Issue 903

On November 16, police attacked and dismantled the Occupy Melbourne site in Treasury Gardens. Three activists were arrested. At a general assembly in City Square this evening, activists will plan their response.

“Any major decisions will be made in a democratic process tonight. Anyone is welcome, including the police commissioner [Ken Lay] and Robert Doyle,” Occupy Melbourne activist Carl Scrase told the Age.

The Northern Inland Council for the Environment and The Wilderness Society Newcastle released the statement below on November 14.

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Environment groups have responded to news that the NSW government plans to stop a single coal seam gas pilot production well on the Liverpool Plains with calls for a far more extensive moratorium.

There was a sea of red when public sector nurses filled Melbourne’s Festival Hall on November 11 to decide on further industrial action. About 50 buses brought nurses from across the state.

A swing version of “Danny Boy” played in the background to set a sombre but defiant tone. Messages of support came from Australian Council of Trade Unions president Ged Kearney and the California Nurses Association.

Socialist Alliance (SA) stallholders at today’s Newtown Festival were told today by a festival organiser that NSW Police had urged them to ban SA and Occupy Sydney from the festival.

The SA has paid for and run a stall every year at the festival. But this year police threatened organisers — the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre — with a $16,000 bill if they did not carry out the ban, saying that the presence of SA and/or Occupy Sydney might incite trouble.

About 4500 people marched and rallied in Hobart on November 12 against the state government cuts to essential services.

Angry health care, education, children's services and other public sector workers, including police, joined with the broader community to chant "no more cuts", drowning out the efforts of Labor Premier Lara Giddings who tried to convince them that the government had no other option.

Greens leader and cabinet minister Nick McKim was also booed and heckled as he tried to defend the cuts.

People concerned about coal seam gas (CSG) will deliver a petition signed by more than 15,000 NSW residents to Premier Barry O'Farrell on November 22.

The NSW-wide petition, initiated by Stop CSG Illawarra, calls for an immediate moratorium on all CSG projects, a Royal commission into the full impacts of CSG and an immediate ban on fracking.

Stop CSG Illawarra member Chris Williams said: "Premier O'Farrell has pledged that any petition with over 10,000 signatures will trigger a debate in parliament.

Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore made clear at a Sydney City Council meeting on November 6 that she supported the “principles” of the Occupy movement but did not support Occupy Sydney.

Greens councillor Irene Doutney put a motion to investigate the dawn police raid on the group in Martin Place and help find Occupy a site for the protest.

But Moore replied that she had to “balance the rights of residents, visitors, workers and others to have access to the public domain”.

After two weeks of hard work to obtain signatures and the constitutive documents, on October 27 the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP) presented before the Supreme Electoral Tribunal more than 81,000 signatures and other documents supporting the request for the inscription of the political instrument, the Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE).

Green Left Weekly’s Ted Walker spoke to two young members of the Egyptian Socialist Party, Basem Osman and Amr Bahaa, in Cairo in September. They discussed their experiences during the uprising against former dictator Hosni Mubarak and the future of Egypt’s revolution.

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Why did you join the Egyptian Socialist Party?

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at”, wrote Oscar Wilde, “for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”

News International chief executive James Murdoch and his billionaire father Rupert were accused of running a mafia-style empire on November 10.

Labour MP Tom Watson made the allegation during James Murdoch’s second appearance before the Commons culture, media and sport committee over the phone hacking scandal.

During lively exchanges Watson asked Murdoch: “You’re familiar with the mafia?

“Are you familiar with the word omerta, the culture of silence around the mafia? Do you accept that applies to the Murdoch empire?”

Socialist Worker (US): It was an Arab Spring and a hot summer of struggle in Europe. But autumn has belonged to Wall Street — to Occupy Wall Street, that is.

No one should underestimate the epoch-making election result in Nicaragua for the Sandinista-led Alianza Nicaragua Triunfa and its candidate Daniel Ortega.

The result marks a return to levels of support for the Sandinista Popular Revolution last seen in Nicaragua's first ever democratic election in 1984. The Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) and its allies have won more than 60% of the national vote. It is no surprise that the anti-democratic right-wing parties refused to accept their crushing defeat.

In the lead up to the ALP National Conference next month, marriage equality is shaping up to be the biggest test yet to Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s leadership.

Gillard has moved from her position that she would override a pro-equality decision at the conference, to hinting she will allow Labor MPs a conscience vote.

However, she now also holds the dubious honour of being the only remaining Labor leader supporting the marriage ban.

Veteran Brisbane activist Gary McLennan spoke at an Occupy Brisbane rally on November 5. An abridged version of his speech is below.

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Friends, I want to thank you sincerely for the invitation to speak to you today. It remains for me a badge of honour, a great honour, that I’ve been asked twice to speak to the Occupy Brisbane movement.

I said when I first spoke to you that your movement represented the best hope for the kind of world that I wanted my grandchildren to grow up in.

I believed that then and I still believe it now.

On the eve of US President Barack Obama’s visit to mark 60 years of the ANZUS military alliance, PM Julia Gillard is not convincing people that Australia must “stay the course” in Afghanistan.

A November 4 Roy Morgan poll, taken six days after an Afghan army trainee killed three Australian soldiers and wounded seven, said 72% of people want troops out, the biggest opposition since the war began 10 years ago.

Supporters of the pro-war parties polled closely: 69% of ALP voters and 67% of Liberal-National Party voters want troops out. Among Greens supporters, the figure is 80%.

WikiLeaks has awakened many people to the cynical and violent workings of the political, military and corporate entities that run the world. For Christine Assange this awakening has been heightened because her son is WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange — now the target of the powerful 1% who have not appreciated his contribution to transparency.

“I started off on this journey saying WikiLeaks is great in theory but … I’m not going to support it publicly before I’ve read everything I can on it,” she told Green Left Weekly. “It was quite a journey for me.”

The strengthening links between unions and the US Occupy movement will be expressed in mobilisations across the US on November 17.

N17 has been called as a national day of action for Occupy and the labour movement, and a range of protest actions and stay-aways will take place across the country. It will also mark the two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street.

Union links to the Occupy movement in Australia are still in their early days. However, the US example shows that there is much common cause to be found.

Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Oct 30: Let me start by introducing you to the Palestinian people and give you a brief background to the conflict.

Palestinians are the indigenous inhabitants of the land that was once known as Palestine — and is now called Israel and the Occupied Territories. Palestinians were mostly a population of farmers — fellaheen — their view of their identity is therefore defined by their connectedness to the stones, the earth and the trees.

In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary
By Ngo Van
AK Press, 2011
264 pages, $43.99

Australians know of the Vietnam War from the arrival of Australian troops in 1965 through to their withdrawal in 1973. People in the United States generally date it from the arrival of US advisors through to the inglorious departure of US helicopters in 1975.

However, for the Vietnamese the struggle began long before that, from their colonisation by the French in the 19th Century.