“Mum’s dead”. The gloomy faced Sujendran Gunesekaram greeted me, as we met in person for the first time. His mother died of a heart attack on September 5, after suffering for three years.
Sujendran is a 27-year-old Sri Lankan Tamil originally from Muttur in Trincomalee, the war-hit town in the east. He was one of 254 asylum seekers on the Australia-bound boat Jeya Lestari that moored off at the port in Merak, Indonesia in October 2009.
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One of the most vital features of the Bolivarian revolution underway in Venezuela is the development by workers and their organisations of different forms of workers’ control in their workplaces and communities.
The increasing participation and control by workers is taking place at the same time as hundreds of companies have been nationalised.
The launch of the community guide to the draft Murray Darling Basin Plan marks the latest step in the largely bipartisan process of water reform that started with the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) reforms of 1994.
It also graphically displays the risks inherent in the increasingly centralised, Commonwealth-driven approach to water planning that developed under the Howard government and has intensified since.
It’s that time of the year again. It’s the festival of festivals to boost the profits of giant retail stores. The “Spirit of Christmas” demands to be fed with your maxed out credit card.
There’s a new desperation to this seasonal message this year. The shoppers are not splurging like they should.
A recent Westpac survey found that consumers would spend 34% less in 2010 than in 2009.
“Nature is our home and is the system of which we form a part, and therefore it has infinite value, but it does not have a price and is not for sale” said a November 3-5 meeting of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) nations of Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua.
The meeting rejected the privatisation of nature, in which “nature is seen as ‘capital’ for producing tradable environmental goods and services … and assigned a price so that they can be commercialised with the purpose of obtaining profits”.
The Republic of Ireland’s financial crisis, which has caused unemployment to rise from 4.3% in 2006 to 14.1% in October, has deep roots.
The conditions of the European Central Bank (ECB)/International Monetary Fund (IMF) “bailout” package for the Irish government will total €85 billion — at a higher interest rate than that tied to the Greek bailout in May. It is tied to the Irish government carrying out huge government spending cuts, tax rises for workers and wage cuts for public sector employees.
Irish workers are being told to pay for a crisis they did not cause.
The first Union and Community Summer School (UCSS) will take place at Melbourne Trades Hall over December 10-11.
The UCSS will bring together a wide range of left, progressive and socialist organisations and unionists. It is an experiment in finding practical unity.
Those who counselled against holding a national election in Haiti in the midst of a catastrophic humanitarian crisis will take no comfort in the debacle it became.
Our thoughts rest squarely with the tens of thousands of people afflicted with cholera, or the hundreds of thousands of earthquake victims still without shelter, clean water and hope. How much suffering could have been alleviated with the tens of million of dollars spent on a wasted electoral exercise?
NOTE:: The previous ad on this page had incorrect details for Lowkey’s Australian tour. The new ad has the right details.
London-based rapper Lowkey has worked with hip-hop acts Immortal Technique, Dead Prez and Canibus, and is touring Australia as part of his “Soundtrack to the Struggle” world tour.
Lowkey is renowned for his overtly political songs, denouncing imperialism and corporate domination.
About 100,000 people took over the streets of Dublin on November 27 to protest the Irish government’s “bailout package” from the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank, and the savage austerity accompanying the loans, the Morning Star said on November 28.
The government formalised the loans, worth €85 billion, on November 29. Loan conditions include the government spending cuts over four years to reduce its deficit. The 2011 budget will contain €4.7 billion in cuts and €1.5 billion in new taxes, the Morning Star said.
The streets of Ayala, Manila, were taken over by about 5000 people on November 25 in a protest against the growing use of contract labour.
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