Moroccan protesters have taken to the streets in recent days, taking advantage of the global spotlight provided by the November 7-18 United Nations COP22 climate talks in Marrakech. Mouhcine Fikri could have been any one of them.
Fikri was the fishmonger whose awful death in the back of a garbage collection truck was caught on mobile phone footage that subsequently spread across social media to ignite large demonstrations in Morocco.
BHP Billiton executives faced dissident shareholders at the company鈥檚 annual general meeting in Brisbane on November 17 over its responsibility for the Samarco tailings dam disaster in Brazil last year.
The protesters want Australia鈥檚 biggest company to compensate the victims. BHP jointly owns the iron ore mine with Brazilian mining giant, Vale.
The news that the White House and Republican congressional leaders have given up on passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is welcome.
That the TPP would be defeated by Congress if brought to a vote signals that the Trojan-horse 鈥渢rade鈥 agreements that expand corporate power are simply no longer politically viable. People power beat the united forces of a US president, the Republican congressional leaders and the entire corporate lobby.
鈥淲e know that elections and individuals alone don鈥檛 create change 鈥 movements do.鈥
This is the maxim that guided the huge United States-wide action that took place on November 15. There were nearly 200 protests against the Dakota Access pipeline, the largest since the US government requested the project be temporarily halted in September.
Each day after the November 8 presidential elections won by Donald Trump, the streets of cities across the United States have pulsed with anger, outrage, fear and solidarity in opposition to Trump, US Socialist Worker .
鈥淭he response was immediate, with spontaneous mobilisations forming as the election results came in,鈥 it said.
Social movements across Asia, Latin America, Oceania, and North America celebrated on November 15 the fact that their seven-year strategic campaign had successfully derailed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a controversial trade deal widely condemned for privileging corporate profits over international public interest.
Up to 1000 people gathered outside state Parliament on November 15 to protest against plans by the Western Australian Coalition government to sell the state鈥檚 main electricity provider, Western Power.
The protest was organised by the Use your Power Group, headed by the Australian Services Union (ASU) and Electrical Trades Union. There was also strong support from the Maritime Union of Australia, Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, United Voice, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and State School Teachers Union.
Palestinians and their supporters gathered on November 15 at Federation Square in Melbourne to celebrate the Palestinian National Day. The Palestinian flag was raised for the first time ever in Melbourne and stood next to seven other Palestinian flags.
In response to the election of right-wing billionaire Donald Trump as president elect in the US, a 鈥淒ump Trump鈥 protest was organised on November 12.
The action was in solidarity with African Americans, Latinos, LGBTQIA people, the disabled and women, all of whom have borne the brunt of attacks by Trump and his supporters as they exploited xenophobia, Islamophobia, racism, homophobia and misogyny during the long election campaign.
Landholders are celebrating after a gas exploration lease south of the environmentally sensitive Whicher Range, near Margaret River, was cancelled on November 11 after it expired and was not renewed.
Mariah de Cerquiera from the Whicher Range Action Group said the cancellation was a victory for the local campaign to save the area from being turned into an industrialised gasfield.
A report by UNICEF and Save the Children found operating the detention system on Nauru and Manus Island had cost $3.6 billion since the reintroduction of offshore processing in 2012.
The report said shutting offshore detention facilities would save $2 billion over four years.
Turnbacks are estimated to have cost nearly $300 million since Operation Sovereign Borders began.
The US Declaration of Independence declares: 鈥淲hen a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government鈥.
Err, like now, when we have just seen the racist, misogynist, billionaire bully Donald Trump 鈥渆lected鈥 US president by only 25% of the eligible vote and with 700,000 fewer votes that his opponent Hilary Clinton?
When the majority of US residents did not vote for either of these two candidates of the richest 1%?