NSW Labor has anointed a new leader less than three months before the state election in March. With the ALP trailing Mike Baird's Coalition government in the polls, it must have calculated that it has nothing to lose by dumping former leader John Robertson.
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The Basque people have suffered long-standing repression and denial of national rights under Spanish rule, including many jailings of supporters of Basque self-determination.
The Basque nationalist movement is entirely committed to peaceful, non-violent means, with Basque armed group ETA declared a “permanent cessation” of armed activity in 2011. Spanish state repression has not ended, however.
The statement below was released on January 17 by the Basque Peace Process website.
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Aboriginal people and their supporters are converging in Canberra from all over Australia for the Invasion Day weekend. The weekend will feature a "sit-in" that is expected to release an historic Declaration of Independence reaffirming Aboriginal sovereignty in this country.
The rate of Aboriginal children removed from their families has increased each year since Kevin Rudd said sorry to the Stolen Generations, and more and more Aboriginal children are being placed with non-Indigenous carers, a new report into Indigenous disadvantage has revealed.
In 2008, Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to the victims of past policies of forced removal that led to the Stolen Generations, promising that the “injustices of the past will never, never happen again”.
1. A GLOBAL CALL FOR CLIMATE ACTION
Last year, more than ever before, people stood up to demand action from world leaders to address the climate crisis. On September 21, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of New York to insist on the need for stronger climate policy and more renewable energy.
2. EUROPE BANS PESTICIDES LINKED TO BEE COLLAPSE
Below is a Charter of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Rights was adopted by the Socialist Alliance in 2013.
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Introduction
Refugee Action Coalition released this statement on January 16.
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Manus Island detention centre is engulfed in the largest protests in a year, as more asylum seekers join the hunger strike.
Sudanese asylum seekers in Mike Compound joined the hunger strike protest late on January 15. There are now around 300 on hunger strike in Mike Compound alone, and around 170 in Foxtrot.
Fee deregulation will be resurrected this year. This gives education activists that general zombie-slayer feeling any sane human gets from fighting a piece of legislation you thought you had killed already.
Last year, fee deregulation was booted out of the Senate, with student boots doing most of the kicking. But it doesn’t want to die and is set to return to parliament, presumably with enough amendments to appeal to the biggest fence sitters.
Releasing the interim report of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption on December 19, employment minister Eric Abetz said the findings showed the decision to hold a royal commission into unions had been “vindicated”.
However, the fact that almost every substantial case examined by the royal commission was already making its way through the legal system, suggests the system is working. A royal commission is a tool government can effectively employ when there is a serious failure by the existing regulatory system.
Left-wing London-based US journalist and author Mike Marqusee passed away on January 13 from cancer, aged 61. Below, radical sports writer and socialist Dave Zirin pays tribute. It is abridged from The Nation.
It’s 8pm and I’m sitting in the main section of the carriage. A weathered, middle-aged man in a tracksuit and peak hat is swaying around by the doors, muttering. I watch him out of the corner of my eye as he ambles over.
“How’s it going?” He slurs.
“Yeah good mate.”
The train soon shudders to a stop, the doors open and he springs out like some manic racehorse into the night.
Lisa Cruickshank, long-time activist, feminist, union stalwart, friend, sister and mother died peacefully at home surrounded by family and friends on November 2.
Lisa lived her life with courage, commitment, determination and love. She once wrote that: “I’m not about to prioritise class v gender v ethnic struggles — if there’s a decent blue going on, it deserves support.”
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