The latest crackdown on journalists, authors and publishers in Malaysia, which is aimed at protecting former government figures facing trial for corruption and money laundering, is being fuelled by a nauseating campaign of racism and xenophobia, writes Peter Boyle.
Corruption
For those with economic or political power, the coronavirus pandemic is nothing more than a carnival of crisis and possibilities, writes Tamara Pearson.
“The problem is mismanagement of the Barwon-Darling rivers” activist Fleur Thompson told the Yaama Ngunna Baaka Corroboree Festival bus tour, as it passed through the western New South Wales town of Bourke on September 30.
“The federal and state governments could step in anytime and fix it, but they don’t and won’t. To do that the governments would have to admit fault.”
The most farcical side of the parliamentary banter between the Coalition and Labor regarding politicians’ ties to Chinese billionaires and government “agents of foreign influence” is not the pot-calling-the-kettle-black nature of their posture. It is that both studiously avoid mentioning the elephant in the room — the deeply entrenched corporate corruption of parliament and the state apparatus, writes Peter Boyle.
A key federal election issue, which the carefully stage-managed leaders’ debates are ignoring, is one on which all our lives depend: access to clean drinking water.
On March 14, 2018 in the centre of Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro, two gunmen in a car murdered Municipal Chamber Councilor Marielle Franco and her driver, Anderson Pedro Gomes. Unlike most of the city’s political leaders, Marielle came from Rio’s favelas. And many of the favelas’ millions of marginalised and mostly black residents saw her as their champion.
Ecuador’s president Lenin Moreno has been implicated in an offshore tax haven corruption scandal, casting his future into doubt.
Not long after the FBI raid on Trump Organization attorney Michael Cohen’s office and home, journalist Adam Davidson made a bold prediction in the New Yorker: “We are now in the end stages of the Trump Presidency.”
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) raids on the Melbourne and Sydney offices of the Australian Workers Union (AWU) on October 24 show the state is becoming more authoritarian at a time when more people are disengaging from politics as usual.
Since the start of the year, 76 women have died while giving birth in Lara state — the highest rate of any state in Venezuela and three times the rate for the rest of the country.
Speaking about the situation to Green Left Weekly, Katrina Kozarek from the Women’s Movement for Life in Barquisimeto, the capital of Lara, explained: “Both the doctors and nurses treat poor, black women really badly. They slap their bottoms, call them filthy names and say ‘stop screaming because you didn’t scream like that when you were having sex’.”
The Resources Regulator Lee Shearer revealed in a Budget Estimates hearing on September 1 that it is investigating whether Korean mining company KEPCO is fit and proper to hold a mining licence in New South Wales, after serious international fraud and corruption allegations against the company were made.
KEPCO is proposing to develop two open-cut coalmines in the beautiful Bylong Valley, about 55 km north-east of Mudgee in north-western NSW. The mine is expected to produce up to 6.5 million tonnes of coal a year for 25 years, commencing early next year.
Sentient lobsters boil at 200°C, screaming in pain, just so billionaires can slurp them up. Consider this the lobsters’ revenge on the Victorian Opposition Leader. Matthew "tough on crime” Guy was boiled and cooked red after having a sit-down lobster and donations dinner with mobsters.
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