Analysis

On October 15, almost 260 Tamil refugees were stranded at an Indonesian port in west Java. They were refusing to disembark from the boat that had carried them from Malaysia and pleaded for the Australian government to hear their case. That evening they declared a hunger strike.

In May last year, federal Treasurer Wayne Swan announced the formation of the Australia’s Future Tax System Review, to be run by Treasury secretary Ken Henry. When the Henry review reports to government in December, its recommendations are likely to leave the wealthy smiling and the rest of us grinding our teeth.

The 350.org campaign has already made an important impact worldwide. The recent spike in official 350.org actions — now well above 2000 — suggests the number of people who support stabilising atmospheric CO₂ at under 350 parts per million (ppm) has grown phenomenally in the past few months.

The Greens released a set of 22 amendments to the Rudd Labor government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) on October 12.

I am part of Critical Climate, an Adelaide activist group advocating a “sustained mass civil disobedience” response to the climate emergency.

In early September, most abortions performed in Queensland health facilities came to a halt. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists had passed on a legal opinion to their members that said doctors were still at risk of prosecution while abortion remained in the criminal code.

What do a Jewish congregation in the Alaskan town of Fairbanks, the Browniz coffee shop in the port city of Salalah, Oman and a Shanghai primary school have in common?

Lewis Carroll once wrote about a fictitious map that was so topographically accurate, it was as large as the country it was mapping.

The eighth anniversary of the war in Afghanistan has come and gone. As Prime Minister Kevin Rudd considers yet another troop surge, for most Australians this milestone represents just another statistic, another number to skip over in the morning papers.

On October 6, the Reserve Bank of Australia lifted the official interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 3.25%. Explaining the bank’s decision, RBA governor Glenn Stevens said “the risk of serious economic contraction in Australia” had now “passed”.

One of the infamous “double-speak” slogans of the nightmare totalitarian regime in George Orwell’s 1984 was “war is peace”. The Nobel jury appears to have based itself on this principle of inverting reality with its decision to grant this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama.

In a sick mockery of the rising boatloads of refugees coming to Australia, the federal government will pay one of the world's biggest advertising agencies to spread fear and propaganda among Tamils escaping genocide in Sri Lanka.