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Protesters picketed a December 1 event in Red Hill addressed by Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Australia Thisara Samarasinghe. The protest was organised by the Refugee Action Collective to condemn Samarasinghe, a former navy admiral accused of war crimes against the Tamil people in northern Sri Lanka, and the appalling human rights record of the Sri Lankan government.

The Australian Forests and Climate Alliance released the statement below on December 2. * * * “During the Durban Climate Conference all countries, including Australia, must take real action to protect the world's forests and deliver real reductions in carbon pollution,” said Australian Forests and Climate Alliance (AFCA) spokesperson Peter Campbell.

Green Left Weekly's Peter Boyle spoke to Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon outside Lynas Corporation's annual general meeting on November 30 about Lynas's plan to build a rare earths refinery in Malaysia.

Protesters gathered outside the annual general meeting of Australian mining company Lynas Corporation in Sydney on November 30. Lynas is building a rare earths refinery in Kuantan, Malaysia, which will dump toxic and radioactive waste near a highly populated area. Local residents have been campaigning against the refinery. Greens senator Lee Rhiannon addressed the protest. Three activists attended the AGM and criticised Lynas's rare earths refinery before shareholders, CEO Nicholas Curtis and directors.

The letter below will be distributed at the upcoming ALP national conference, December 3-4, 2011. To add your name to the open letter please visit the Stop the War Coalition Sydney website. We, the undersigned, call on Prime Minister Julia Gillard to rethink the government’s support for the US-NATO war in Afghanistan. Specifically, we call on her to remove the Australian troops, and to send massive amounts of untied aid to the war-ravaged nation.

Lord Mayor Robert Doyle was subjected to a barrage of harmless ideas by Occupy Melbourne.

A rally to support the Egyptian revolution took place in Melbourne on November 27.

Paul Benedek of the Socialist Alliance (Australia) gives a message of solidarity to the Egyptian Revolution at a rally outside the Egyptian Consulate in Sydney on November 26, 2011.

On November 29, inner west peace advocates gathered to give away fair trade chocolate crackles and sing freedom carols outside the Max Brenner chocolate outlet in Broadway, which is owned by the Israeli multinational, Strauss Group.

In a week that saw a huge mass meeting and a rally of 12,000 people, Fair Work Australia (FWA) has ordered Victorian nurses— for the third time — by to lift their industrial action.

After 13 days of an around-the-clock picket line, the workers at poultry company Baiada in Laverton North have won a tremendous victory. Baiada was well known as having the worst pay and conditions of all poultry processing companies.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance ceremony, held annually on 20 November, was started in 1999 in response to the brutal murder of North American, Rita Hester. It is a day marked by solemn ceremonies in cities around the world that record the sex and gender diverse who have fallen, and the government inaction that foments such hate crimes.