An audience of more than 600 people at a forum debate in Sydney on May 10 voted by a margin of 69% to 23%, that, "All drugs should be legalised."
The forum was sponsored by Intelligence2, a project of the St James Ethics Centre. It heard arguments for and against the proposal and questions and comments from the audience.
Dr Alex Wodak, president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, and a founder of Australia's first needle exchange, argued: "As a starting point, we must recognise that the 鈥榳ar on drugs鈥 has failed. Legalisation is the only answer.
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Despite years of anti-labour laws, government attacks on unions, workplace restructuring and labour 鈥渇lexibility鈥, the huge turnout for 2011 May Day celebrations shows that South Korean organised labour is still a force to be reckoned with.
On May 1, huge numbers of workers took to the streets for May Day protests across Seoul. Police estimated the crowd at more than 58,000 鈥 making it the largest 2011 May Day rally in Asia.
The main demands of the rally were for better workplace security and an end to the casualisation of labour.
Campaign groups Western Downs Alliance and Six Degrees combined with a number of other activists and organisations to bring us the Rock the Gates Festival at Tara showgrounds from April 29 to May 4
In the past few decades, Christian and Muslim theologies have been misinterpreted and used tactically against Middle Eastern dictatorships with no success.
For instance, former US president George W Bush justified the 鈥渨ar on terror鈥 as a fight against an 鈥渁xis of evil鈥 and called for a new Crusade to liberate the people of the Middle East.
This use of Christian theological concepts to justify the war in the Middle East requires a lot of spin.
For many Australians, Fairfax Media is a benign alternative to Rupert Murdoch鈥檚 right-wing media empire. Well-meaning people buy Fairfax newspapers such as the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age because they believe they present a fairer picture of the news. But just how fair is Fairfax?
Newcastle climate, forest and anti-war activist Pete Gray passed away on April 30 after a battle with cancer that lasted more than two years. Pete was a week and a half short of his 31st birthday.
Pete was a founding and active member of the nationally and internationally renowned activist group , whose bold direct-action approach to climate activism has earned the acclaim of many supporters.
One hundred activists of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) attended the Pushing the Boundaries climate change conference over April 28-29.
The two days of talks, vibrant debate and action-based workshops set a progressive agenda for ongoing union environmental activism and marked the NTEU as the left pole of the global warming debate in the union movement.
NTEU national president Jeannie Rea opened the conference by drawing attention to the special place of the NTEU in the debate about global warming.
Coalition leader Tony Abbott wrote to PM Julia Gillard in March calling for a bipartisan approach to Aboriginal issues and a in the Northern Territory. He flew to Alice Springs in late April to further these calls.
June will mark four years since former PM John Howard launched the Northern Territory Emergency Response 鈥 or NT intervention.
Every once in a while a book comes along that changes a mass audience's view of the world. Naomi Klein鈥檚 2000 book No Logo, which deconstructed consumer culture, was one. Treasure Islands, a revealing expose of tax havens written by financial journalist Nicholas Shaxson, is equally groundbreaking.
In a joint statement with Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak on May 7, the Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced an agreement had been reached to swap 800 future 鈥渋rregular maritime arrivals鈥 from Australia with 4000 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recognised refugees from Malaysia over the next four years.
Our goal, as socialists, is to raise women (and for that matter, all of humanity) to a level where they are regarded as true human beings.
By that I mean, people whose ideas, opinions and desires are worthy of consideration, rather than machines which exist to provide sexual pleasure, offspring, and free/cheap labour in the form of caregiving/housework.
Young women face much pressure in our society, in the form of media and pornography, which tell them how they must behave, look and relate to men.
A group of 30 people held up construction of a second loader arm at Newcastle's third coal loader site on Kooragang Island on May 10, stopping a crane crew for about 90 minutes.
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