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We should never forget the image of Treasurer Joe Hockey and finance minister Mathias Cormann smirking as they announced the end of the mining tax introduced by the former Labor government. Along with that other image of them enjoying their post-budget cigars, they should be preserved as evidence for the day when the exploiters and oppressors face justice.
鈥淚t鈥檚 socialism for the rich and capitalism for the rest of us in Britain鈥 writes Owen Jones in on August 29. Jones鈥 argument is based on the bailouts given to the banks and subsidies given to big businesses by the British government in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. These government bailouts allowed the banks to survive, but individuals suffered and received limited government intervention or support.
Australian resident Natalie Lowrey was refused entry into Malaysia on August 31. She was travelling as an observer to the trial of 15 environmental activists who were arrested for protesting against Australian rare earth mining company Lynas. On arrival in Malaysia, Lowrey was held by customs officials who said she had been blacklisted by Bukit Aman 鈥 the police headquarters in Kuala Lumpur 鈥 and that she would be deported home. Lowrey was informed of a strict denial of entry to Malaysia. No reasons were given.
On November 27, 1095, a speech by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont used allegations of the persecution of Christians in the Holy Land to launch a series of military adventures by the warrior aristocracies of feudal Christian Western Europe against the Muslim civilisations of the Middle East. The ensuing two centuries of religious wars, or Crusades, were characterised by land-grabbing, plunder and the massacre of Muslims, Jews and non-Catholic Christians.
For the West's masters of war, it's a good time to be in Wales. A military alliance that has struggled for years to explain why it still exists, NATO has got a packed agenda for its September 4 and 5 Newport summit. NATO may not be at the centre of US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron's plans to ramp up intervention in the Middle East and wipe the so-called Islamic state 鈥渙ut of existence鈥. But after 13 years of bloody occupation of Afghanistan and a calamitous intervention in Libya, the Western alliance has got an enemy that at last seems to fit its bill.
A petition is calling on the Monash University Clubs and Societies Executive to overturn its decision to deregister the Socialist Alternative Club. The text of the petition is below. . ***
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fought for an independent Tamil homeland in the north and east of the island of Sri Lanka. The group was formed in response to discrimination against the Tamil people by the Sri Lankan government, after peaceful protests had been repeatedly met with violent repression. It waged an armed struggle for nearly three decades. The LTTE was militarily defeated in 2009, and no longer exists. Yet people are still being penalised for alleged links with the group. This is happening in Sri Lanka, in Australia, and in other countries.
Rallies were held in cities around Australia on August 30 to demand the extradition to Chile of former Pinochet regime secret police agent Adriana Rivas. This follows revelations shown on SBS last year about her involvement in repression of political prisoners as a member of the National Intelligence Agency of Chile during 1976-77.
Nick Riemer gave this speech to the March Australia rally in Sydney on August 31. He is an activist with the Refugee Action Coalition. *** The Gadigal and the other first peoples of this country were 鈥 and still are 鈥 the objects of a relentless war of attrition. That merciless frontier war has been hidden and denied. Another war that the government tries to conceal and rationalise away is its war on asylum seekers.
The University of New South Wales acting vice chancellor Iain Martin cancelled a Town Hall meeting on September 3, organised to brief staff on the University鈥檚 response to proposed fee deregulation. UNSW students had planned to protest their exclusion from the meeting. In cancelling the meeting, Martin told staff: 鈥淲e have been advised this morning by police and security that the meeting was being targeted by protest groups, which we understand were predominately external to UNSW. Our advice is that the intention was to disrupt the Town Hall.鈥
A 24 year-old Iranian asylum seeker, Hamid Khazaei, who was flown from Manus Island to Brisbane in a medical emergency on August 27, was declared 鈥渂rain dead鈥 on September 1. His life support was switched off and he died on September 5. The Refugee Action Coalition in Sydney reported: 鈥淏y the time Hamid was sent to Brisbane, he was suffering septicaemia from an infection spreading from a cut foot and went directly into intensive care in the Mater hospital. He had sought medical attention for days on Manus Island for the pain and the infection.
Two representatives from Irish republican party Sinn Fein toured Australia from August to September 7, speaking to hundreds of people at public meetings about the campaign for Irish reunification. Sinn Fein vice-president and member of the Dail (Irish parliament) Mary Lou McDonald and Sinn Fein MP for Mid-Ulster in Ireland's north Francie Molloy, spoke in support of the campaign to end partition and unite the six counties still claimed by Britain with the 26 counties that make up the southern state in a democratic republic.