General

Green Left Weekly's $250,000 Fighting Fund: Help bury Howard's agenda

Dear Green Left Weekly reader,
What a relief to finally see the back of John Howard and his despised Coalition government!

Green Left Weekly's $250,000 Fighting Fund: Grandparents ponder serious change

I became a grandfather last week. The much-anticipated first grandchild arrived at 11.42pm. That’s worse than it sounds because she was born in Perth and I live in Sydney — two hours ahead. I groggily answered the phone but my eldest daughter’s excited voice woke me up quickly and the memory of the birth of my younger daughter just 11 years ago came rushing back.

Green Left Weekly's $250,000 Fighting Fund: Why Green Left Weekly supports the Socialist Alliance

Come Saturday night, most political parties in Australia will be winding up their public campaigning until the next elections. The rank-and-file members who did their stint of letterboxing and polling booth duty will mostly retreat into inactivity, leaving “politics” once again to the professional politicians. No wonder so many people are cynical about politics — in their experience, it’s about politicians doing it by themselves and largely for themselves.

Green Left Weekly's $250,000 Fighting Fund: People's power revolution needs your solidarity

The idea that we build something much better than capitalism had been around for generations but, 90 years ago in Russia, for the first time an alliance of workers and peasants made a revolution that was to frame the course of history ever since.

Green Left Weekly's $250,000 Fighting Fund: A very special project

Thousands of people will read Green Left Weekly for the first time this week. You may be one of these first-time readers. If so, chances are you will have picked up a copy at one of the large Walk Against Warming marches being held all around Australia on the weekend of November 10-11.

Green Left Weekly's $250,000 Fighting Fund: The Rainbow Connection

It was when they played Kermit the Frog singing The Rainbow Connection at Gail Lord’s funeral that I started crying.

Green Left Weekly's $250,000 Fighting Fund: We need more than the worm

When PM John Howard tried, unsuccessfully, to ban the use of the “worm” — the audience’s reaction graph in the only debate Howard’s agreed to have with Labor leader Kevin Rudd in this election campaign — Rudd protested with a scripted joke.

Winners of the Venezuela Solidarity guessing competition

The guessing competition run by the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network this year was drawn on October 14 at the Latin America Asia Pacific International Solidarity Forum in Melbourne. The winners are: first prize, Barry Healy (Perth); second prize, Steven O’Brien (Newcastle); and third prize, Rowan Stewart (Geelong). The AVSN thanks all those who supported the competition, which raised $2500 for Venezuela solidarity activity in Australia.

Correction

GLW #727 reported that 120 people marched in Cairns in solidarity with Burma on October 3. The protest took place on October 4.

Publication schedule

Due to the Latin America and Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference (October 11-14 in Melbourne — visit for more information) there will be a one-week break in publication schedule. The next edition will be dated October 24 (uploaded October 21).

Green Left Weekly's $250,000 Fighting Fund: Corporate media profits from Howard's lies

If you were to believe those federal government advertisements now saturating television and radio, pigs do fly.

Green Left Weekly's $250,000 Fighting Fund: who does the corrupting?

Berlin-based Transparency International’s latest corruption perceptions report listed Burma and Somalia as the two most corrupt countries in the world. Then comes Iraq, Haiti, Tonga, Uzbekistan, Chad and Afghanistan. The three least corrupt countries were New Zealand, Denmark and Finland. Australia came in 11th, just after Canada but ahead of the US, which was 20th on the list.