Analysis

May 14 marked 63 years of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. The Palestinian Arabs know it as al Nakba, which translates as “day of the catastrophe”. In preparation for Israel’s independence from Britain, the Haganah — a Zionist paramilitary, or, as it would be described by the FBI today, terrorist organisation — set about its two objectives.

Newcastle climate, forest and anti-war activist Pete Gray passed away on April 30 after a battle with cancer that lasted more than two years. Pete was a week and a half short of his 31st birthday. Pete was a founding and active member of the nationally and internationally renowned activist group Rising Tide Newcastle, whose bold direct-action approach to climate activism has earned the acclaim of many supporters.

Her long red nails jabbed and waved in the air like a conductor dramatically tracing an absurdist symphony of propaganda, cajoling, and threats.

In a joint statement with Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak on May 7, the Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced an agreement had been reached to swap 800 future “irregular maritime arrivals” from Australia with 4000 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recognised refugees from Malaysia over the next four years.

Laura’s* mother was in Dara’a in southern Syria when the military attacked youths who had graffitied anti-government slogans in mid March.

The mining and banking companies creaming billions in super profits from the mining boom — the biggest mining boom in Australia’s history — have done very well from the federal budget that was delivered by the Gillard Labor government on May 10. The big mining companies will continue to pay the lowest ever share in tax and royalties while they make their biggest ever profits.

Coalition leader Tony Abbott wrote to PM Julia Gillard in March calling for a bipartisan approach to Aboriginal issues and a “second intervention” in the Northern Territory. He flew to Alice Springs in late April to further these calls. June will mark four years since former PM John Howard launched the Northern Territory Emergency Response — or NT intervention.

The refugee deal struck between the Australian and Malaysian governments will put vulnerable, desperate refugees in great danger. Under the agreement, the Gillard Labor government will deport to Malaysia 800 asylum seekers that arrive in Australia by boat.

In the past few decades, Christian and Muslim theologies have been misinterpreted and used tactically against Middle Eastern dictatorships with no success. For instance, former US president George W Bush justified the “war on terror” as a fight against an “axis of evil” and called for a new Crusade to liberate the people of the Middle East. This use of Christian theological concepts to justify the war in the Middle East requires a lot of spin.

One hundred activists of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) attended the Pushing the Boundaries climate change conference over April 28-29. The two days of talks, vibrant debate and action-based workshops set a progressive agenda for ongoing union environmental activism and marked the NTEU as the left pole of the global warming debate in the union movement. NTEU national president Jeannie Rea opened the conference by drawing attention to the special place of the NTEU in the debate about global warming.

After 12 hours on the road, travelling 800 kilometres from Newcastle through Gunnedah, Narrabri, Moree and Goondiwindi, just after sundown, our big blue bus pulled into Tara showground for four days of workshops and direct action as part of the Rock the Gate festival against coal seam gas mining.

To every complex problem there is a simplistic response, which is usually wrong. For instance, to the challenge of generating all of Australia’s electricity from renewable energy, the deniers repeatedly utter the simplistic myth that renewable energy is intermittent and therefore cannot generate base-load (that is, 24-hour) power.