And the winner is: solar power. Residents in the South Australian town of Port Augusta have voted overwhelmingly for solar over gas to replace the town鈥檚 coal-fired power stations.
The result, announced on July 22, was 4053 votes for a concentrating solar-thermal power plant, 43 for gas. In the end, 98% of voters favoured solar.
The result is testament to newly-formed local group, Repower Port Augusta, whose dedication ensured that almost one-third of residents voted, an impressive outcome for the voluntary exercise.
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Adopting a centre-left reforming image, Peruvian President Ollanta Humala was narrowly elected last year on the back of widespread discontent with destructive neoliberal development policies and a widening wealth gap.
His supporters were filled with the hope that real and substantive change was imminent. Other progressives welcomed the Humala victory more cautiously, arguing that it was at least the lesser of two evils. The alternative was ultra right-winger Keiko Fujimori.
Snow White & the Huntsman
Directed by Rupert Sanders
Staring Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth
In cinemas now
Mirror, mirror on the wall, which is the most derivative of them all? I suppose to even ask that of a Hollywood movie is foolish.
Hollywood thrives on figuring what has previously interested the audience and recycling it through its cultural mashing machine to produce what it knows best: schlock.
It rarely takes very long into an Olympics for the myth that the games are above politics to be shattered. For the London 2012 games, the myth was smashed well before the games begun.
A series of incidents involving Australian athletes have shown that politics are at the heart of the games.
Despite winning the Olympic trial earlier this year, athlete John Steffensen was not selected to represent Australia in the individual 400 metres sprint, replaced by 19 year old Steve Solomon.
For two weeks 鈥淣othing in, Nothing out鈥 was the mantra on the picket as the trucks were turned away at the Coles warehouse in Somerton, Melbourne.
Angered by the fact that workers for Coles warehouses in other states were receiving better working conditions, even though they were doing the same job, the National Union of Workers (NUW) members at the Coles Somerton warehouse took action.
Coles owns the warehouse, but management is outsourced to Toll Logistics. Workers are paid below industry standards despite both companies making obscene profits.
Nuclear fission is an innately dangerous process 鈥 and the nuclear industry鈥檚 record of handling the dangers has been well short of perfect. Traditionally, that鈥檚 been enough for the environment movement to reject nuclear energy.
Climate change, though, subjects this established position to an important challenge. The final death toll from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, by some estimates, could reach hundreds of thousands. But a full-scale climate disaster could kill most of humanity 鈭 thousands of millions of people.
Australia鈥檚 spy agencies are seeking to drastically expand their powers to spy on Australian citizens online and through social media. They are also hoping to collect and keep the phone and internet data of all individuals for two years.
Some of the proposals appear to be broad enough to allow whistleblowing groups like WikiLeaks to be directly targeted.
Activists in Melbourne have won a big victory for the right to political protest after the charges against the Max Brenner 16 were dismissed on July 23. The court trial lasted for 17 days in May.
The 16 Palestine solidarity activists had been arrested and charged over a protest outside the Max Brenner chocolate shop in QV Square, Melbourne in July last year. The protest was part of the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel and the occupation of Palestine.
About 200 people packed Petersham Town Hall in Sydney's inner west on July 25 for a night of trivia and fundraising organised by Stop Coal Seam Gas Sydney.
The group, which has campaigned for 20 months against exploratory CSG drilling planned for St Peters, had a recent victory when Dart Energy said it would not go ahead with drilling in the suburb.
A 100 second compilation on the question 'what does socialism mean to you?' from participants at the Resistance national conference in Adelaide, held from July 20 until July 22.
The antics of Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer have served as a useful foil for Labor. They're like caricature capitalists lifted from a comic book.
Attacking them has given Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Treasurer Wayne Swan the opportunity to make up for their earlier capitulation on the Rudd mining tax with a bit of populist rhetoric, while letting BHP and Rio Tinto just get on with it.
The obvious question posed by Labor's recent attacks on the Greens for being dangerous extremists is: who the hell keeps asking Paul Howes for his opinion?
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