Images forge reality, granting a power to television and video and even still photographs that can burrow deep into people鈥檚 consciousness without them even knowing it.
I thought that I, too, was immune to the repetitious portrayals of Venezuela as a failed state in the throes of a popular rebellion. But I wasn鈥檛 prepared for what I saw in Caracas this month: how little of daily life appeared to be affected by the right-wing protests, the normality that prevailed in the vast majority of the city.
I, too, had been taken in by media imagery.
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Socialist Alternative has denied allegations by the Jewish Students鈥 Society at the Australian National University (ANU) that members of the socialist group abused them with anti-Semitic slurs.
The arrival of a new M.I.A. album is always a thing to behold. Music critics are sure to be polarised, as are the usually ham-fisted attempts to better categorise her work to make it less controversial than it is. Snide remarks about her latest, Matangi, however, have been relatively muted in the months since its release.
The March in March protests across Australia over March 15-17 were a resounding success 鈥 not just because of their size, focus and breadth.
Just as significant is the fact that March in March tore apart the idea 鈥 seeded by the cynical rhetoric of John Howard's spin doctors in the wake of the invasion of Iraq 鈥 that protests don't work.
This protest worked precisely because it brought between 80,000 and 110,000 people out of their homes and into the streets in a disparate yet united way against the Tony Abbott government's attacks.
To get elected, wait until the existing government makes itself unelectable. Say as little as you can about your real policies. Smile, and present a small target.
Those were the perspectives of South Australia鈥檚 Liberal opposition in the run-up to the state elections on March 15. The key Liberal slogan, outside polling places throughout the state, was 鈥淎 Fresh Start鈥. A start to what, specifically? Voters weren鈥檛 supposed to ask.
A former welfare worker at the Nauru refugee detention camp says the July 19 riot that razed most of the Topside compound was an 鈥渋nevitable outcome鈥 of a 鈥渃ruel and degrading policy鈥, in a new book released last week.
The Undesirables follows several big whistleblower revelations that have come from Nauru since the camp was re-established by then-PM Julia Gillard in August 2012.
The Liberal Party swept to victory in the Tasmanian elections on March 15, winning 14 seats of the 25 seat parliament. The Labor Party, which had governed for the past three years in coalition with the Greens, received a swing against of 9.5%. It won only six seats.
The Greens were also heavily punished, losing two seats in an 8% swing against them. Party leaders Nick McKim and Cassy O鈥機onnor managed to keep their seats. Kim Booth looks likely to be re-elected as well.
Witnesses to the violence in the Manus Island detention centre spoke at a forum on March 17 organised by the Refugee Action Coalition (RAC) in Sydney. The forum was organised after the death of Reza Berati, who died on February 17 after being beaten by Papua New Guinea police and G4S staff during widespread violence that also injured 60 asylum seekers.
The forum heard from the brother of a refugee detained on Manus Island, Samar; translator and former refugee Azita Bokan; and RAC spokesperson Ian Rintoul.
As David Harvey reminds us, capital never solves its crisis tendencies, it merely moves them around. Since the turn to neoliberalism in the 1980s there has certainly been a lot of movement.
Throughout the 1980s there were big recessions in all of the rich countries. Across Africa, Latin America and Western Asia at that time there was a depression, although it was not called this because of a self-imposed taboo on the word by mainstream economic commentators since 1929.
Members of the National Union of Workers (NUW) employed at the Super A-Mart warehouse in Somerton have maintained a presence outside their workplace since being locked out on March 7.
The workers held a one-day strike on February 28 in support of their campaign for an enterprise bargaining agreement, which would be the first ever signed at the warehouse. They called another strike on March 7, but were then locked out indefinitely by the company.
"The solution to Qantas's problems is being framed as a choice between lifting the level of permissible foreign ownership or a public debt guarantee,鈥 Chad Satterlee wrote in article in the . 鈥淭here is another option: renationalisation".
Jock Palfreeman is serving a 20-year sentence for murder in Sofia Central Prison, Bulgaria. His conviction followed a trumped-up trial in a dysfunctional state where the local gangsters known as mutri hold sway, and hatred of Roma is a national pastime for many.
Palfreeman was alleged to have killed Andrei Monov in Sofia in December 2007 while trying to defend two Roma men. Monov was the son of a Bulgarian MP who wants Jock to spend the rest of his life in jail.
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