Eighty four protesters were arrested at a May Day protest in Dili. The 84 were placed in a detention centre.
More than 100 protesters had marched to the Hotel Timor, a four star hotel in Dili, on May 1 to demand a pay rise and to stop sackings of local staff. Four staff of the hotel had recently been dismissed after being accused of stealing.
The demonstrators chose May 1, the International Workers' Day, to express their concerns and demand their rights.
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CSG Free Northern Rivers brought 7,000 people to the streets of Lismore on May 12 in a colourful and outspoken show of solidarity against Coal Seam Gas Mining in the region. And concerns over coal mining loom not far behind in a groundswell push to renewable energy sources.
Greece will hold new elections in June if last-ditch negotiations on forming a coalition government fail once again.
Celebrity Inc. ― How Famous People Make Money
By Jo Piazza
Open Road, 2011
231 pages
Celebrity is just like printing your own money, says Jo Piazza in Celebrity Inc.
Two rich, spoilt, talentless celebrity brats ― Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian ― are experts at the fame game. Kickstarted by family wealth, and propelled to fame through a steamy sex tape and reality TV, Hilton “earns” around US$10 million a year. The Kardashian family franchise raked in $65 million last year.
Unmasked
By Nate Anderson
Ars Technica, 107 pages
What kind of a jerk would want to bring down WikiLeaks? The kind of socially inept and morally bankrupt arsehole that is Aaron Barr, CEO of internet security firm HBGary Federal.
This book documents Barr's WikiLeaks-whacking work, apparently for the US government, that brought him into contact with the Julian Assange-supporting hacktivist group Anonymous. It eventually led to Barr's downfall.
The Wilderness Society released the statement below on May 14.
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• 250 police sent to Broome; 276 to Eureka Stockade.
• Joint venture partners must speak out or be tainted by Premier’s actions.
Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett has sent 250 police officers to Broome to crush community opposition to the proposed gas industrial complex at James Price Point, not far off the 276 police and soldiers sent to the Eureka Stockade to crush the miners.
The victory of Socialist Party (PS) candidate Francois Hollande in the French presidential election on May 6 set off a wave of hope across Europe. On May 9, the Spanish government announced that it was nationalising the country’s fourth biggest bank, Bankia, to keep it from collapsing.
What do these seemingly unrelated events have to do with each other?
Enormous expectations are being loaded onto the shoulders of the former French PS national secretary. In recession-stricken Spain, Portugal and Greece, people hope he will put Europe’s economies on a path to growth and job-creation.
In what marks a significant shift in the balance of European politics, in the final round presidential election on May 6, Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande defeated right-wing incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy of the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement by almost 52% to 48%.
Hollande is France's first president from the social democratic Socialist Party in France in 17 years. Sarkozy is the first president since 1981 not to win a second term.
Six Palestinians on hunger strike against their illegal long-term detention without trial in Israeli jails were close to death on May 8, the International Committee of the Red Cross said that day. Two of the six, Tha’er Halahleh, 33, and Bilal Diab, 27, had, by May 12, been on hunger strike for 75 days.
The other four prisoners had been on hunger strike for between 51 and 68 days on May 12.
Compared with a southern Europe stricken by ever-rising unemployment and government attacks on social welfare and democratic rights, Luxembourg can feel as if it is on another, much more pleasant, planet.
The richest country in Europe ― with Gross Domestic Product per capita at least 30% higher than that of the US, unemployment at 5.9% and the second-lowest public sector debt to GDP ratio ― this most important financial centre after London’s City would seem to be floating above the crisis.
Now that parties supporting cuts are losing elections across Europe, I wonder if the British Labour Party will consider a policy of opposing cuts.
At the moment, they sort of oppose them, so if the government announces 200 libraries are closing next Wednesday morning, Labour says: "This is typical of this callous administration. They ought to wait until the afternoon."
The death in prison of poor odd-job man Aa-Kong (also known as Ah Kong) is yet another indication of the barbarity of the lese majeste (insulting the monarch) law, the injustice of the Thai legal system and the brutality of the Thai ruling class.
The fact that he was refused bail to get medical treatment, and the that the prison authorities waited three days after he became ill before sending him to the prison clinic, is an indication of the terrible conditions in Thai prisons.
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