On March 29, pro-choice protestors gave Melbourne City Council (MCC) a clear message: don鈥檛 mess with our free speech rights!
Councillor Cathy Oke tabled a bulky tome 鈥 nearly 600 statements signed by individuals and organisations, telling the council to uphold the right to protest and stop using local laws against pro-choicers defending the Fertility Control Clinic in East Melbourne against anti-abortion harassment.
From the public gallery, placards demanding 鈥淢ake Melbourne a free speech city!鈥 underscored the message.
875
The pro-democracy movement in Bahrain has been severely weakened by the brutal wave of repression that began on March 15.
Attempts to reignite pro-democracy protests have been broken up by government security forces and strikes have been called off.
Troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates entered Bahrain on March 14 to help the Bahraini government 鈥渞estore order鈥 by attacking thousands of pro-democracy protesters.
Writing in the aftermath of the several high profile WikiLeaks publications including the and the Afghanistan and Iraq , News Corporation journalist Brad Norington set out on a crusade against online media, and more specifically, against WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.
Every election time, a fraction of the population turn up to a polling place, muttering under their breath, and give withering looks to the volunteers offering them 鈥淗ow to Vote鈥 cards.
They wait in line to get their name marked off. With their obligations completed for another few years, they hastily scribble a 鈥1鈥 next to the name of whichever candidate happens to come first on the page, and, still muttering, march off home.
I was having a conversation about the likely outcome of the NSW elections on Radio SkidRow, a Sydney community radio station, just days before the March 26 election.
鈥淲e know what is going to happen after [the Liberals'] Barry O鈥橣arrell wins the election, don鈥檛 we?鈥 I said. 鈥淗e鈥檒l wait a couple of weeks then he will announce that Labor has left the cupboard bare so they鈥檒l have to bring in an emergency budget.
If the last federal election promised the beginnings of a break from the two-parties-for-capitalism electoral system that has plagued Australian politics for the last century, the March 26 NSW election seems to be a lurch in the other direction.
The Liberal-National Coalition won dominance of the Legislative Assembly and (with small right-wing parties) control of the Legislative Council because a large number of working-class voters punished the Labor party with a 13.5% swing in primary votes.
About 8000 people demonstrated for urgent action on climate change in Sydney's Belmore Park on April 2 in a powerful counter-mobilisation to a 2000-strong climate deniers rally led by right-wing radio shock jocks Alan Jones and Chris Smith from Radio 2GB held in Hyde Park.
The climate deniers rally was a repeat of a similar-sized rally held in Canberra a week earlier and is part of an attempt to build a right-wing populist Tea Party-style movement as exists in the US.
The climate change activists rally was organised by the internet-based group GetUp!
Climate change is often called the greatest environment threat facing humanity.
The threat is very real. Unless we cut carbon pollution fast, runaway climate change will worsen existing environmental and social problems, and create new ones of its own.
But it鈥檚 no longer enough to simply refer to the climate crisis. Climate change is one part of a broader ecological disaster, brought about by an economic system that relies on constant growth, endless accumulation and ever-deepening human alienation.
鈥淧eace is not just the absence of violence; but the presence of justice,鈥 Samah Sabawi, Palestinian-Australian writer, and co-author of Journey to Peace In Palestine, told an audience of about 80 people at the University of Queensland on March 31.
She was commenting after a showing of Michael Weatherhead鈥檚 excellent documentary Return to Gaza. The documentary is based on the journey of her brother, Fetah Sabawi, who returned to Gaza with his wife and child in 2006 to visit family members and set up a music school for young Palestinian refugees.
Residents of Queensland鈥檚 Western Downs and their supporters have witnessed arrests, police harassment and some exciting victories over the past week in their fight to prevent coal seam gas expansion on the Tara estate, near Chinchilla. During a protest organised by Lock the Gate Alliance on March 29 Friends of the Earth campaigner and Queensland Greens co-founder Drew Hutton was arrested and charged with impeding the construction of a coal seam gas pipeline. Mr Hutton refused bail conditions and faced 30 days prison, but was soon released on unconditional bail.
Five revolutions in postwar Latin America have seen illiteracy as a neocolonial battleground.
Salvador Allende鈥檚 Chile 鈥 birthplace of How to Read Donald Duck, an iconic attack on cultural imperialism 鈥 reduced illiteracy from 15.2% to 6.3% in under two years (1971-73), triple the rate of any regime before or since.
In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas slashed the Somoza dictatorship legacy of 50% illiteracy to just 13% before the end of its first full year in power (1980), catapulting women to cultural and political prominence in the process.
Environment Tasmania (ET), the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and The Wilderness Society (TWS) launched television and radio advertisements on March 30 that call for an end to logging in native forests.
The ads feature University of Tasmania biologist Peter McQuillan, who says: 鈥淲e need government to implement the agreed forest solution鈥.
- Previous page
- Page 3
- Next page