This year has seen prime minister Tony Abbott and education minister Christopher Pyne deliver a cruel budget that has promised a cut in university funding and a deregulation of course fees.
Join this National Day of Action, where we oppose the budget and take our education back into our own hands. Let's say no to $100,000 degrees - education should be for all, not just the rich.
October 16
ADELAIDE - 3pm, Maths Lawns, Adelaide University
https://www.facebook.com/events/1573329979562601/?notif_t=plan_user_invited
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The latest in a growing tide of actions targeting the fossil fuel industry, over 60 people occupied the headquarters of AGL on October 9, to protest against its efforts to scrap Australia’s Renewable Energy Target and frack 330 unconventional gas wells in Gloucester, NSW.
Over 60 people sat-in at the company headquarters, while others blocked the entrance door and stood outside with a banner reading: “AGL invests in climate chaos.”
"Venezuela: The revolution continues," was the theme of a solidarity conference held at Redfern Town Hall here on October 6.
About 120 people attended the conference, which was organised by the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in conjunction with the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network (AVSN), the Bolivarian Circle, the Latin American Social Forum (LASF), other solidarity organisations, unions, and political groups, including Socialist Alliance.
Snap protest was held on September 29 and October 7 in Sydney by members of the progressive Kurdish community. It was called in response to news that ISIS killers had entered the besieged town of Kobane, which is part of the Rojava Kurdish liberated zone in northern Syria. On Friday morning (October 10) members of the community will a protest fast in Sydney Town Hall Square from 9am.
A flyer by the Kurdish Association distributed by the Kurdish protesters/hunger strikers in Sydney says:
Those who were expecting to see the supporters of Scottish independence dispirited ― and who hoped that the issue of independence was settled for at least a generation ― were quickly disappointed after the September 18 referendum.
This defeat, in which the pro-independence vote lost by roughly 45% to 55%, bears the seeds of future victory ― for at least three reasons.
Peru will host the UN-sponsored Conference of Parties climate talks this December. The world’s peak climate conference, the COP is an annual event first held in Berlin in 1995, leading to provisional developments such as the Kyoto Protocol.
Peru is also a country increasingly affected by the consequences of climate change. A study published by the United Nations Development Project said: “Peru has been ranked third globally in terms of risk to climate related disasters.”
Cuba said it will send nearly 300 more doctors and nurses to West Africa to help fight the Ebola epidemic, Al Jazeera reported on September 26.
The Cubans will work in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, Regla Angulo, head of the Cuban medical relief agency said in a statement that day. Al Jazeera said: “The announcement means that up to 461 Cuban medical personnel would have been sent to help address the epidemic spreading across West Africa.
The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI
Betty Medsger
Knopf, 2014
596 pages, $46.95 (hb)
As far as burglaries go, this one was pretty audacious. On March 8, 1971, nine anti-Vietnam-war activists in Pennsylvania burgled the FBI. They stole secret files in the regional FBI office in the small town of Media.
With careful planning, a little luck and plenty of pluck, the amateur burglars exposed, for the first time, the FBI’s political spying and suppression of democratic dissent.
The Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee(CHRAC), a coalition of 21 NGOs, issued the statement below on September 26 in response to the deal with the Australian government to resettle asylum seekers in the impoverished south-east Asian nation.
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CHRAC is urgently calling for the Australian government to release much needed information regarding this deal that has allegedly been struck between the two governments, including:
* The number of refugees that will be resettled from Nauru, Papua New Guinea and other offshore detention centers?
Cables from the first term of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa show how the US sought to defend the interests of US companies in Ecuador, and protect the position of foreign investors in general. Moves against the power of transnational corporations by Correa's government, first elected in 2006, were seen as attempts to increase control over the economy, which the US government views as the domain of private interests. The US Embassy in Quito therefore tried to influence Ecuadorian economic policy in conjunction with allies from other embassies and from within the private sector.
“The excessive focus on profits neither respects Mother Earth, nor takes human needs into account,” Bolivian President Evo Morales said in his speech to Untied nationals climate summit on September 23. “The continuation of this unequal system only leads to greater inequalities.”
Prensa Latina said that day that Morales called for incentives to respect Mother Earth and exhorted the developed countries to live up to their promises.
On September 24, one day after the United Nations climate summit in New York once more failed to come up with any form of serious action to confront the climate crisis, Filipino socialist group Party of the Labouring Masses released the statement below.
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Philippines President Benigno Aquino concluded his United Nations speech in New York on September 23 by posing the question: What more can we do?
The question is rhetorical, even hypocritical, as the president well knows what needs to be done: to address the demands of the mass movements, which he has heard, but not heeded.
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