MELBOURNE Locals into Victorias Environment organised a 5000-strong protest against the federal governments climate change policies on May 17.
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“The International Peoples’ Tribunal of Conscience sat on May 15-16 in Paris to hear testimony about the harmful effects of Agent Orange on Vietnam’s environment and population”, Thanhniemnews.com said on May 20.
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SYDNEY Mohan Rajan, a young Tamil activist, told Green Left Weekly he was concerned that two violent incidents between the Tamil and Sinhalese communities in Sydney on May 18 overshadowed the human catastrophe in Sri Lanka.
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SYDNEY A May 19 ceremony at Ibero-American Square marked the 114th anniversary of the death of Cuban national hero Jose Marti.
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SYDNEY — On May 15, the Australia Western Sahara Association (AWSA) organised an event at Leichhardt Town Hall to mark the beginning of the struggle for independence in Western Sahara 36 years ago.
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I am a Sinhalese from the majority community in Sri Lanka, not from the brutalised Tamil community. I have campaigned for five decades for the right of the Tamils to live with equality, dignity and safety in the country of their birth.
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The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has criticised the fast-tracking of approval for a 3km tunnel under the Ranger uranium mine operated by Energy Resources of Australia.
News
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The NSW Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) has criticised RailCorp plans to decimate station staff numbers.
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Chants of “Hardest working, lowest paid: Bligh and Wilson, be ashamed!” rang out from 4000 teachers at the gates of state parliament on May 19.
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Last week’s university staff strikes across Victoria were in response to decades of attacks on higher education.
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Members of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) from five Victorian universities took strike action on May 21.
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Two protesters abseiled from the front of parliament house on May 13 in a dramatic protest against the federal government’s policies on climate change.
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Socialist Alliance member and Latin American solidarity activist Jim McIlroy addressed a forum organised by the Australia Venezuela Solidarity Network (AVSN) at the Brisbane Activist Centre on May 21. McIlroy and solidarity activist Coral Wynter had recently returned to Australia after six months visiting Venezuela, Cuba and Central America.
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Close to 100 people attended a May 17 Community Action Against Homophobia (CAAH)-organised International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) rally in Newtown to commemorate the day the World Health Organisation took homosexuality off its list of mental disorders.
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After rugby league commentator and former player Matthew Johns gave an insincere and misdirected apology on The Footy Show on May 7 — preempting the ABC Four Corners program that named Johns as part of an alleged sexual assault in 2002 — Paul “Fatty” Vautin slapped him on the back and declared: “Well said, now let’s get on with the show.”
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A Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU) member in South Australia has become the second worker to face charges for refusing to speak to the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC).
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On May 21 University of Newcastle cleaners staged a protest at the twin entrances to the campus. They demanded that big budget cuts be reversed and the prior cleaning regime and working hours be restored.
Analysis
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There are still about 12.3 million people worldwide who work in some form of bonded or forced labour, according to a May 12 International Labour Organisation (ILO) report.
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On May 14, the Senate upheld the parliamentary remuneration tribunal’s decision to raise electoral allowances for federal politicians by $90 a week ($4700 a year). The vote was 38 votes to 7.
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Plans are underway for the fifth national day of action for same-sex marriage rights. Rallies are already planned in seven cities across Australia on August 1.
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The victory for Greens candidate Adele Carles in the May 16 by-election for the WA state seat of Fremantle is a breakthrough for the progressive movement and a testament to the Greens’ consistent efforts to raise a left alternative to Labor.
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A three month long industrial dispute at the West Gate Bridge strengthening project in Melbourne has ended. Unions and construction giant John Holland reached a settlement on May 15.
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When the United Nations describes the Sinhalese armys attacks on the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka as a bloodbath on the beach you know a massacre is going on.
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Climate scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a disturbing new study on May 19. Without drastic action, the Earth’s surface temperature could rise by 5°C or more by 2100, they said.
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Schools and clinics in many Aboriginal homelands and outstations are likely to close under proposed changes announced by the Northern Territory government on May 20.
