Democracy

Stop the War Coalition Sydney, Sydney Solidarity for Bradley Manning and Peace Bus released the open letter below on November 17. * * * An open letter to the President of the United States Barack Obama & Prime Minister Julia Gillard on the occasion of Barack Obama’s address to the Australian Parliament on November 17, 2011. While you meet in Australia’s Parliament House, Australians concerned about human rights, peace, justice and equality protest against your policies.

Zurich’s Paradeplatz is home to Swiss banks such as Credit Suisse and UBS and the main slogan of the Occupy Paradeplatz protest is "Save human beings, not banks". On November 7, 50 people were living at the Occupy Paradeplatz camp at Lindenhof, a nearby park. Occupy Paradeplatz holds daily assemblies and weekly rallies.

On November 16, police attacked and dismantled the Occupy Melbourne site in Treasury Gardens. Three activists were arrested. At a general assembly in City Square this evening, activists will plan their response. “Any major decisions will be made in a democratic process tonight. Anyone is welcome, including the police commissioner [Ken Lay] and Robert Doyle,” Occupy Melbourne activist Carl Scrase told the Age.

Nurses in Victoria are being threatened with an Alan Joyce-style lockout because they have campaigned for a modest 3.5% pay rise (just to keep up with the rising cost of living), superannuation and overtime improvements, and keeping patient-to-nurse ratios. Australia’s four big banks, meanwhile, have announced a combined annual profit of $24.4 billion, up 12% from $21.7 billion a year ago. This speaks volumes about the grossly distorted priorities in our society.

The role of notorious Malaysian-owned logging company Rimbunan Hijau (RH) is in the spotlight after Greenpeace activists blockaded one of its ships in Papua New Guinea on October 24. Greenpeace was supporting about 200 local landowners from West Pomio, in New Britain, who were protesting against what they say was illegal logging by RH, AAP said on October 24. Forty-thousand hectares of land was leased to RH — operating under a front company called Gilford — for 99 years for a palm oil plantation, without the consent of all landowners.

WikiLeaks has awakened many people to the cynical and violent workings of the political, military and corporate entities that run the world. For Christine Assange this awakening has been heightened because her son is WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange — now the target of the powerful 1% who have not appreciated his contribution to transparency. “I started off on this journey saying WikiLeaks is great in theory but … I’m not going to support it publicly before I’ve read everything I can on it,” she told Green Left Weekly. “It was quite a journey for me.”

Not many things would get the Returned and Services League and died-in-the-wool greenies climbing into bed together; have a mother-and-daughter being frisked by police on the same day, nor cause the arrest of an 83-year-old retired high school English teacher. But the 14 Ficusmicrocarpa var. Hillii, commonly known as Hill Figs, planted in memory of World War I soldiers in Newcastle have.

Socialist Alliance (SA) stallholders at today’s Newtown Festival were told today by a festival organiser that NSW Police had urged them to ban SA and Occupy Sydney from the festival. The SA has paid for and run a stall every year at the festival. But this year police threatened organisers — the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre — with a $16,000 bill if they did not carry out the ban, saying that the presence of SA and/or Occupy Sydney might incite trouble.

On the eve of US President Barack Obama’s visit to mark 60 years of the ANZUS military alliance, PM Julia Gillard is not convincing people that Australia must “stay the course” in Afghanistan. A November 4 Roy Morgan poll, taken six days after an Afghan army trainee killed three Australian soldiers and wounded seven, said 72% of people want troops out, the biggest opposition since the war began 10 years ago. Supporters of the pro-war parties polled closely: 69% of ALP voters and 67% of Liberal-National Party voters want troops out. Among Greens supporters, the figure is 80%.

After two weeks of hard work to obtain signatures and the constitutive documents, on October 27 the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP) presented before the Supreme Electoral Tribunal more than 81,000 signatures and other documents supporting the request for the inscription of the political instrument, the Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE).

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at”, wrote Oscar Wilde, “for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”

On November 4, Israeli warships in international waters attacked and boarded the two vessels Tahrir and Saoirse that were trying to deliver medical aid the besieged territory of Gaza.