General

Every time capitalist politicians play with racist prejudice against asylum seekers, there are violent consequences. I'm not just referring to the threatened forceful disembarkation of the Tamil refugees from the Oceanic Viking, which is outrageous. The bipartisan anti-asylum seeker rhetoric in Canberra is also very likely provoking more racist violence across Australia.
A wave of deep moral revulsion swept through everyone in this country with a social conscience after Labor PM Kevin Rudd uttered that ugly sentence: “This government makes no apology for a hard-line approach to people smuggling and border security.”
With the help of Socialist Alliance members in the growing Sudanese community in Australia, Green Left Weekly is proud to publish a regular Arabic language supplement. The Flame covers news from the Arabic-speaking world as well as news and issues from within Australia. The October edition can be read at Links, international journal of socialist renewal.
Green Left Weekly is highly valued by its many international readers. Every week, Farooq Tariq and his comrades in the Labour Party Pakistan “eagerly await” the arrival of this particular newspaper from far-off Australia. Pakistan is now a “hot-spot” in the US-led war against Afghanistan.
A fearsome maelstrom of tsunamis, earthquakes and huge floods have suddenly ended or shattered the lives of many people in the Asia-Pacific region over the past two weeks.
Below is an open letter initiated by the Socialist Alliance to Australia's foreign affairs minister, Stephen Smith, calling on the Australian government to act for the immediate and unconditional reinstatement of President Manuel Zelaya — and to pressure the US government to finally cut all aid and ties with the dictatorship. Please add your name, and organisation if relevant, to this statement by emailing weekly.greenleft@gmail.com. Please send this letter, a version of it or your own to Stephen.Smith.MP@aph.gov.au (fax, phone number and address below).
Reading through the messages of support coming in for Green Left Weekly’s “Spring Offensive” fundraising appeal, I was reminded of the old saying: “You don't know what you have until you lose it.”
Our next issue will be dated October 14.
We are letting the readers and supporters of Green Left Weekly explain why you should make a special donation for the Spring Offensive to help make our $250,000 fighting fund target.
“We are lucky in Australia to have a national newspaper, Green Left Weekly, not beholden or shackled to big business or multinational corporations, whether they be church or state. Over many years it has remained a newspaper free to critique the capitalist system, which continues to reward those with capital and exploit those without.
Green Left Weekly is launching a “spring offensive” to help us reach our 2009 fighting fund target of $250,000. By the end of August, we had raised $147,550 — about 60%. We need a push to get to 100% or more.
The current issue of Green Left Weekly, #808, is a two-week issue. The next edition will be dated September 9.