鈥淚n light of news that every day the entirety of telecom giant Verizon鈥檚 call system records are handed over to the NSA, news that Occupy Wall Street protest attendees鈥 cellphones were logged should hardly come as a shock,鈥 said Salon.com on June 7. 鈥淚t nonetheless bears noting that cellphone metadata of march and rally participants was likely specifically logged, as security expert Steven Ramdam recently noted.
鈥淭his means that individuals were directly targeted for their engagement with First Amendment-protected activity.鈥
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For much of the past two years, Israel stood sphinx-like on the sidelines of Syria鈥檚 civil war.
Did it want Bashar al-Assad鈥檚 regime toppled? Did it favour military intervention to help opposition forces? And what did it think of the increasing visibility of Islamist groups in Syria? It was difficult to guess.
The released this statement on June 20.
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The Socialist Alliance in Australia stands in warm solidarity with the Gezi resistance in Istanbul, throughout Turkey and around the world.
We watched in horror as the peaceful occupation of Gezi Park was so savagely attacked by police early this month and in joy as ordinary people of all ages and backgrounds poured onto the streets to defend their precious green space and their democratic rights. We are with you in Gezi.
About 40 people gathered in Raintree Park, Darwin, to mark World Refugee Day on June 20.
Larrikiah woman June Mills opened the gathering with a rendition of Arafura Pearl, and an explanation of the Aboriginal practice of welcoming strangers to their land. Other speaker included Greens councillor Robin Knox, Tamil-Australian lawyer Kajaliny Ranjithkuma and Reverend Basil Schild.
A minute鈥檚 silence was held for the 62-year-old refugee from Afghanistan who was found dead at Darwin鈥檚 Wickham Point detention centre on June 15.
Australian foreign minister Bob Carr is nothing if not committed to humanitarian causes. And anyone supporting humanitarian causes cannot be anything but especially concerned about the situation facing the people of West Papua.
And so it was that Carr bravely spoke out against the 鈥渃ruel鈥 forces oppressing the long-suffering Papuan people: the international solidarity movement with the Papuan people's struggle against Indonesian occupation and for self-determination.
Sireen Khudiri is a 24-year-old Palestinian teacher, human rights activist and political prisoner. She studied computer science at the Open University in Tubas, on the West Bank.
Khudiri is an advocate of the rights of children in the Jordan Valley in the West Bank to have a decent education and has been active in non-violent campaigns against the abuses imposed by the Israeli occupation authorities.
Khudiri also writes to publicise the struggle of the Palestinian people for their rights.
About 400 people filled the Fitzroy Town Hall for the launch of the 鈥渢rains not toll roads鈥 campaign on June 13.
The Yarra City Council organised the launch to advocate for a rail line from the CBD to Doncaster Hill, as well as to oppose the state government鈥檚 proposed East-West road link.
Minetu Larabas Sueidat is a young Saharawi woman living in refugee camps in Tinduf in the south-west of Algeria. Western Sahara, the land of the Saharawi people, has been occupied by Morocco since 1975. In 1991, the United Nations brokered ceasfire between Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front that supposed to include a referendum on self-determination, which has still not occurred.
When I asked Margarita Windisch, the Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Wills, to explain why she became an activist, the answer was simple.
She said, 鈥淟ife is very political, like it or not. So it鈥檚 better to get into the fray and fight for what we want and what the planet needs than to leave it up to a small rich minority who will put their bank accounts before humanity. That鈥檚 what I decided to do anyway and have never looked back.鈥
Edward Snowden said on June 17 that it was as a compliment to have former US vice President Dick Cheney call a 鈥渢raitor鈥 for leaking classified information from the National Security Agency. Sowden, who has been charged with espionage by US authorities, made the comment in a June 17 live web chat with investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald hosted by The Guardian.
Many protests took place last week. There were protests against government inaction on the climate emergency, against the mass sackings by a bank making record profits and a sad vigil for a 26-year-old Hazara man who died in an Australian immigration detention centre.
More protests were also planned for refugee rights, Aboriginal rights and in solidarity with the new people's power movement in Turkey united around the defence of Gezi Park.
This is not unusual in Sydney these days. There is a lot to protest about today but most of these campaigns are quite small.
Stop Income Management in Playford released this open letter on June 17.
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We the undersigned call for the suspension of the federal government鈥檚 compulsory income management, expanded to Playford and four other sites as part of programs that began in July last year.
We believe compulsory income management is humiliating, unfair, and unlikely to improve quality of life for recipients or their children.
We note the lack of solid evidence that this policy achieves its goals, and fear this approach will be counterproductive.
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