鈥淲e Tamils, inside and outside the island of Sri Lanka, still want an independent state,鈥 Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran, prime minister of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE), told me recently in New York.
鈥淎nd because the war crimes and severe brutality of the Mahinda Rajapaksa government against our people have become well known, our cause is being spoken about all over the world.鈥
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Crowds burned a US flag in Kabul on October 6 at a rally to mark the 10th anniversary the next day of the US-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
There is a sharp reality disconnect in the Black community.
On the one hand, the Black population continues to support the first African American president, Barack Obama, by more than 90%.
Yet the plight of the Black communities is at its worst condition in three decades. Official unemployment is over 16% 鈥 twice that of whites and iabout 30% for young African Americans.
Black household income is in decline and the lowest of the five major ethnic groups. Poverty is at the highest levels in 30 years.
There鈥檚 no doubt that the explosion of social media, mobile technology and online-organising capabilities have dramatically altered the battle terrain of class struggles today in ways good, bad and ugly.
From the Arab Spring to New York鈥檚 ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests, social media and online organising are clearly transforming the way that small, isolated campaigns develop into mass movements in the streets. But how do we separate the genuinely useful aspects of social media from the 鈥渄ata smog鈥 of media hype?
The Woman Who Shot Mussolini
By Frances Stonor Saunders
Faber and Faber, 2010
375 pages, $32.99 (pb)
The Honourable Violet Gibson was not like the other women of the Anglo-Irish elite when it came to Benito Mussolini, the leader of Italy's fascists.
While Lady Asquith (wife of the former prime minister) was delighted by Mussolini, and Clementine Churchill (wife of the future prime minister) was awestruck by 鈥渙ne of the most wonderful men of our times鈥, Violet Gibson aimed a revolver at the fascist dictator in Italy in April 1926 and shot him in the nose.
Entering the darkened space of the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation that held Vietnamese artist Dinh Q Le鈥檚 latest installation, Erasure, which finished on September 10, I imagined myself to be stepping into the psychological space of a disturbed memory.
The brooding political and cultural climate surrounding the issue of refugees in Australia has involved politicians exploiting the sensitive subject in a game of political football.
Natacha Atlas, the award-winning electronic-worldbeat artist, has her upcoming show in Israel and will be boycotting the state until the apartheid regime is dismantled.
September 25 will go down as one of the darkest days in Bolivia since Evo Morales was elected as the country鈥檚 first indigenous president almost six years ago.
After more than 40 days of indigenous protesters marching, police officers moved in to repress those opposed to the government鈥檚 proposed highway that would run through the Isiboro-Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS).
The controversial highway has met with both opposition and support from the many indigenous and social organisations that form the Morales government鈥檚 support base.
Dr Aunty Ruby Langford Ginibi, one of Australia鈥檚 foremost Aboriginal authors, passed away on October 2 in a Sydney nursing home. Through her numerous books, short stories, poetry, interviews and public appearances and her commitment to 鈥渆du-ma-cating鈥 non-Aboriginal people about Indigenous peoples鈥 circumstances and struggle, she made a distinctive and substantial contribution to Australian history and literature. Her books were studied in high schools and universities in Australia and internationally.
More than 500 people gathered in Melbourne over September 30 to October 3 to take part in four days of stimulating talks and discussion at the second Climate Change Social Change conference. The conference, which featured five plenary sessions, 39 workshops and more than 90 speakers, was organised by 麻豆传媒 Weekly, Socialist Alliance and Resistance.
Australia, at least for me, is a paradox. As Dorothy McKellar famously wrote, 鈥淚 love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of rugged mountain ranges and droughts and flooding rains鈥.
The extremes in our landscape and our weather seem to have been etched into our national psyche as well, which is something I鈥檝e never quite understood.
Ian Angus is editor of climateandcapitalism.com and co-author, with Simon Butler, of the new book Too Many People?. This is his keynote presentation to the recent Climate Change Social Change conference in Melbourne.
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