After Cyclone Pam caused widespread destruction on Vanuatu, a South Pacific archipelago, on March 14, Prime Minister Baldwin Lonsdale said the devastating cyclones increasingly hitting his nation were directly linked to climate change.
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I take issue with Ben Courtice鈥檚 and Emma Murphy鈥檚 criticism of my review of Bill Gammage鈥檚 book, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia in the January 28 91自拍论坛 Weekly.
I have two major arguments with their criticism. First, Gammage has made a major contribution to our understanding of how Aboriginal Australians cared for the land for more than 60,000 years right across the continent.
US bars UN torture investigator from jails and Guantanamo
The United Nations special investigator on the use of torture criticised the US on March 11 for stalling for over two years in granting the international human rights body access to inmates at Guantanamo Bay and other federal US prisons.
Student activists dropped a huge banner from Sydney University鈥檚 Fisher Library which read "No cuts, no fees, no dereg. Fightback now!" to raise the alarm about the federal government鈥檚 looming attempt to deregulate university fees.
Six students also locked themselves to the Vice-Chancellor's office, to demonstrate their opposition, and called on all university Vice-Chancellors to oppose the bill.
The following was released by Aid/Watch, an independent monitor of international aid and trade, on March 5.
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Australia spends $577 million a year on aid for Papua New Guinea (PNG). Two key focus areas are anti-corruption related 鈥 law and justice, and governance.
PNG has concurrently undertaken a number of national processes to combat corruption without Australian support.
Experience proves that left-wing movements can win government, but nevertheless not hold power. Democracy, in other words the exercise of power by the people and for the people, requires much more.
The problem is now being faced in Greece with with radical left party SYRIZA, which won elections in January. It will have to be faced in Spain if the new anti-austerity party Podemos wins November elections.
The NSW government鈥檚 just before a state election raises more questions than it answers.
The Socialist Alliance released this statement on March 12.
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"The state government's plan to privatise the power industry鈥檚 'poles and wires' would be a disaster for the people of NSW," Duncan Roden, Socialist Alliance candidate for the Legislative Council in the March 28 state elections, said on March 12.
"The sell-off would be an economic and political setback for the public interest, and a windfall hand-out to former merchant banker [and now Premier] Mike Baird's big business mates.
In This Changes Everything, author Naomi Klein raises the question of how capitalist societies will 鈥渁dapt鈥 to the people made homeless and jobless by increasingly intense and frequent natural disasters.
One of the issues she focuses on is the reaction of insurance companies, pointing out that the chief executive officer of Swiss Re America admits that climate change is 鈥渨hat keeps us up at night鈥.
A month after the Labor landslide electoral victory, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has begun to fine-tune her government鈥檚 opposition to the sale of public assets.
The sale of public assets caused the demise of both the previous Labor and Liberal-National Party governments. The Palaszczuk Labor government was elected on a platform of halting the proposed sale of state assets, such as electricity and ports.
To date, Vice-Chancellor of University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Attila Brungs has supported Prime Minister Tony Abbott's fee deregulation legislation. Last year fee deregulation 鈥渃ould have some positive impacts鈥 and result in 鈥渢eaching quality going up鈥. Arguing that it is positive that students finish their course with $100,000 debt is a hard sell, and Brungs felt the heat as students at UTS signed petitions calling on him to oppose it.
US hemispheric policy reached a new low on March 9 when President Barack Obama invoked emergency powers to declare 鈥渁 national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela.鈥
Thanks to Obama鈥檚 action, the US has now blatantly rehabilitated its traditional imperial posture towards the South and challenged the continent-wide Bolivarian cause of Latin American and Caribbean independence and sovereignty.
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