Visiting Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has urged Sri Lankans held in immigration detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru to come home. “Come back. All is forgiven,” he said in Canberra on February 15 after talks with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Even though they had broken the law in trying to flee to Australia he insisted they would not face prosecution if they returned.
Activist, teacher and mother of two, Petrina Harley, grew up in the suburbs of Perth. She is a fierce advocate for human rights, her main passions being rights for the LGBTI community, illegally detained asylum seekers and stopping the Roe 8 freeway.
She is standing for the Socialist Alliance in the WA state election alongside Sam Wainwright in the South Metropolitan Legislative Council. Harley was interviewed by Green Left Weekly by Chris Jenkins, who is standing in the seat of Fremantle.
The misnamed Fair Work Commission decided on February 23 to cut Sunday penalty rates. This will slash the take-home pay of about 700,000 workers in the retail, hospitality and fast food sectors by up to $6000 a year.
The commission will also reduce public holiday penalty rates for full-time and part-time workers in these industries.
Victorian Trades Hall Council and We Are Union called a snap action outside the Fair Work Commission in Melbourne just before the decision was announced.
Palestinian artists, cultural groups and human rights supporters have welcomed the Australian-British singer Natalie Imbruglia’s cancellation of her planned March performance in Tel Aviv and thanked her for deciding to be “on the right side of history, on the side of the oppressed”.
The Trump administration is pressing on with its reactionary agenda amid ongoing mass protests.
Wall Street and businesses, big and small, greeted Trump’s election with elation in anticipation of his campaign promises to rapidly eliminate regulations they regard as onerous. As Trump seeks to fulfil these promises, the capitalists are moving to take advantage of the chance to rake in greater profits.
Immediately after contributing to his team’s Super Bowl victory on February, Martellus Bennett of the New England Patriots was asked what he thought about an upcoming visit to Mexico to represent the National Football League (NFL).
“Tear down the wall! Tear down the wall! That’s what I think about going to Mexico,” he cried.
Bennett then became the first of a number of Patriots players to confirm they would skip a visit with President Donald Trump at the White House.
Jews Against the Occupation released this statement on February 21, as the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Sydney for a four-day visit.
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Jews against the Occupation are strongly opposed to the red carpet welcome being given by the Australian Government and Opposition to the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Nearly 2 million Britons have signed a petition calling on President Trump’s official state visit to be canceled. On February 20, thousands of protesters gathered outside Parliament in London as British lawmakers debated whether to deny Trump a formal state visit. Democracy Now! spoke to Asad Rehman of Friends of the Earth International. He spoke at the protest in London on February 20. The video and transcript are below.
Mapping My Return: A Palestinian Memoir
By Salman Abu Sitta
American University in Cairo Press
2016
Given the centrality of memory and history to the modern Palestinian identity, it is fitting that the number of memoirs and diaries being published by Palestinians seems to be rising.
About 100 people braved pouring rain in Melbourne on February 19 to protest the visit to Australia by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
In the wake of a growing corruption scandal around him and the recent passage of the so-called Regularisation Law that retrospectively “legalises” illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, the situation of Palestinian communities across the occupied territories has become increasingly desperate.