Issue 951

The second day of the trial of Perth protester Kamala Emanuel ended on January 24 with no verdict from the magistrate.

Emanuel was charged with failing to comply with a police officer's direction to leave a legal, peaceful rally last April.

Twenty people protested outside the court in support of the right to protest without police interference.

More than 60 people attended a meeting on January 24 to discuss the Coburg Structure Plan.  This plan, put forward by the Moreland City Council, will allow the construction of 10-storey buildings adjacent to existing homes in Coburg, an inner-northern Melbourne suburb.

The meeting was called by newly elected Socialist Alliance councillor Sue Bolton, whose electorate includes Coburg. Bolton told the meeting that most residents she had spoken to did not know about the plan.

Members of dozens of local Aboriginal Land Councils protested outside the office of the NSW Land Council on January 25. The peak body of Aboriginal affairs has been criticised for applying for exploration permits for uranium and coal seam gas in areas throughout NSW.

Chairperson of the Illawarra Local Aboriginal Land Council, Roy “Dootch” Kennedy, told Green Left Weekly they were protesting because of serious concerns about the effects of mining and the lack of consultation about the decision.

There are awards for everyone. There are the Logies, the Commies, the Tonys, the Theas, the Millies ("They cried with pride") and now the Shammies.

The Shammies celebrate the finest sham media. "Competition for the 2013 Gold Shammy," said the panel of judges, "has been cutthroat." The Shammies are not for the tabloid lower orders. Rupert Murdoch has been honoured enough. Shammies distinguish respectable journalism that guards the limits of what the best and brightest like to call the "national conversation".

The Israeli right-wing may not have lived up to expectations, but the real losers of Israel's national elections on January 22 were the Palestinian people.

Though they lost ground to more “centrist” parties such as Yesh Atid and Labor, the right-wing Likud-Beitenu alliance remains the largest bloc in the assembly.

Although he will remain prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu will probably have to compromise with moderates to form a coalition.

Two student leaders from Jaffna University who were detained under Sri Lanka's draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act were released on January 22.

Jaffna University Student Union president V. Bavanandan and Science Faculty student activist Shamugam Solomon were taken into custody with two other students on November 29 and 30.

About 150,000 people converged on Merdeka Stadium, Kuala Lumpur, for an opposition-called People's Uprising rally (Himpunan Kebangkitan Rakyat) on January 12.

This huge but peaceful mobilisation was an implicit warning to the Barisan Nasional (BN) government not to “steal” the coming general elections through the intimidation, corruption, electoral registration fraud and gerrymanders that have been used to hang on to power since formal independence from British colonial rule in 1957.

Indian socialist feminist Kavita Krishnan spoke to Green Left TV's Pip Hinman about the new movement against gender violence in India. Kavita is Secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association (AIPWA) and has been a leading activists in the campaign that has swept India (and beyond) since the brutal gang rape of a woman student in Delhi in a public bus. The woman, badly injured in the attack, died two weeks later despite being flown to Singapore for treatment. Her male companion, who was also severely assaulted, survived. Six suspects are being tried.

I left the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) in July last year after working there for 22 years. I was given a redundancy package.

My job had not been abolished, but a clause in the ATO enterprise agreement says: “An employee whose services can no longer be effectively used in their current job because of changes in technology or work methods or changes in the nature, extent of organisation of the ATO [can be given a package].” This is popularly called the “not coping with change” clause.

The Only Democracy In the Middle East (TM) held elections on January 22, which is what all good democracies do — even if not all those actually governed by the Israeli Knesset got to vote.

Those in Gaza, which depends on the Israeli government elected in the poll to decide such things as which basic goods are let in to the besieged territory and whether or not they will be bombed on any given day, didn't get to cast a ballot. But in the West Bank, you'll be pleased to hear it is more mixed.

The NSW Barry O’Farrell government has been criticised for having close links to mining companies after it made two controversial decisions in December last year.

The Coalition government announced it would appoint a former mining company executive to the board of the Sydney Catchment Authority (SCA) and confirmed it would axe funding to the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO).

Anti-coal activist Jonathan Moylan hit the headlines after he distributed a fake media release in the name of ANZ bank on January 7. It claimed that the bank was withdrawing a $1.2 billion loan that would finance the proposed Maules Creek coalmine owned by Whitehaven Coal, due to its corporate responsibility policy.

It read: “We want our customers to be assured that we will not be investing in coal projects that cause significant dislocation of farmers, unacceptable damage to the environment, or social conflict.”

Cuts to the Victorian health budget are having a significant impact on Victorian hospitals.

More than 300 beds have been closed, elective surgeries have been delayed, and jobs are being lost as hospitals attempt to implement a funding cut of $107 million by June this year.

Fifty years ago, on February 13, 1963, the publication of US writer and activist Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique sparked a new awakening in the thinking of women across North America.

Friedan denounced the repression women suffered in the aftermath of World War II, when they were forced out of wartime jobs and convinced to accept the role of keepers of the home.

Profiteers of the market launched an unrelenting but subtle propaganda campaign to venerate women as wife and mother. This role, Friedan said, was the “feminine mystique”.

Eureka: An Unfinished Revolution
Peter FitzSimons
William Heinsmann Press, 2012

“And so I call you, all my fellow diggers, irrespective of nationality, religion, and colour, to salute the ‘Southern Cross’ as the refuge of all the oppressed from all countries on Earth.” So said Raffaello Carboni at the Eureka Stockade, Bakery Hill, on November 29 in 1854.

With these words, Carboni and the diggers on the Victorian goldfields raised the Eureka flag and launched their rebellion against the unjust licence fees imposed on miners by the Victorian government.