Protesters will again travel to Rockhampton to oppose the Talisman Sabre war games between the US and Australian military machines over July 10-13 estimated to cost well over $100 million.
Issue 795
News
Rallies across Australia are planned for May 23 to call for an end to the Sri Lankan government’s genocide against the Tamil people.
As students across Australia sat the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests last week, the media reported NSW government plans to introduce league tables, comparing student performance across schools.
Vision Australia announced on May 6 that it will slash more than 130 jobs. This includes cutting 90 jobs in Victoria and the closing of three regional offices.
On May 19, more than 37,000 state school teachers will stage a one-day strike against the Queensland governments pay offer. The offer would keep Queenslands teachers among the lowest paid in Australia.
The statement below was read out at a May 16 rally in Melbourne, called to denounce the Sri Lankan government’s brutal war against the Tamils.
Palestinian supporters in Melbourne and Sydney rallied on March 15 to commemorate 61 years since the Palestinian Nakba — the day of the catastrophe.
Greens candidate Adele Carles is set to win a historic victory at the May 16 by-election – the first time the Greens have won a lower house seat in Western Australia. Carles polled 44% of primary votes and 54% of two-party preferred votes at the close of counting on election night.
Twenty people protested outside the offices of private prison operator GSL in Perth on May 14. The protest demanded justice for Aboriginal elder Mr Ward, who died due to excessive heat in a prison van operated by GSL. The coronial inquest finished on May 1. Findings are due to be presented on June 12.
Analysis
Two hundred people protested at Parliament House on May 6 against the Victorian governments proposed solar feed-in tariff legislation.
On May 9, local residents gathered in the remote Clouds Creek State Forest to protest Forest NSW logging operations.
On May 10, federal treasurer Wayne Swan announced that Australia will finally join the overwhelming majority of developed countries in implementing a national paid parental leave scheme. But the plan falls way short of what women need.
On May 11, ABC’s Four Corners screened an interview with a young woman from New Zealand. She recounted an alleged 2002 sexual assault in a Christchurch hotel room by at least 12 players and staff from the Cronulla Sharks.
One hundred percent renewable energy in Australia by 2020! That was the bold call endorsed by members of more than 150 climate action groups at the Climate Action Summit held in Canberra in January.
Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan delivered the Labor governments second budget on May 12. Swans bleak message was clear: for those with a job, its a matter of work until you drop.
More than 100 members of the Australian-Afghan community and supporters protested in front of Parliament House and the Afghan embassy in Canberra on May 12.
Since police raided the Florentine Valley protest camp on May 4, at least 32 people have been arrested for participating in protests against logging in the southern Tasmanian valley.
A week after the Rudd government announced Australian troops would join the US and NATO-led troop surge in Afghanistan, a May 4 US air strike on two villages in the country’s south-west killed up to 150 civilians, including many women and children.
More than 50 people joined a public meeting in Lawson in the Blue Mountains on May 11 and discussed a new campaign to stop plans by the Roads and Traffic Authority to upgrade the Great Western Highway.
In a new lease deal proposed by Aboriginal affairs minister Jenny Macklin in early May, Aboriginal people in Alice Springs town camps could lose control over their housing.
While federal and state governments focus on the need for state-based reconciliation groups to bring better understanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, Reconciliation Victoria Incorporated (Rec Vic) will have to close in July due to a lack of funding.
The Sri Lankan government’s war against the Tamil minority has again exposed the extent to which the corporate media reinforces the status quo — no matter how unjust.
World
The following statements are reprinted from Links, international journal of socialist renewal
The political crisis caused by the refusal of the head of the Nepalese Army to implement instructions from the elected civilian government is continuing in Nepal.
“Socialism will save Venezuela; socialism will save the world”, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on May 10 during his weekly TV program Alo Presidente.
In the early 1960s, it was the Irish of Derry who would phone late at night, speaking in a single breath, spilling out stories of discrimination and injustice. Who listened to their truth until the violence began?
The Unite union is New Zealand’s newest trade union and one of its most dynamic.
Israel calls it the anniversary of independence. But for Palestinians, May 15 commemorates terrible ethnic cleansing.
On May 3, Visteon workers occupying their west Belfast plant voted to end their 36-day sit-in protest, An Phoblacht said on May 7.
On the night of May 9, the Sri Lankan Army conducted one of the most brutal assaults in recent history against a civilian population. Medical sources within the so-called safe zone in, told Tamilnet.com that as many as 2000 people had been killed by heavy shelling in the Vanni region in the island’s north.
At an April 5 anti-NATO protest in Strasboug, Matthis Chiroux apologised to Afghan feminist Malalai Joya for the crimes of the US-led occupation of Joya’s country.
The US Socialist Worker is running a series of commentary from a range of left-wing perspectives assessing the first 100 days of US President Barack Obama. Two contributions are published below. To read more of the commentary, visit www.socialistworker.org.
The Bologna process is the name for the measures contained in the proposed European Higher Education Area. The stated aim of the European Union’s EHEA is to create compatible and coherent higher education systems across the continent.
Workers and activists gathered in the central plaza of Asuncion, Paraguay on May 1 to commemorate International Workers Day. Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, a former priest elected in April last year on a pro-poor platform, marked the day by raising the minimum wage by 5%, half of what many of the unions present were demanding.
The Peruvian government decreed a 60-day state of emergency on May 9 across various districts in the Amazonian region in the east.
Venezuela’s National Assembly passed a law on May 7 that assigns control over goods and services connected to the country’s petroleum industry to the state.
The statement below was initially circulated at the World at a Crossroads conference hosted by Green Left Weekly in Sydney, April 10-12. A selection of the much larger number of names that signed on are included below. To add your name to the statement, email stuartmunckton@gmail.com
Culture
When Sri Lankan state unleashed its hate,
World failed to defend Tamils' fate.
When they killed without hesitation,
World stood still in hallucination.
@poetry = When they sent us on boats to the North,
World looked at us as refugees of no
Star Trek
Directed by JJ Abrams
Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman
With Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy and Eric Bana
Directed by JJ Abrams
Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman
With Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy and Eric Bana
World War Il: Behind Closed Doors — focuses on the secret history of the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin. SBS, Friday, May 22, 8.30pm.
Sex, TV and Ugly George — Explores censorship and public decency on television using the
We Will Not Fight: The Untold Story of World War Ones Conscientious Objectors
By Will Ellsworth-Jones
Aurum Press, 2008
296 pp, $49.95 (hb)
By Will Ellsworth-Jones
Aurum Press, 2008
296 pp, $49.95 (hb)
Editorial
Greens Senator Bob Brown moved the following motion to the Australian Senate on May 12: “That the Senate, in regard to the massacre of civilians, including hundreds of children, in the Tamil homelands of northern Sri Lanka, calls on the government to take decisive action commensurate with the need to immediately halt this unnecessary bloodshed.”
General
On May 13, a team of three British adventurers measuring ice conditions in the Canadian Arctic found themselves on thin ice and asked to be airlifted out weeks before they had planned.
Letters
New laws a slur on civil liberties
New NSW laws that allow police to move-on people who are "noticeably" drunk ("slurring their speech") and arrest those who fail to comply, will mostly target Aboriginals, teenagers, young people and people with
Resistance!
Labor delivered its budget on May 12 in the context of Australia’s slide into recession. With the economic crisis hitting hard, young people are one of the most vulnerable groups in society.
The federal government announced in its budget that $1.3 billion will be spent over six years aimed at tackling people-smuggling and securing Australias borders, the Australian reported on May 13.