Australia has long been known as one of the most wasteful countries in the world: per head of population we are second only to the US in the amount of waste we pile into landfills.
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A new weekly left newspaper, antidot, has been launched in the German speaking part of Switzerland. The first issue appeared on May 1. The paper is published by a collective, the antidot Verein, comprising a broad spectrum of individuals and organisations, including a branch of the Greens, a branch of the Workers Party (PdA), the Socialist Alternative (SolidariteS), ATTAC Switzerland, anarchist organisations and others. The newspaper aims to provide an antidote to mainstream media and a forum for discussion among the social, environmental and political movements and groups on the left in the German speaking part of Switzerland. Visit <http://antidot.ch>.
BRISBANE Australia is the only Western democracy without human rights legislation, James Whelan from Amnesty International told a public forum attended by 50 people on May 23.
A group of Rohingya people, a Muslim ethnic minority from western Burma’s Arakan state, is being held indefinitely at the Australian government detention centre on Nauru.
NEWCASTLE More than 30 people attended a speak-out to express solidarity with the Pine Gap Four at the Hamiltons Clocktower on May 25. One of the Pine Gap Four, Donna Mulhearn, is a well-known peace activist in the Hunter region. She was among those arrested after successfully carrying out a citizens inspection of Pine Gap on December 9, 2005. Their trial goes to court shortly.
On May 23, a group of traditional landowners of the Yuin people served an eviction notice on Forests NSW, demanding the immediate cessation of logging in the Bodalla State Forest.
Friends of the Earth (FoE) has expressed concern after the Northern Land Council nominated a site at Muckaty, near Tennant Creek, for a proposed nuclear waste dump.
The City of Sydney Council wants to limit the distribution of printed material, something that Cameron Murphy, president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties (NSWCLL), believes may violate the constitutionally implied right to freedom of political communication.
On the June 2-3 weekend, hundreds of people from around NSW will gather at the site of the proposed Anvil Hill mega-coalmine in the Upper Hunter Valley to protest their opposition to the state government and coal companies push to expand the coal industry. Its expected that NSW planning minister Frank Sartor will decide whether to approve the mine very soon.
Organising is underway for demonstrations during the APEC summit, which PM John Howard is hosting in Sydney on September 8-9 and which US President George Bush and other world leaders will be attending. The Stop Bush collective is organising a convergence for September 8, aiming to draw people onto the streets to protest against the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. The protest will also call for urgent action to stop environmental destruction and for the defence of workers rights.
There are two big issues in this dispute: the right of academics to free speech and the question of QUT [Queensland University of Technology] conducting unethical research, left-wing academic Dr Gary MacLennan told Green Left Weekly on May 24.
Two hundred young people attended a protest on May 19 to demand that the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay be closed. The action, organised by the combined schools Amnesty International group, heard from a range of speakers, including high school students, ALP state MP Lisa Sing and Greens state MP Nick McKim.
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