Issue 1242

The Addison Road Community Centre in Marrickville, Sydney, has renamed one of its streets to Raise The Rate Drive to help raise awareness about the campaign to raise the rate of payments for welfare recipients.

Murdoch University is facing widespread criticism for its decision to seek potentially millions in compensation by suing one of its employees, associate professor Gerd Schroeder-Turk. Murdoch has also attempted to remove him from his elected position on the university’s senate.

Fossil Free SA and supporters called for a ban on new fossil fuel projects in South Australia, at a protest held outside Parliament House on October 18. The action was called in response to a recent decision by the state Liberal government to invite new applications for oil and gas licences.

Supporters of recently paroled Australian activist Jock Palfreeman gathered in Melbourne on October 13 to demand the government step up pressure on Bulgaria to allow him to return home.

Members of the Kurdish community and supporters held rallies across Australia on October 19 and 20 to demand Turkey end its invasion of Rojava, a predominately Kurdish region in north-eastern Syria.

The interests of marginalised and vulnerable people —here and abroad — must be place at the forefront of the campaign for climate action.

The economy is clearly in the doldrums and the situation only looks like getting worse — at least for the poor.

The final act in a week of protest in Catalonia, against the vindictive jail terms imposed on nine Catalan leaders by the Spanish Supreme Court on October 14, was a general strike and vast demonstration in the capital, Barcelona.

Infuriated by the verdict, frustrated with the strategy of the established independence movement (seen as “getting nowhere”), and most of all, outraged by police violence, young Catalans, who had never been on a barricade in their lives, decided that “direct action” was the only solution, writes Dick Nichols.

There is little about United States President Donald Trump that one can truly be surprised by at this stage in his presidency. Buffoonery and delusion — not to mention racism and the incitement of violence — have become normalised during his time in office to a frightening degree.

Still, even if we take the most jaw-dropping quotes of his more than two-and-a-half years in office into account, there is something remarkably horrifying about the comments he has made in recent days since he de facto supported Turkey’s offensive into northern Syria, writes Marcel Cartier.

It’s been barely noticed, but last month there was an incursion of politics into sports like no other, writes Dave Zirin.

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With little reason, the Israeli government made the decision to cancel the Palestinian national football (soccer) club championship, otherwise known as the FIFA Palestine Cup.