The Darwin Asylum Seekers Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) released the statement below on October 23.
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The Darwin Asylum Seekers Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) today called on the federal government to learn from the humanitarian disaster that is the Northern Immigration Detention Centre (NIDC) and abandon its plans to open a new 1500 bed detention centre at Wickham Point, 35 kilometres south-east of Darwin.
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Tim reads out our first statement endorsed by the consensus of the General Assembly.
Electronic Intifada (EI) brought together three stories in early October that paint a vivid picture of the need for a cultural boycott of Israel. This certainly is no surprise, given that EI is without a doubt the best source out there on the Palestinian struggle.
Occupations in Sydney and Melbourne have been violently broken up by police in the past few days, but the Occupy Brisbane camp at Post Office Square is going well so far.
Between 80 and 100 people gathered for an open-air Occupy Perth general assembly in Perth on October 22. It began at 11am and finished around 5pm. The main purpose of the assembly was to make plans for establishing a Perth occupation at the end of the Chogm Protest (taking next Friday, October 28) that would last at least throughout the CHOGM summit. There was quite a constructive discussion and a lot of enthusiasm to begin an occupation next weekend. Eleven working groups were established.
Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy
By Lindsay Tanner
Scribe, 2011
232 pages, $32.95 (pb)
Lindsay Tanner, the former finance minister in the federal Labor government, laments in his book, Sideshow, the rotting core of democracy in Australia that plumbed its most dismal depths in the lacklustre, “non-of-the-above” elections of 2010.
The commercial media, he says, have been responsible for dumbing down the quality of political debate and sapping the level of popular political engagement.
There is much in Tanner’s critique that is accurate.
October 15 was the first time since February 2003, with the huge demonstrations in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, that a call for an international action on a specific date has met with such a response.
United States President Barack Obama announced on October 14 that he was sending US special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there.
In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only "engage" for "self-defence", says Obama, satirically.
With Libya secured, a US invasion of the African continent is under way.
Obama's decision is described in the press as "highly unusual" and "surprising", even "weird". It is none of these things. It is the logic of US foreign policy since 1945.
Greek trade unions warned on October 21 of further strikes in the next week after parliament approved new harsh cutbacks amid mass protests that left one man dead and about 200 injured.
Civil servants' union Adedy secretary-general Ilias Iliopoulos said the new law "will not be implemented" and accused the government of ignoring popular dissent.
Greece's main private-sector union, GSEE, was also planning new strikes.
GSEE board member Stathis Anestis said: "We plan long-running opposition to ensure that the crippling cutbacks imposed by our loan shark predators are not enforced."
Indonesian army forces brutally attacked the Papuan national conference in Abepura on October 19. The conference was attended by up to 20,000 people discussing West Papua's struggle for independence from Indonesia.
WestPapuaMedia.info said on October 21 that local sources confirmed six people were killed. New Matilda.com reported on October 20 an account from a priest who saw a truck full of arrested people who were “covered with blood” and had been “beaten and shot”.
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