903

In the lead up to the ALP National Conference next month, marriage equality is shaping up to be the biggest test yet to Prime Minister Julia Gillard鈥檚 leadership. Gillard has moved from her position that she would override a pro-equality decision at the conference, to hinting she will allow Labor MPs a conscience vote. However, she now also holds the dubious honour of being the only remaining Labor leader supporting the marriage ban.
Veteran Brisbane activist Gary McLennan spoke at an Occupy Brisbane rally on November 5. An abridged version of his speech is below. * * * Friends, I want to thank you sincerely for the invitation to speak to you today. It remains for me a badge of honour, a great honour, that I鈥檝e been asked twice to speak to the Occupy Brisbane movement. I said when I first spoke to you that your movement represented the best hope for the kind of world that I wanted my grandchildren to grow up in. I believed that then and I still believe it now.
Hundreds took to the streets of Hobart for the Inaugural Pride Parade on November 5 as part of the TasPride Festival. This was the first parade held since Tasmania was the final state to decriminalise homosexuality in 1997. Tasmanian Aboriginal lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex members also marched. Speakers at the rally afterwards at Parliament House included Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group spokesperson Rodney Croome, Outright Youth coordinator Joshua Brown, Community Services Minister Cassy O鈥機onnor and Coming Out Proud president Julian Punch.
91自拍论坛 Weekly鈥檚 Ted Walker spoke to two young members of the Egyptian Socialist Party, Basem Osman and Amr Bahaa, in Cairo in September. They discussed their experiences during the uprising against former dictator Hosni Mubarak and the future of Egypt鈥檚 revolution. * * * Why did you join the Egyptian Socialist Party?
The global Occupy movement has focused the spotlight on the 1% versus the 99%. Who are the 1%? In the United States, the 400 richest individuals have as much wealth as the bottom 150 million. A similar picture applies in all the large capitalist countries. Economy owned by the 1%
After two weeks of hard work to obtain signatures and the constitutive documents, on October 27 the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP) presented before the Supreme Electoral Tribunal more than 81,000 signatures and other documents supporting the request for the inscription of the political instrument, the Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE).
Arlene TextaQueen and Gary Foley

When my wife and I were in the supermarket the other day, we got chatting to a kindly white stranger. After a few seconds, the woman asked my wife, "And how long have you been here?"

Socialist Alliance (SA) stallholders at today鈥檚 Newtown Festival were told today by a festival organiser that NSW Police had urged them to ban SA and Occupy Sydney from the festival. The SA has paid for and run a stall every year at the festival. But this year police threatened organisers 鈥 the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre 鈥 with a $16,000 bill if they did not carry out the ban, saying that the presence of SA and/or Occupy Sydney might incite trouble.
In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary By Ngo Van AK Press, 2011 264 pages, $43.99 Australians know of the Vietnam War from the arrival of Australian troops in 1965 through to their withdrawal in 1973. People in the United States generally date it from the arrival of US advisors through to the inglorious departure of US helicopters in 1975. However, for the Vietnamese the struggle began long before that, from their colonisation by the French in the 19th Century.
Debate about the Labor-Greens carbon price has dominated Australian politics for the past year. So it is little surprise that the passing of the carbon price laws through parliament on November 8 received widespread media attention. But the media鈥檚 coverage overshadowed two shocking new reports on the climate emergency released in the past week.
The Man on Devil's Island: Alfred Dreyfus & the Affair that Divided France By Ruth Harris Allen Lane, 2011 542 pages, $26.95 (pb) The Dreyfus Affair in France a century ago shows how little has changed. 鈥淣ational security鈥 was on the lips of politicians and military officers as an innocent man from a vilified group was framed for treason in a rigged military court and sent to rot in a prison hell-hole to serve political ends amid war hysteria. Make the name 鈥淎lfred Dreyfus鈥 or 鈥淒avid Hicks鈥 and the template fits.
Not many things would get the Returned and Services League and died-in-the-wool greenies climbing into bed together; have a mother-and-daughter being frisked by police on the same day, nor cause the arrest of an 83-year-old retired high school English teacher. But the 14 Ficusmicrocarpa var. Hillii, commonly known as Hill Figs, planted in memory of World War I soldiers in Newcastle have.