlds poor. The issue of global warming also featured at the Gleneagles meeting, with the G8 resolving to act with resolve and urgency to tackle climate change.
More than 30 delegates from around the world attended the Jerusalem Initiative conference held in occupied East Jerusalem to call for an end to Israels illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The three-day conference from June 2-4 was organised by the Palestinian Peoples Party and the Communist Party of Israel and was attended by representatives from European, Scandanvian and Australian socialist parties as well as members of the international peace movement, trade unions and womens organisations from around the world.
On June 5, thousands of Palestinians and international solidarity activists throughout Palestine marked the 40th anniversary of al Naksa (the calamity), the beginning of the 1967 war and the illegal seizure of the Palestinian territories.
On June 5, the Iraqi parliament approved a law giving itself the formal authority to block the extension beyond December of the UN Security Council mandate under which US and allied foreign troops are deployed in Iraq.
The corporate owned- and controlled-media’s accounts of recent events in Venezuela give the impression that a new student movement is fighting for their democratic rights against an increasingly autocratic government. This is testimony to the way the corporate media turns reality on its head — making the victim look like the aggressor and vice versa.
Some 55,000 people demonstrated in Hong Kong on June 4 the 18th anniversary of the Chinese armys bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy student protesters at Beijings Tiananmen Square.
At midnight on June 4, around 2800 kitchen staff, orderlies and hospital cleaners were set to be locked out of their workplaces by four contracting companies Spotless, OCS, ISS and Compass in hospitals across New Zealand. However, last-minute negotiations between the Service and Food Workers Union Nga Ringa Tota (SFWU) and the District Health Board averted the lockout.
More than 1 million public servants across South Africa have embarked on the largest public sector industrial campaign in the countrys history. On June 1, more than 700,000 workers downed pens and clipboards for an indefinite stoppage, while another 300,000 essential workers, who are prohibited from striking, joined huge nationwide marches, pickets and other protest actions. While the immediate demand is for a significant pay increase, an important undercurrent of the mass action is working-class and poor peoples growing dissatisfaction with the pro-rich policies of the African National Congress (ANC) government.
On June 5, Labour Party Pakistan general secretary Farooq Tariq was arrested from his home by a large contingent of police without a warrant. His detention is part of a recent wave of repression by the military regime of President Pervez Musharraf, in which hundreds of activists have been arrested. The LPP, which is pursuing legal action and organising protests against Tariqs detention, believes he was arrested due to his role in the lawyers pro-democracy movement and in activities against the Pakistan electronic Media Regulatory Authority, and because of the LPPs announcement that it would hold a Free Media Conference on June 6. Tariq had also been arrested on May 4 and detained for three days to prevent his participation in the public reception for suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.
Cuban newspaper Granma reported on June 6 that Venezuelas socialist president, Hugo Chavez, had called for an expansion of ALBA the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, a solidarity-based alternative to US-backed bilateral free trade agreements and the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Chavez made the call during the closing of the first meeting of ALBAs Council of Ministers in Venezuelas capital, Caracas.
There is little mystery behind Iraqis' tenacious resistance to US President George Bush's war of occupation: over four years of war have left the country devastated and resulted in the deaths of over half a million Iraqis, according to a study published in the influential British medical journal The Lancet.
The start of the official campaign period for East Timor’s June 30 parliamentary elections has been marred by violence, including killings. The most serious incidents took place in Viqueque district, where two men were shot dead on June 3. An investigation by the Major Crime Investigation Unit and the National Investigation Unit is underway, focusing on a number of East Timorese police officers (PNTL).
The Venezuelan government’s decision not to renew the expired free-to-air broadcasting licence of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), while still allowing it to broadcast online or via cable, has created a sharp debate in Venezuela about democracy and freedom of speech.
The latest attempt by the US to isolate the revolutionary government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez failed when the Organisation of American States general assembly meeting in Panama on June 4 refused the US demand to criticise and investigate Venezuela for supposed attacks on freedom of expression.
Concerned about the health effects of a chemical plant proposed to be built in the coastal city of Xiamen by a Taiwanese capitalist, up to 2000 protesters took to the citys streets on June 1 and 2 seeking to have the project scrapped.
On June 4, Chinas National Development and Reform Commission issued a 62-page climate change action plan that seeks to reduce the countrys carbon dioxide emissions. The plan seeks to realise by 2010 three goals under the UN climate change convention to reduce the countrys energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20%, to increase its renewable energys share in the countrys primary energy mix to 10% (up from its existing share of 7%, and to increase forest coverage to 20% (up from its existing 18%).
Under the banner of “For freedom of speech and against imperialism”, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets of Caracas on June 2 in defence of their revolution, and as a direct response to the domestic and international campaign being whipped up by Washington in the wake of the non-renewal of Radio Caracas TV’s (RCTV) broadcasting concession, dwarfing all of the opposition marches that had occurred in preceding days. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced: “If the Venezuelan oligarchy believe that they will stop us with their threats, with their manipulations or with their destabilisation plans, forget it!”
On June 2, masses of people from different parts of the country descended on the streets of Caracas to march in support of the government of socialist President Hugo Chavez, and the new TV channel Venezuelan Social Television (TVes). TVes is broadcasting on Channel 2, previously used by RCTV owned by multi-millionaire Marcel Granier whose 20-year concession ran out on May 27. RCTV will continue on cable, but many Venezuelans feel that after helping organise the April 2002 coup against the elected government, RCTV is lucky to remain on air at all.
The Socialist Party of Timor (PST) is fielding 65 candidates in the June 30 parliamentary elections, and also has 25 candidates on the supplementary list (which comes into operation if candidates withdraw or die, or vacate their position after the election). Fourteen parties are contesting the elections. Topping the PSTs list of candidates is party secretary-general Avelino Coelho da Silva. PST president Nelson Correia is second on the list; two well-known women activists, Angela Fraga and Maria de Carvalho, are the third and fourth candidates.
Culture
Australians all, let us rejoiceFor we are girt by seaWhich makes it very difficultFor would-be refugees,If any of them make it here and it's not a lot We lock them upAnd send them offSomewhere that's very hotWe lock them upAnd send them offSomewhere
Yossi & Jagger — The story of a gay relationship in the Israeli army. SBS, Saturday, June 16, 1.05am.
Compass: Bearing Witness — Examines the trauma experienced by journalists who have been witness to terrible world events while on assignment.
Tom Morello is an outspoken musician and political activist who has played in the bands Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. Recently, he has been working on a solo acoustic guitar project he calls The Nightwatchman. Morello spoke to US Socialist Worker’s Kris Jenson and Keith Rosenthal about The Nightwatchman and his album One Man Revolution.
General
When the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest national accounts last week it was revealed that the corporate profit share of all Australian income had risen to 28.1%, well above the long-term average of 20%.
Letters
Algae and coal
Zoe Kenny's assertion in GLW #707 that cost-effective "clean coal" technology does not yet exist requires some modification. In recent years, techniques for carbon sequestration using microalgal photobioreactors have advanced