The United States media remain enthralled by Congress鈥檚 partisan battles over the national debt ceiling, while the assault on public sector workers across the US intensifies.
On June 14, Wisconsin鈥檚 state supreme court overturned an earlier legal challenge to the state鈥檚 anti-union 鈥渂udget-repair鈥 bill. The bill will ban collective bargaining for most of the state鈥檚 public sector workers.
The bill sparked sustained mass protests in Wisconsin in February and March, including the occupation of the Capitol building in Madison.
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WikiLeaks released the statement below on June 16 to mark six months since its editor-in-chief Julian Assange was placed under house arrest in Britain.
Three months after the earthquake and tsunami that triggered a nuclear disaster in Japan, new radiation "hot spots" may require the evacuation of more areas further from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility.
鈥淧ower never gives up without a fight.鈥 These words of United States civil rights leader Martin Luther King were quoted by US President Barack Obama in his May 19 policy speech on the Middle East.
The quote is certainly a true description of the response of the region's regimes to the Arab democratic upsurge. But Obama failed to mention that the biggest power in the Middle East is the US.
Disaster capitalists flocked to Haiti in a 鈥済old rush鈥 for contracts to rebuild the country after the January 12, 2010 earthquake, wrote the current US ambassador Kenneth Merten in a secret Febuary 1, 2010 cable obtained by WikiLeaks and reviewed by Haiti Liberte.
An emergency phone tree on June 6 mobilised the extra support needed to stop workers coming on-site to begin demolishing part of Melbourne鈥檚 only Aboriginal school, Ballerrt Mooroop College (BMC).
The workers from the demolition company, ADCO ,decided, as long as there were people staffing the picket line, not to cross it. The Building Industry Group of unions, including the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union, the Electrical Trades Union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the Plumbers Union are considering banning work on the site.
More than 40 Palestinian civil society organisations released a statement on June 12 calling for international support for the Freedom Flotilla 2, which aims to break the siege of Gaza.
Rapper Ozi Batla has long been known for speaking out on social issues. His band The Herd are well known for tracks such as 鈥77%鈥 鈥 which features the line 鈥77% of Aussies are racist鈥, in response to an opinion poll result on the treatment of refugees during the Howard years. The Herd's 鈥淏urn Down the Parliament鈥 caused controversy when it was coincidentally released the same week as the 2003 Canberra bush fires.
Swiss women and a major Swiss union held a national day of action on June 14 for wage equality for women and for a minimum wage of US$4000 a month for all workers.
The minimum wage that the union and women are seeking would be the equivalent of $48,000 a year. The minimum wage is now $3000 a month, which was won in the 1980s.
Switzerland has one of the highest costs of living in the world.
Soccer is the great global game: the closest thing we have to a connective cultural tissue that binds our species across national and cultural borders.
But only in a world so upside down could 鈥渢he Beautiful Game鈥 be run by an organisation as corrupt as FIFA and by a man as rotten to the core as FIFA President Sepp Blatter.
Only Blatter, whose reputation for degeneracy approaches legend, would hire a war criminal such as former United States secretary of state Henry Kissinger to head 鈥渁 committee of wise persons鈥 aimed at 鈥渞ooting out corruption鈥 in his organisation.
Marcel Khalife, born in 1950 in Amchit, Lebanon, has injected new life into the music produced by the oud (the Arabic lute) 鈥 helping revive an important part of Arabic culture. Khalife studied the oud at the Beirut National Conservatory of Music and graduated in 1971. From 1972 to 1975, Khalife taught at the Beirut National Conservatory of Music, public universities and local private music institutions. During that period, he toured the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and the United States giving solo performances on the oud.
They鈥檙e a part of the human race
Searching for a safe place
To rise from their despair
To聽be part of the world that seems fair
Without wars
Famines
Or destruction
That stops all means of production
So they begin to flee
Unwilling to live amongst the聽debris
Where they lost friends
Without any warnings
Where they lost family
Indefinitely鈥
When they arrive
Freedom is limited in order to survive
Due to a lack of understanding
With the government demanding
Brief medical attention
A lack of food and mental exhaustion
A place we like to call mandatory detention
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