On September 10 a British jury acquitted six Greenpeace protesters who were on trial for trying to shut down a coal-fired power station on the grounds that they were trying to stop global warming.
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Until last months major party conventions, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obamas victory was looking the pretty likely. With his message of change, it isnt hard to see why.
In the lead-up to the release of a report from the federal government’s review into the Northern Territory intervention, the Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association has blasted the policy. AIDA describes it as discriminatory, damaging to people’s health and completely unable to alter conditions of child abuse or neglect in remote Aboriginal communities.
Arriving at the Palacio Moneda in Santiago, Chile, on September 14, where close to 35 years ago to the day Chile’s left-wing president Salvador Allende was overthrow in a military coup, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declared that “in Bolivia a conspiracy is underway, an international conspiracy, financed and directed by US imperialism, just like that which occurred in Chile in 1973’’.
My cows can’t swim!”, protested one farmer’s sign, with a marker to indicate just how high the water would rise. “Act now or be dammed!”, advised another, echoing the overall theme of the 500-strong Save the Mary River rally on September 6 at the Traveston Crossing bridge in south-east Queensland.
The Greens were the major beneficiaries of the swing to the left in many councils across NSW at the September 13 elections, probably taking their representation to more than 70 for the first time. Independents and other progressive tickets, including the Socialist Alliance, also made gains.
The decision to make public a presidential order in July authorising US strikes inside Pakistan without seeking the approval of the Pakistani government ends a long debate within, and on the periphery of, the Bush administration.
Relative calm has returned to Bolivia following a three-week offensive of violence and terrorism launched by the US-backed right-wing opposition denounced by Bolivian President Evo Morales as a “civil coup”.
As I write this column the newspapers report that United States, Canadian, European and Japanese banks have combined to inject an extra US$180 billion (A$225 billion) into global financial markets. It is the latest desperate measure to try to stem the year-old global financial crisis commonly — and misleadingly — labelled the US subprime mortgage crisis.
Union Solidarity activists blockaded the Dandenong mail distribution centre overnight on September 19 in response to Australia Post’s proposed transfer of a union delegate who took strike action three months ago.
Max Phillips, a newly elected Greens councillor in Marrickville and the Greens campaign coordinator for the September 13 NSW local government elections, puts the swing to the Greens down to the state Labor governments implosion.
On September 17, the Thai parliament elected a candidate from the Peoples Power Party (PPP), Somchai Wongsawat, to be the next prime minister.
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