Occupy has gone viral. First we had flash trading, then flash mobs, and now a flash movement. But this is no flash in the pan.
902
Strong>The Short Goodbye: A Skewed History of the Last Boom and the Next Bust
By Elisabeth Wynhausen
Melbourne University Publishing, 2011
219 pages, $29.99 (pb)
From writing stories about workers being sacked during the 2009 global financial crisis, Elisabeth Wynhausen, a journalist at Rupert Murdoch鈥檚 The Australian, got a taste of the real thing when she was handed a pink slip of her own.
The streets of Oakland, California, echoed with the voices of tens of thousands of people determined to take a stand on November 2. Workers, students, activists and people from all walks of life responded to the call for a general strike by Occupy Oakland. The last general strike in the United States was in 1946 (also in Oakland).
Two civilian boats, the Canadian Tahrir (鈥淟iberation鈥), and the Irish Saoirse (鈥淔reedom鈥), carried 27 people from nine countries to try to reach the beleaguered Gaza Strip to challenge Israel鈥檚 ongoing criminal blockade of the territory.
On November 4, the two ships were illegally boarded by the Israeli military in international waters. All passengers, including Australian activist Michael Coleman, were detained by Israel.
In October, the Sydney branch of the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society (ACFS) toured Dr Merita Armindo Monteiro, an East Timorese doctor trained for free in Cuba. Armindo Monterio is also an activist in the Timor Leste-Cuba Friendship Association.
Since 2004, Cuba has undertaken a large-scale medical training program for East Timor and sent hundreds of Cuban medical personnel to work on the island. Cuban medical collaboration in the region has since been extended to Kiribati, Nauru, Vanuatu, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands. Papua New Guinea may soon benefit from Cuba鈥檚 generosity as well.
When Annie Leonard put her groundbreaking cartoon online in late 2007, she would have been really happy if 50,000 people had watched it. 鈥淭o my utter amazement we got 50,000 viewers on the first day,鈥 she told 麻豆传媒 Weekly during a recent visit to Australia.
Two grassroots lesbian, gay, bisexual, sex and/or gender diverse (LGBSGD) rights conferences will take place in Sydney in early December. The conferences will coincide with a national marriage rights rally on December 3, outside the ALP National Conference.
Australia's first Sex and Gender Diversity (SGD) Human Rights and Dignity Conference, is planned for December 2 at the Redfern Community Centre.
In the context of Australia鈥檚 struggling climate movement, the achievements of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC) have been significant.
When the Murdoch press would rather report Lord Munckton鈥檚 denialist nonsense, a group that connects more than 70,000 young Australians to raise awareness and combat climate change is commendable.
However, AYCC鈥檚 politics are not without problems.
About 1500 people joined an Occupy Sydney rally at Town Hall on November 5, making it the largest of the three Occupy Sydney marches so far. Members of the Maritime Union of Australia and other unions filled out the crowd.
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams led a dramatic walkout from the Dublin parliament (Dail) on November 2. The protest was over the coalition government鈥檚 decision to hand over more than 鈧700 million to an unknown private investor in the failed Anglo Irish Bank.
Finance minister Michael Noonan admitted in the Dail there was no legal obligation to refund the bond investment, which was not covered by the former government鈥檚 bank guarantee.
With the government refusing a debate on the matter, Adams led the walkout of Sinn Fein and United Left Alliance parliamentarians.
Thousands of New South Wales high school and primary school teachers stopped work for two hours on November 2. They voted overwhelmingly to reject the Coalition O鈥橣arrell state government鈥檚 salary offer.
Ninety-nine percent of teachers at the stopwork meetings also voted to hold a 24-hour stopwork action on November 29 if the government refused to make a reasonable salary offer.
Teachers will consider further industrial action at the start of 2012 if a reasonable offer is not made by then.
If you speak out against the widening gap between wages and CEOs鈥 salaries, the corporate media will accuse you of stoking the 鈥減olitics of envy鈥. Workers who dare take industrial action to get a few more crumbs from the bosses鈥 table are cast as class war dinosaurs.
- Previous page
- Page 3
- Next page