Venezuela
As an Australian person currently living and working in Venezuela, I feel there are many important aspects to the ExxonMobil issue that have been, perhaps deliberately, ignored by the mainstream media in Australia.
Legalities aside
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Last May, the ALP announced a target for greenhouse gas emission reductions that, if observed generally across the world’s major emitting countries, would give humanity virtually no chance of avoiding climate catastrophe.
Former Democrat senator Sid Spindler died at his home on March 1, aged 75. He had dedicated his life to opposing injustice and campaigning for a more socially just world, even when this might have been unpopular. He was always prepared to stand up and be counted on social justice issues.
Just weeks after the Ecuadorian and Venezuelan governments called on Colombia to respect the need for peace and negotiation with the guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Peoples Army (FARC-EP), the Colombian of President Alvaro Uribe launched an extensive armed air and land assault against the insurgency movement.
The Melbourne Age reported on February 27 that child abuse charges against an Indigenous woman from the NT had finally been dropped after two years. The womans son has still not been returned to her by Family and Childrens Services Northern Territory (FACS), however.
Janet Giles, secretary of SA Unions, South Australias peak trade union body, resigned on February 18 from the board of the state governments WorkCover Corporation, stating that she could not defend the rights of injured workers while remaining on the board.
The breakout of the people of Gaza in late January provided a heroic spectacle unlike any other since the Warsaw ghetto uprising and the smashing down of the Berlin Wall.
On March 3, 400 teachers rallied as part of the Australian Education Unions campaign for improved wages and conditions. The AEU is calling for a 10% pay rise each year for three years to bring Victorian teachers wages in line with those of New South Wales teachers.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denounced the Colombian state as a “terrorist state”, and said it had become “the Israel of Latin America”, following the Colombian military’s bombing of Ecuadorian territory on March 1 that killed up to 21 members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Chavez argued the US government was behind Colombia’s actions.
As the horror of Israels recent attacks on Gaza spread, UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon could only describe Israels rocket launches as an excessive use of force. By contrast, he described a Palestinian homemade rocket, which killed two Israeli soldiers and one civilian, as a terrorist act.
Centrelink is to cut about 2000 of its 27,000 staff over the next financial year as part of new cost-cutting measures by PM Kevin Rudds Labor government.
It has to be one of the most unbelievable stories of the century: New Idea, a magazine that trades on gossip about royals and other celebrities, is blamed for exposing Prince Harry’s deployment in the British military intervention in Afghanistan. It is about as believable as the plot of Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper, in which a young prince swaps places with a street lad to see what life is like in “Paupersville”.
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