Democracy

The struggles of Kurdish women in Rojava Kurdistan (Northern Syria) became known to many people in the world during the brutal attacks of ISIS against the city of Kobanê in September 2014.

Save Safe Schools WA organised a protest in Perth on April 23. The Safe Schools program is an important anti-bullying program that began in 2010 in Victoria and has since been extended throughout the country.

The electioneering has begun. In a campaign set to be dominated by economic issues, the Coalition and Labor are locking horns over who can best manage our finances, protect jobs and make housing more affordable. The Greens predictably decry the major parties, including their cavalier climate change policies.

In response to a recent vote in the lower house of Brazil’s parliament in favour of impeaching Workers’ Party (PT) President Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s two main coalitions of social movements issued the statement below on April 17. Rousseff is under attack over a series of corruption scandals, but the forces allied against her — the political, media and corporate elite — have themselves been implicated in corruption. Many in Brazil, including left opponents of Rousseff’s government, see the impeachment as an institutional coup by the right wing.

Palestine has sent 19 rescuers to Ecuador in the aftermath of the South American country's devastating earthquake — which is 19 more than the US, who have sent none at all, TeleSUR English said on April 21.

Four lawmakers from Spain's far-left Podemos party and its allies are participating in a week-long hunger strike to try to rally public support for refugees. The lawmakers began their hunger strike on April 16 and called on people to occupy public squares for 24 hours on April 22, the day their actions end. The hunger strike is a gesture of support for those people at the center of Europe's biggest migrant crisis since World War II. Twenty-four hour assemblies were planned for a dozens cities on April 22.

Despite a decisive victory on April 19, providing further confirmation of her likely nomination, in many respects Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton emerged from the New York primary more damaged and her party more divided.

The biggest barrier to the rational economic policies of Jeremy Corbyn, the socialist leader of the British labour Party, is the huge profits the super-rich are making from irrational ones. The Bank of England has shelled out £375 billion in “quantitative easing” since the 2008 crash. It has, quite literally, created electronic money out of nowhere and used it to buy up financial assets held by the banks. The idea has been to pump “liquidity” — lendable money — into the economy.

Palestine has sent 19 rescuers to Ecuador in the aftermath of the South American country's devastating earthquake — which is 19 more than the US, who have sent none at all, TeleSUR English said on April 21.

In a stunning rebuff to the party establishment, delegates to the federal convention of the Canada’s social democratic New Democratic Party, meeting in Edmonton, Alberta April 8-10, voted to reject Thomas Mulcair as their leader. They voted to begin reorienting the party to become a leader in Canada’s climate justice movement.

Activists from Stop CSG Sydney and the Australian Student Environment Network toured the AGL Camden CSG gasfields on April 17 to see for themselves how close gas wells are to homes. AGL has promised to end gas mining in Camden by 2023. Residents want them shut down now. The NSW government has said that gas wells cannot be drilled within two kilometres of homes, but it is happy for Landcom, the government's own developer, to sell house and land packages within a few hundred metres of major gasfields.