The Chicago teachers’ strike entered its third day on September 12. This strike is of national significance for a number of reasons:
* It is a militant fightback against the ruling class onslaught to destroy public education being carried out by Democrats and Republicans across the country.
* It is aimed at the policies of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party machine in Chicago headed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, longtime aide, advisor and fundraiser for Obama.
*It is being organised by a new rank-and file-leaders with a class-struggle perspective.
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Billionaires and Ballot Bandits Greg Palast Out September 18 www.gregpalast.com If you really want to understand the forthcoming US presidential election, read this book. Former corporate fraud investigator Greg Palast previously showed how the 2000 US election was rigged through "purging" black voters off the electoral rolls. He showed how the 2004 election was rigged the same way. In 2008, the same thing happened again, yet Barack Obama still managed enough votes to get in.
The Indigenous Social Justice Association (ISJA) and the Support Assange and WikiLeaks Coalition released the statement below on September 9.
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Significant regional integration efforts, independent from the United States, have been among the most striking developments in Latin America and the Caribbean this century.
The most ambitious of these projects is the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), founded at a summit in Caracas, Venezuela in December last year.
Pressure from trade unions and human rights groups has stopped plans by South African authorities to charge striking mine workers with the massacre of 34 of their own comrades. Those killed had been shot by police on August 16.
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) have been competing for members at the Lomin mining corporation's platinum mine at Marikana in South Africa.
Quebec’s student movement has claimed a victory with the toppling of the right-wing Liberal government in the September 4 election.
The opposition Parti Quebecois (PQ) looks set to form government, winning the most seats ahead of the right-wing Liberal Party who had governed for the past nine years. Quebec's largest pro-independence party, the PQ has, in government, also implemented neoliberal policies.
Greek opposition leader Alexis Tsipras, from the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), launched an explosive attack on the government on September 7. Tsipras accused it of paying bailout officials fat-cat wages while working people face endless cuts and rock-bottom wages.
The Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF) bailout fund manages the recapitalisation of Greece's banks as part of the country's €130 billion ($160 billion) bailout. HFSF managers are earning up to €22,000 a month compared with a minimum wage below €600, Tsipras said.
September marks the arrival of a defining name of the 1980s British anarcho-punk scene, Subhumans, to Australia. This will be the band’s first Australasian tour and features the 1981 line-up that recorded their debut EP Demolition War and classic albums such as The Day The Country Died.
Green Left Weekly's Chris Peterson spoke to frontman Dick Lucas.
Bruno Walter ― The Early Recordings
EMI 679 0262 (Nine-CD set)
Bruno Walter Conducts Mahler
Sony 88691 920102 (Five-CD set)
Mahler ― Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5
Naxos 8.110876 & 8.110896
“My time is yet to come!” Austrian composer, conductor and pianist Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) famously declared in response to the mixture of incomprehension and hostility that greeted his musical compositions.
Mahler's greatness as a conductor was never seriously disputed, but his standing as a composer certainly was.
In richest-woman-in-the-world Gina Rinehart's twisted moral universe, workers in Australia need to work harder for less to compete with African mine workers (including an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 child miners in West Africa) who slave for $2 a day. She says that's what competition in the “global market” dictates.
Fearless Milk Crate Theatre Carriageworks, Sydney September 13-22 $35, $25 www.milkcratetheatre.com Milk Crate Theatre director Mirra Todd says his main goal is to get people thinking and talking about homelessness. “All theatre is about starting a conversation,” the wiry, animated Todd tells Green Left at Milk Crate’s rehearsal rooms in Sydney’s Kings Cross.
Shorten 'shamed' over Centrelink job cuts
Workplace relations minister Bill Shorten faced cries of “shame” from union delegates on August 29, when he tried to score political points by praising workers his government had just sacked.
At the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) annual leaders conference in Sydney, Shorten commended Centrelink social workers for supporting grieving families following the 2009 Victorian bushfires and last year's Queensland floods.
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