News aggregator
Sri Lanka: Tamil group to contest council poll, despite controversy
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the main party representing Tamils in Sri Lanka’s parliament, has selected 36 candidates to contest the Northern Provincial Council elections, to be held on September 21.
Sri Lanka’s northern province, which is mainly inhabited by Tamils, has been under military rule since the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009. The LTTE fought for nearly three decades for an independent Tamil state in the north and east of the island.
Iran: Rouhani win brings hope for change
Hassan Rouhani was inaugurated as the president of Iran on August 4. He was elected in June, after mass mobilisations swept the country in support of his candidacy.
Those who supported him saw his election as the best way to open up space for reforms within the country. However, he is not an outsider to the system.
Rouhani was on Iran's nuclear negotiating team and was the country's top negotiator with the European Union on Iran's nuclear program from 2003 to 2009. He received official endorsement from Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, on August 3.
Public meeting: Democracy action convergence.
What can be done about the sorry state of democracy in Australia? What should a twenty-first century democracy look like and how can we get there? How can we harness the new technologies of participation to give ordinary Australians a fair say in our democracy? Real Democracy Australia is pleased to invite you to a day of workshops, discussion and stategising to change the way our democracy works. 10am-5pm. Melbourne Town Hall, cnr Collins & Swanston sts, City. $20 (or $25 on the door).
Event date: Sat, 17/08/2013 - 10:00am - 5:00pm Website: BookingsPublic meeting: Community gathering in Melbourne as the West Papua Flotilla embarks from Cairns.
Come along and enjoy West Papuan culture; Support West Papuan political prisoners. Speaker: Rev. Peter Woods (ex-missionary West Papua & longtime worker for West Papuan self-determination). 2pm. St Lukes Uniting Church, 94 Essex Rd, Mt Waverley. $10 (or donation; children free). For more info ph Shereen 0461 596 857 or Faye 0402 853 147.
Event date: Sat, 17/08/2013 - 2:00pm Website: Free West Papua Phone: Shereen 0461 596 857 or Faye 0402 853 147Fundraiser: Solidarity dinner supporting Latin American Solidarity Conference.
7pm. Bar-Bistro, 14 Smith St, Collingwood. $25/$20. Organised by LASNET. RSVP by August 15 to 0425 539 149 (seats are limited).
Event date: Fri, 16/08/2013 - 7:00pm Phone: 0425 539 149Public meeting: Stop racism, not the boats: How can we rebuild a grassroots refugee movement?
6:30pm. Trades Hall, 54 Victoria St, Carlton South.
Event date: Fri, 16/08/2013 - 6:30pmRally: Climate activists for mine workers.
Friday, August 16
Before all else comes solidarity! Locked-out mine workers and their families are coming to Melbourne for a joint protest with climate activists, for dignified, safe working conditions and a transition to renewable energy jobs. 11am. China Light & Power, 385 Bourke St, City.
Event date: Fri, 16/08/2013 - 11:00amWills candidates meeting: Our climate & sustainability
Monday, August 19, 7pm (for 7:30pm start). Coburg Concert Hall, Moreland Civic Centre, 90 Bell St, Coburg. For the 2013 federal election, come and hear what the candidates have to say about policies. The following Wills candidates have agreed to attend: Dean O'Callaghan (Save the Planet), Kelvin Thomson (Australian Labor Party), Margarita Windisch (Socialist Alliance), Tim Read (Greens). Entry: gold coin donation. Presented by Climate Action Moreland; supported by: Moreland BUG, Brunswick Residents Network, CERES, Sustainable Fawkner, Friends of Upfield Linear Park.
Event date: Mon, 19/08/2013 - 7:00pm Phone: 0431 445 930Solomon Islands: Ten years of Aus.-led occupation fails to create more than fantasy
Back in 1989 a schoolmate of mine showed me some copies of Tribune, the newspaper of New Zealand’s Socialist Unity Party.
The SUP had for decades been convinced of the infallibility of the leadership of the Soviet Union, and the pages of Tribune were full of recycled press releases from the Kremlin and large airbrushed photographs of crumbling Soviet leaders like Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov.
TPP free trade deal threatens democracy, jobs
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) cost United States workers 700,000 jobs. But another effect was to drive Mexican small farmers out of business.
In the brave new world of free trade, Costco makes tortilla chips and salsa in the US and trucks them to its stores in Mexico.
US Congress will soon debate whether to “fast-track” a trade deal that would make job-killers like NAFTA look puny. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is being negotiated by Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US and Vietnam.
PNG solution deepens Australian neo-colonialism
Prime minister Kevin Rudd’s announcement of the “PNG solution” — where refugees who arrive in Australia by boat will be denied resettlement and sent to Papua New Guinea — has sparked the largest refugee rights rallies in Australia since John Howard was in power, as well as opposition from within PNG itself.
On August 2, 2000 students at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) held a protest against the proposed plan.
Underground and under illusions: review of a Weather Underground memoir
Love & Struggle, My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground & Beyond
By David Gilbert, PM Press, 2012
336 pp, $22.00
From the earliest anti-capitalist revolutions, starting almost as soon as capitalism cemented its political mastery of Europe in the late 1700s, there has been dispute between those whose moral outrage at oppression led them to conspiratorial methods and those saying that open political struggle is superior.
Originally this debate was between the Blanquists and Marxists and later between Bakuninite anarchists and (again) Marxists.
Zimbabwe: Why Tsvangirai's MDC 'lost' the election
For a good part of his 33 years in power, Robert Mugabe has presided over a ruthless dictatorship. From the thousands killed in the 1980s Gukurahundi massacres and misery for millions under structural adjustment plans, Operation Murambatsvina and hyper-inflation of 2008.
Yet in the July 31 general election, endorsed by Southern African Development Community and the African Union, the 89-year-old ruler annihilated the hitherto iconic working-class leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T), who beat him in March 2008.
John Pilger: Manning will inspire others to stand for truth
The critical moment in the political trial of the century was on February 28 when Bradley Manning stood and explained why he had risked his life to leak tens of thousands of official files to WikiLeaks.
It was a statement of morality, conscience and truth: the very qualities that distinguish human beings. This was not deemed mainstream news in the United States; and were it not for Alexa O'Brien, an independent freelance journalist, Manning's voice would have been silenced.
JPMorgan scandal: Wall Street gets rich off climate inaction
As more people start to share scientists' long-expressed concerns over climate change, revelations of big bank energy market manipulations highlight Wall Street's entrenched stake in the fossil fuel economy that is heating up the planet.
Californian hunger strikers fight on despite death
For more than a month, more than 400 prisoners in seven Californian prisons have refused to eat in protest at the use of long-term solitary confinement and other abuses.
This is the longest hunger strike in California’s history and is provoking a predictably savage response from prison authorities. Prisoners are being denied medical attention, those accused of being representatives of the strikers are put in administrative segregation to further isolate them and many are being denied their mail.
GLW issue number 977
Australians' hidden opposition to WWI revealed
In The Shadow of Gallipoli: The Hidden History of Australia in World War 1
By Robert Bollard
New South Publishing, 2013
223 pages (PB), $32.99
Every year, around ANZAC day on April 25, hordes of Australian tourists and backpackers descend on the shore of Gallipoli in Turkey to commemorate the first battle in which Australians took part in World War I in 1915.
ANZAC day has experienced a resurgence in popularity over recent years. Governments have helped by promoting nationalistic myths about how the unsuccessful campaign was “where Australia was born”.
