Peter Boyle

David McBride, a former Australian military lawyer and whistleblower on alleged war crimes by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan spoke to media outside the ACT Courts on August 22. He was there for a preliminary hearing on charges he is facing for theft of commonwealth property, breaching the Defence Act and unauthorised disclosure of information. If convicted, this 55-year-old could spend the rest of his life in jail.

Video: The Kurdish community in Sydney held a protest on August 21 outside NSW Parliament, against the recent removal of elected Kurdish mayors in Turkey.

On August 17, Indonesian Independence Day, armed Indonesian police, soldiers and radical Islamic militia stormed a student dormitory in the Indonesian city of Surabaya (on the island of Java), which housed West Papuan students, arresting 43. The attack reportedly took place because the students had allegedly refused to raise the Indonesian flag.

“I believe the numbers will change the game,” said First Nations activist and artist Uncle Bruce Shillingsworth in an interview with Green Left Weekly about the global climate emergency and the water crisis in the Murray-Darling river system.

Hundreds attended an early morning pro-choice rally on August 20, 2019 outside the NSW Parliament which was considering a bill to decriminalise abortions. Among the speakers was 17-year-old Bella Zaid who, together with other high school students, organised a huge pro-choice rally and march earlier this year. Video by Peter Boyle for Green Left Weekly.

On Friday August 16, hundreds attended a peaceful rally in Sydney's Martin Place to show their solidarity with the Hong Kong democracy protests. Video and stills by Peter Boyle for Green Left Weekly.

Activists rallied in solidarity with the people of Kashmir in Sydney on August 9 and 11. The protest was organised by the Pakistan Association of Australia.

MKOTT media conference 09-08-19

The Movement Against the Occupation of the Timor Sea (MKOTT), a Timorese activist group based in Dili, condemned the Australian government on August 9 for its ongoing prosecution of Witness K and his lawyer Bernard Collaery, over the exposure of Australian secret service bugging of Timorese government offices, labelling it as an "attack on freedom of expression and democracy".

#Folau was still trending on Twitter in Australia on August 7 as the endless whining — amplified by the corporate media — about sacked rugby player Israel Folau allegedly having his freedom to express his bigoted hate speech restricted persists.

In a 40-minute interview with the Guardian, federal “opposition” leader Anthony Albanese's arguments for Labor’s serial capitulation to the Coalition government were weak, inconsistent and based on a fool’s reading of political reality.

Dr Lisa Natividad is a Chamorro woman, activist and academic from Guam (Guahan), a Pacific island nation that the US continues to occupy, deny full democracy and self-determination because it is the site of massive complex of US military bases. She spoke to Green Left's Peter Boyle on her way to Darwin where she will be a keynote speaker at the Independent Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) conference on August 3-4, 2019.

Nearly 100 Malaysian environmental and civil society groups have demanded that Australia stop exerting "bullying" diplomatic pressure on Malaysia to accept half a million tonnes of toxic radioactive waste piled up at Australian corporate polluter Lynas’s rare-earth refinery in Gebeng, near the Malaysian city of Kuantan.