Qantas workers at Sydney Airport struck for four hours on March 30. Workers held a mass delegates聮 meeting to respond to plans to outsource jobs at Sydney, Launceston and Hobart airports. Baggage handlers, ramp, fleet and catering staff at airports in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth also took industrial action.
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More than 3000 workers, organised by the Public Service Association, marched on NSW Parliament House on April 2 to oppose the planned privatisation of the Goulburn and Cessnock jails.
The article below is by Peter Boyle, the national secretary of the Democratic Socialist Perspective, which is a Marxist tendency in the Socialist Alliance. Boyle attended the founding congress of the new mass-based left-wing Power of the Masses Party (PLM) in Manila in February. He also met with military rebels, some supportive of the PLM, currently in prison for trying to overthrow the corrupt, neoliberal government of President Gloria Arroyo. A longer version of this article can be found at the socialist e-journal Links, .
As capitalism sinks into a growing crisis of war and economic meltdown, people around the world are waking up to the fact that something is drastically wrong with the system that is throwing millions into poverty, wrecking our climate and turning entire countries into battlefields.
Members of the Aboriginal community were joined by construction and manufacturing unionists at a 350-strong protest on April 3 to bring an end to deaths of Aboriginal people in custody.
Speaking on March 30 in Qatar, the day before the two-day summit of South American and Arab countries, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez said the meeting represented the 鈥渃oming together鈥 of two regions that have experienced 鈥渃enturies of struggle against colonialism鈥.
Senator Humaira Namati, a member of the upper house of the Afghan parliament, said the new law that has been signed by US-backed President Harzai Karzai was 鈥渨orse than during the Taliban鈥, the March 31 British Guardian said.
According to a 2008 report by UN agencies UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation, an estimated 1.9 million people were newly infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa in 2007, bringing the number of people living with HIV in the region to 22 million.
The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), the party led by Chavez that has almost 6 million aspiring members, has also produced a document analysing the global economic crisis and the tasks for revolutionary socialists for discussion in its branches across the country. A translation of the document can be read at the socialist e-journal, Links ().
Workers and the community will march on May Day this year under the banner 鈥淧ut jobs before profits鈥.
The Group of 20 meeting of leaders of the world聮s biggest economic powers was marked for failure even before it began on April 1.
The article below is by Brian Senewiratne, who is from Sri Lanka聮s Sinhalese ethnic majority and a long-time Tamil rights activist. For his uncompromising stance against the long-term oppression, and current brutal military offensive, against the Sri Lanka聮s Tamil minority by the Sinhalese chauvinist regime, he was recently barred from entering Malaysia and was singled out and victimised by Canadian and Australian immigration officials.
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