Global military spending rose to US $1.74 trillion in 2011. The Australian government spends $25 billion a year 鈥 or $68 million per day 鈥 on defence spending.
This is a travesty when 125,000 Australians are homeless every night and budget cuts are being made to higher education.
Demonstrations were held on April 15 in cities around Australia and in over 100 centres world wide to mark a global day of action on military spending. This coincides with the publication by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute of world military expenditures for the past year.
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interviews founder Gregory Wilpert on Venezuela's April 14 elections, in which the candidate of the Bolivarian revolution Nicolas Maduro beat the right-wing opposition candidate Henrique Caprilles by more than 300,000 votes.
The Sydney Support Assange and WikiLeaks Coalition (SAWC) interviewed former Australian attorney-general, Kep Enderby QC, about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
Enderby first contacted SAWC to offer his support for our campaign last year. In July, he wrote a statement read out at a rally for Assange and WikiLeaks in Sydney.
Enderby became involved in civil liberties and human rights activism while working as a lawyer in London in the 1950s. He championed the cause of African-American singer and radical, Paul Robeson, who was being denied his passport by the US government.聽
Nicolas Maduro, the candidate for the Unitede Socialist Party of Venezuela, has won the Venezuelan presidential election with 50.66 percent of the vote against 49.07 percent for opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski.
Maduro gave a victory speech immediately after, while Capriles initially refused to recognize the results.
The 鈥渇irst bulletin鈥 results were announced by the president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Tibisay Lucena, at around 11:20 p.m. Venezuelan time, with 99.12 percent of the votes totaled, enough to give Maduro an irreversible victory.
Perth protest by sole parents and supporters against the cuts to parenting payment in which 84000 sole parents have been forced onto Newstart at a rate more than $130 per week below the poverty line! Speakers included: Rachel Siewert, Mary O'Brien and Sam Wainwright and others.
Iain Banks is an acclaimed Scottish author, who has written successful straight fiction as well science fiction (as Iain M. Banks). His science fiction series 鈥淭he Culture鈥 deals with a post-scarcity, egalitarian and classless society. Tragically, the 59-year-old author recently announced that he has terminal cancer.
British groups have for three months been pressing Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to withdraw its festival invitation to Israel's National Theatre, Habima, in response to the Palestinian call to boycott Israeli cultural institutions, on March 29.
In the week leading up to Venezuela鈥檚 April 14 presidential elections, whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks published a classified cable indicating that US-based aid organisations were working to overthrow the government and defend US corporate interests in the Andean country.
Rallies were held around the country on April 13 to protest the federal government's cuts to single parent benefits which will force families deeper into poverty.
In the western Sydney suburb of Penrith, 30 people gathered to hear from speakers which included single parents, Penrith city councillor Michelle Tormey and founder of ChilOut, Dianne Hiles, who campaigns to get refugee children and families out of detention.
Photos: Tessa Barrett
Compulsory income management of disadvantaged welfare recipients was slammed by speakers at a forum at the Bankstown Arts Centre on April 11.
The forum, organised by the Say No to Government Income Management: Not in Bankstown, Not Anywhere campaign coalition, attracted about 40 people to hear representatives from unions and Aboriginal, migrant and youth groups call for a campaign to stop the extension of income management from July 1 this year.
The SEARCH foundation held a conference called 鈥淪ecure Jobs in a Green Future: Australian Left Renewal Conference鈥, on April 6-7. It featured international guest Costas Isychos, a member of the Greek left party SYRIZA and head of the party鈥檚 external and defence policy.
At first, a bridging visa seems like a new life. A brief glimpse of freedom is felt by many asylum seekers who, after years in detention, see an opportunity to live freely in Australia.
The temporary, selective visa gets asylum seekers six weeks鈥 accommodation and financial support of $219 a week 鈥 a figure that is 89% of the Newstart allowance.
But after six weeks 鈥 a nanosecond in Australia's cumbersome and bureaucratic refugee processing system 鈥 asylum seekers are expected to go out on their own, find somewhere to live, and somehow survive on a few hundred dollars a week.
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