Year in the Rear: 2011 Wednesday, November 30, 8pm York Theatre, Seymour Centre $48.60. Funds go to Asylum Seekers Centre of NSW Bookings: (02) 9351 7940 www.seymourcentre.com This has been an extraordinary year. Our best ever bowler, Warnie, morphed into an Austin Powers leading lady, the British royal family dominated the media in a non-scandalous event, the Aussie dollar wowed Wall Street and our prime minster received a poodle for her 50th birthday.

2nd "Democracy is Dead" Flash Mob - Occupy Sydney.

Supporters of Palestinian human rights gathered in Sydney on November 10 to protest the Australian government's silence on the arrest by Israeli authorities of Australian Michael Coleman, who took part in the recent Freedom Waves to Gaza attempt to sail humanitarian aid to Gaza.

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”.

Sydney Peace Blog — The 2011 City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture was delivered to a sold-out crowd at Sydney Town Hall on Wednesday November 2 by the 2011 Sydney Peace Prize Recipient Professor Noam Chomsky. The full text of Chomsky’s lecture, titled Revolutionary Pacifism: Choices and Prospects, is below. * * *

Nikita gives a report on a day filled with peace, love and a little police aggression.

Thousands of New South Wales high school and primary school teachers stopped work for two hours on November 2. They voted overwhelmingly to reject the Coalition O’Farrell state government’s salary offer. Ninety-nine percent of teachers at the stopwork meetings also voted to hold a 24-hour stopwork action on November 29 if the government refused to make a reasonable salary offer. Teachers will consider further industrial action at the start of 2012 if a reasonable offer is not made by then.

About 1500 people joined an Occupy Sydney rally at Town Hall on November 5, making it the largest of the three Occupy Sydney marches so far. Members of the Maritime Union of Australia and other unions filled out the crowd.

Two grassroots lesbian, gay, bisexual, sex and/or gender diverse (LGBSGD) rights conferences will take place in Sydney in early December. The conferences will coincide with a national marriage rights rally on December 3, outside the ALP National Conference. Australia's first Sex and Gender Diversity (SGD) Human Rights and Dignity Conference, is planned for December 2 at the Redfern Community Centre.

Noam Chomsky, in Sydney winning the 2011 Sydney Peace Prize, spoke at the #OccupySydney meeting to inspire and continue the campaign against neo-liberalism.