Nine refugees held in the Northern Immigration Detention Centre in Darwin staged a protest on top of a building in the centre鈥檚 compound on March 15 after they witnessed Serco guards assault another detainee.
The refugees 鈥 who are Rohingya people, an ethnic minority in western Burma 鈥 told refugee advocate Carl O鈥機onnor on March 16 that the protest was sparked by a physical assault on another Rohingya detainee.
鈥淥ne man was refused rice in the mess room,鈥 the refugees said. 鈥淥ut of frustration he broke a glass. He was then chased down and tried to escape from two Serco guards.
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As the United States and Britain look for an excuse to invade another oil-rich Arab country, the hypocrisy is familiar.
Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is 鈥渄elusional鈥 and 鈥渂lood-drenched鈥, while the authors of an invasion that killed a million Iraqis, who have kidnapped and tortured in our name, are entirely sane, never blood-drenched and once again the arbiters of 鈥渟tability鈥.
But something has changed. Reality is no longer what the powerful say it is.
Of all the spectacular revolts across the world, the most exciting is the insurrection of knowledge sparked by WikiLeaks.
Emboldened by the successes of Muammar Gaddafi鈥檚 forces in Libya, a number of Arab regimes have escalated crackdowns on pro-democracy protests while the world鈥檚 media was focused on the earthquake disaster in Japan.
With the exceptions of Libya and Iran, the governments brutally cracking down on their citizens have received minimal criticism from the West.
Calls for 鈥渞estraint on both sides鈥 obscure the fact that it is governments armed with weapons made in the West ruthlessly attacking mostly unarmed people.
This video is from a protest by homeless people on 14-4-11 in response to plans by the state government to sweep homeless people off the street during the October CHOGM summit.
"We all knew that this was going to happen, but now many people are going to be saddled with this gigantic debt," David White, president of Community Action for Sustainable Transport (CART) told 91自拍论坛 Weekly on March 11.
He was commenting on the move to place the Clem7, Brisbane鈥檚 first and only cross-river road tunnel, into financial administration the previous week.
The article below is based on a speech by veteran feminist activist Eva Cox to the March 12 Sydney International Women鈥檚 Day protest.
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I wore my 1973 T-shirt to the march today to remind myself of what we were hoping to do. It was printed by Canberra Women鈥檚 Liberation for the women who were short-listed for the first ever Prime Ministerial Women鈥檚 Adviser鈥檚 job with Gough Whitlam.
It has the clenched fist women鈥檚 symbol on the front and the word superwoman on the back.
Wilhelm Furtwaengler 鈥 The Great EMI Recordings
21 CD set, EMI
Furtwaengler the Legend
Three CD set, EMI
George Whitbread, a long-deceased left identity in Perth who once led a printer鈥檚 strike at The West Australian, was reputedly fond of saying that 鈥淏eethoven gives you strength鈥.
Nor was 鈥淲hitty鈥 (as he was called) alone in his sentiments.
After World War II, many on the left 鈥 builders, grocers, teachers, homemakers 鈥 took an active interest in classical music.
More than 100 protesters joined a March 14 blockade of the Queensland Gas Corporation (QGC) gasworks on the QGC-owned property 鈥淜enya鈥 near Tara, 300 kilometres west of Brisbane.
Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE) launched its award-winning Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Stationary Energy Plan to a packed meeting at Perth Town Hall on March 14.
BZE executive director Matthew Wright outlined the Western Australian aspects of the plan, which was developed to show how Australia could reduce its stationary energy greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2020, using a mix of commercially available renewable energy sources, primarily concentrating solar thermal and wind.
Through the eyes of many modern women, it seems difficult to comprehend that not so many decades ago women all around the Western world were fighting for the basic rights and freedoms they so rightly deserved.
Amid an ongoing struggle, laws began to change and social ideals began to alter. A new sense of empowerment quickly emerged as women entered the workforce and marked their places in the political arena.
Had gender equality finally been won? Or did certain stereotypes of women remain beneath the surface, waiting to be shaped by the norms of modern society and popular culture?
Socialist Alliance candidate for the NSW seat of Parramatta Duncan Roden was born in Fiji and grew up in Sydney's west. He is a member of the socialist youth organisation Resistance and is an activist with the Parramatta Climate Action Network and Westies Welcome Refugees.
Roden spoke to Tamil Aruvi about his views on the Tamil people鈥檚 struggle for self-determination. The interview is republished below.
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What do you know about Sri Lanka's treatment of Tamil people?
Progressive Indonesian website said in a March 14 editorial that the recent US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks exposing the corruption of the Indonesian government confirmed what most Indonesians already knew.
However, it said the leaks have further delegitimised the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
In his two terms of government, the editorial said, Yudhoyono has imposed neoliberal policies and acted as a puppet of US imperialism.
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