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Opinion polls in both the Fairfax and Murdoch dailies on May 18-19 show voter support for PM Kevin Rudd has fallen. Rudd, who scored a 74% approval rating in the Fairfax Nielsen poll on March 30, dropped 10 points in the May 18 poll, down to 64%.
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Despite some new health spending on infrastructure and research, the recent budget failed to address the growing public health care crisis.
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Prominent journalist Jeff McMullen questioned the Northern Territory intervention at a forum organised by Reconciliation for Western Sydney on May 20 in Wentworthville.
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Fremantle Greens victory The ALP failed to ask them selves this question. Who were these Green voters? It was the first time many people from the ALP and Liberals voted Green. The excuse the ALP made [for the Greens victory] is that there was
World
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On May 18, human rights activists rallied outside Australian foreign affairs minister Stephen Smith’s office in Perth to protest against the treatment of Burma’s democratically elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
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The national president of the US organisation Veterans for Peace, Mike Ferner has written an open letter to US President Barack Obama published below. VFP involves veterans from past and current US wars. Its members “draw on our personal experiences and perspectives gained as veterans to raise public awareness of the true costs and consequences of militarism and war — and to seek peaceful, effective alternatives”. For more information, visit .
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\The article below is compiled from Prensa Latina reports on May 16 and 17.
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Michael Lebowitz is a Canadian Marxist economist. He is the director of the “Transformative practice and human development” program at the Caracas-based left-wing think tank, the Centro Internacional Miranda. He is professor emeritus of economics at Simon Fraser University and author of Build it Now: 21st Century Socialism and the 2004 Isaac Deutscher-prize winning Beyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class.
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“Soldiers, our race salutes you!” state the Sinhala-language slogans on huge placards plastered across Sri Lanka’s countryside.
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There is a revival of socialist feminism in Latin America, spearheaded by the Venezuelan and Cuban revolutions.
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British comedian and activist Mark Steel discusses the growing scandal about expenses claimed by British members of parliament in the article published below. The scandal is causing widespread outrage and forced the resignation of House of Commons speaker Michael Martin on May 19 — the first time in 300 years the speaker had been forced out. The scandal has engulfed MPs from the ruling Labour Party and the Conservative opposition. This article was originally published in the British Independent.
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The following is a May 6 statement by the Treatment Action Campaign (South Africa), AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa, RAVANE+ PVVIH Network for the Indian Ocean Region (Mauritius) and the Grassroots Empowerment Trust (Kenya). It is reprinted from Links.
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The world has recently lost one of the most important leaders of the indigenous movement in Latin America.
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“I believe that we must reject torture without equivocation because it does not make us safe, it results in unreliable intelligence, it puts our troops at risk, and it contradicts core American values”, US President Barack Obama said while campaigning for the White House in March last year.
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Nepal’s political stalemate of sorts continues.
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Malalai Joya is the youngest elected representative to Afghan’s parliament. In 2007, she was unjustly suspended for “insulting” other members of the parliament. Joya is an opponent of the US-led occupation and a strong supporter of women’s rights. She opposes the brutal, misogynistic polices of both the Taliban and the fundamentalist forces the US have installed. Her memoir, Raising My Voice: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice, is due to be released later this year.
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“Our motherland has been completely liberated from separatist terrorism”, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in a May 19 “victory speech” to parliament. He was referring to the military defeat of the pro-independence Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by the Sri Lankan Army.
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“We don’t live in the territories, we cannot throw stones and we cannot participate in the legitimate resistance against occupation”, Haneen Zoabi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) told Green Left Weekly.
Culture
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The Declarations of Havana
By Fidel Castro, with an introduction by Tariq Ali
Verso, 2008
138 pages, $26.95 (pb) -
Samson and Delilah
Written and directed by Warwick Thornton
With Marissa Gibson and Rowan MacNamara
In cinemas -
Friends in deed
By Heather Saville
Australia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) Inc., 2009
337 pages, $24.95 plus postage (pb)