827

Alyawarr elder Richard Downs spoke at the Prescribed Area People’s Alliance (PAPA) meeting in Alice Springs on February 12. Downs is a leader of the walkoff protest against the NT intervention at Ampilatwatja.
“The law is an ass”, said Mr Bumble, in Charles Dickens’ classic, Oliver Twist. And more than 150 people agreed as they rallied yesterday on the same site, six years to the day, where 17-year old Aboriginal boy, TJ Hickey, was impaled on fence in Waterloo.
MELBOURNE — On February 16 a group of peace activists held a vigil outside the Melbourne office of federal finance minister Lindsay Tanner. The protest was the first in a series of monthly vigils aimed at drawing attention to the worsening situation in Afghanistan and to call for the Australian government to bring the troops home.
When the anti-immigration politician Pauline Hanson was asked if she was a xenophobe in a 1996 interview on Sixty Minutes, she famously responded: “please explain”. Now, with the news that she intends to become an immigrant herself, it seems she doesn’t understand the word “hypocrite” either.
Resistance activist Melanie Barnes is standing as a candidate in the upcoming Tasmanian state elections for the Socialist Alliance. She isn’t running to improve her career prospects or income, but because she wants to get an important message out.
MELBOURNE — Eighty people rallied on the morning of February 14 to commemorate the 2004 death of Redfern teenager TJ Hickey and demand an end to Aboriginal deaths in custody. The crowd observed a minute's silence in memory of TJ, who was killed while being chased by police. It also expressed its support for TJ's mother, Gail Hickey, who has lodged a complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
Green Left Weekly spoke to Socialist Alliance national convener Peter Boyle about the political dynamics of the coming federal election and asked him what sort of campaign the Alliance was intending to run.
The internet protest group Anonymous launched a cyber-attack to protest the Australian government's proposed “clean-feed” internet filter on February 10. A number of government websites temporarily became host to pornographic images.
SYDNEY — Six Gaza Freedom March activists presented a moving account of their experiences of trying to get into Gaza late last year at a Stop the War Coalition public meeting on February 15.
Newcastle Resistance branch has entered a “sign war” against federal Labor MP Sharon Grierson.
The picket line outside Xstrata Coal’s Tahmoor colliery is continuing. It marks a continuation of the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union’s (CFMEU) 17-month struggle to negotiate an Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA) with Xstrata.
You may have seen the photo in last week’s Green Left Weekly of the right-wing “Tea Party” movement supporter in Washington DC. The placard he was holding said, in reference to President Barack Obama, “Impeach the Muslim Marxist”. The article discussed the rise of right-wing politics in the US.