Green Left Weekly will be live-blogging the Bust the Budget rallies today. We'll being updating this blog with news, photos and video from rallies all over the country throughout the day.
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Official statistics from the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Information have revealed that 1518 Palestinian children were killed by Israel's occupation forces from the outbreak of the second intifada ("uprising") in September 2000 up to April last year.
That's the equivalent of one Palestinian child killed by Israel every three days for almost 13 years.
Since the bodies of three missing Israeli youths were discovered in the occupied West Bank on Monday, Israeli politicians have whipped the public up with demands for “revenge.”
When Gerry Conlon died on June 21, it reminded the world once more of the cases of the Guilford Four and the Birmingham Six, Irish people framed for bombings in England they had noting to do with.
One cannot but feel privileged and awed to meet three of Burma's “88 Generation” student uprising leaders: Min Ko Naing who has spent most of the years since 1988 uprising jailed by the Burmese military dictatorship for his opposition activities; Ko Jimmy, who spent 20 years as a political prisoner and who was recently thrown back into what he wryly describes as “our second home” for protesting against fuel price hikes; and Ko Ko Gyi who spent 17 years in prison for opposing the military regime.
Washington has embarked on a risky course in Iraq that may lead to a new US war.
In the face of the swift advance by a Sunni coalition headed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which captured a large swathe of northern and western Iraq, the Obama administration has sent 300 soldiers back into the country.
This force, referred to as “observers” or “advisers”, are there to shore up the US-installed Baghdad government in a situation of developing civil war.
A spectre is haunting Venezuela ― the spectre of the colectivos. All the powers of old Venezuela have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise these colectivos: political parties, NGOs, the foreign press, and of course, Twitter users.
“Armed thugs”, “vigilantes”, “paramilitaries” ― these are just a few of the hyperbolic terms attached to what has suddenly emerged as the central bogey of the Venezuelan opposition today: “los colectivos.”
Is it just me, or are the government going out of their way to be such extreme bastards on such a wide array of issues, that it seems a plot to just wear us all out?
Because once you've screamed “AAAAAAAAARRGGHH” for the 17th time in the first half hour after waking up, you've got no voice left with which to register a protest about the 18th insane injustice — inevitably some proposal to force disabled pensioners to sell at least two still-functioning organs or face being put to work as indentured servants for Gina Rinehart.
The government is ducking and weaving in the face of combined resistance to its cruel budget.
Employment Minister Eric Abetz admitted to a Senate Estimates hearing on June 26 that the Productivity Commission's review of the Fair Work Act will now be delayed until the second half of this year.
The media say this is to allow the government to devote its energies into getting its budget measures through, and to avoid an all-out campaign by unions to "revive the spectre of Work Choices".
Dozens of Palestinians held without charge or trial by Israel ended their 63-day hunger strike protest on June 25. It was the longest hunger strike in the history of the Palestinian prisoners movement.
Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups said on June 26 that about 80 of the hunger strikers were still hospitalised and shackled to their beds.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government is set to push through laws to permit the force-feeding of hunger strikers. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu weilded this threat in a bid to break the two-month strike.
Australian environmental campaigner Natalie Lowrey has been released after spending five days in a Malaysian prison. She was arrested in Kuantan, Malaysia on June 22 after participating in a protest against Australian company Lynas.
A petition for her release gained 15,000 signatures and protests calling for her release were held in Sydney, Perth and Alice Springs.
The “Shut Lynas Down” protest was organised by the Green Assembly, a Malaysian environment movement protesting Lynas’ polluting rare earths processing plant.
The statement below was released by the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN), supported the Sydney Stop the War Coalition, on June 26.
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Anti-war and peace groups from across the nation are uniting to urge the Australian government not to involve itself in any further military action in Iraq. The groups insist that Australia should resist any pressure it might be under to follow the US’s lead – in the way that it did in 2003.
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