The protests and arrests in Lhasa and the demonstrations and counter-demonstrations around the Olympic torch relay has re-focused the world on the plight of Tibetans. This has, in turn, sparked a debate on the left about whether the Tibetan struggle is a just one, or not what it seems.
Analysis
The recent decision by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Climate Institute to support carbon sequestration and storage (CCS) will set back Australia’s efforts to confront climate change, as well as increasing the costs of doing so.
The following is an abridged version of a talk given by Terry Townsend at the recent Climate Change Social Change Conference in Sydney. Townsend is a long-term member of the Democratic Socialist Perspective and the managing editor of Links online journal (<http://links.org.au>).
The 2020 summit was two days of political theatre for the new Rudd government. For 48 hours over April 19-20, film stars brushed white-board markers with Australias richest, and politicians mixed with Indigenous people, unionists and youth delegates.
The following statement was initiated by the participants in the Climate Change|Social Change conference, held in Sydney, Australia on April 11-13, 2008. Anyone who agrees with it is welcome to add their signature, and an updated list of signatories will be issued on a regular basis. The statement is being distributed to environmental, trade union, Indigenous, migrant, religious and community
organisations to help build the movement against global
warming
Links to all audio and video recordings from the conference can be found at http://socialisteducation.blogspot.com/2008/04/audio-and-video-guide-to-cliamte-change.html
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian al Nakba (the Catastrophe) — the razing of up to 418 Palestinian villages and the driving of 700,000 Palestinians from their homes by Zionist forces to create the State of Israel.
The union movement can fight back and grow overall in the next period, Tim Gooden, secretary of the Geelong Trades Hall Council, told Green Left Weekly on April 18. He was responding to reports in the mainstream press highlighting figures indicating a further fall in national union membership last year.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a technique to remove carbon dioxide from industrial pollution — and especially from power stations — and compress, transport and store it perpetually in secure underground structures such as expired gas and oil fields and other geological formations.
This April is the 10th anniversary of the mass sacking of hundreds of waterside workers around Australia by the giant Patrick Stevedores. The drama surrounding this event stirred fierce passions, generated mass protests and polarised society on a scale seldom witnessed.
Glenn Stevens, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, has argued that working people should be forced to absorb the cost of higher power bills when a carbon emissions trading scheme is introduced in 2010. Speaking to the April 5 Sydney Morning Herald, Stevens argued that “the policy would need to be well explained to consumers to head off calls for higher wages”.
Ruth Coleman, veteran ALP senator and feisty leftist died peacefully of cancer in her home in Bassendean, Perth, on March 27. She was the last of a generation of left-wing ALP members whose example shames the current neoliberal crop of Laborites.
In an obvious attempt to silence political dissent, on April 14, 10 G20 protesters who had pleaded guilty to charges of common law riot, criminal damage and recklessly causing injury received severe sentences in Melbourne’s Magistrates court.
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