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Gough Whitlam has passed away aged 98. 麻豆传媒 will run more detailed analysis of his significance and legacy, but for now here is Sydney-based Celtic punk band Roaring Jack, fronted by Scottish socialist Alistair Hulett, with "The Ballad of '75" about the coup that removed the Whitlam government from power.

New information was released on October 14 at the Financing Development with Transparency annual conference about the controversial operations of US mining company Newmont. Journalist Raul Weiner and accountant Juan Torres released their investigation, claiming it proves the US transnational committed tax fraud by not paying the Peruvian state about US$137 million last year alone. Newmont owns Yanacocha in Peru, a set of five gold mines that make up the second largest gold exploration in the world. The transnational also owns an expansion project called Conga.
鈥淚raq is our main effort, and it has to be, and the things that we鈥檙e doing right now in Syria are being done primarily to shape the conditions in Iraq,鈥 General Lloyd Austin, the US commander overseeing the air strikes against Iraq and Syria told an October 17 Washington press conference. However, the first significant victory against the official enemy in the latest US-war in the Middle East 鈥 the ultra-violent terrorist group that calls itself 鈥渢he Islamic State鈥 (IS) 鈥 is being won in the Kurdish town of Kobane on the Syrian-Turkish border.
No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, The NSA & The Surveillance State Glenn Greenwald Hamish Hamilton, 2014 259 pages, $29.99 (pb) Glenn Greenwald鈥檚 No Place To Hide is not just a thrilling account of the award-winning journalist鈥檚 鈥渃loak-and-dagger鈥 encounter with National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden, but a clinical and impassioned analysis of the danger posed by the US鈥檚 vast surveillance state.

In celebration of the nationally acclaimed Day of Indigenous Resistance on October 13, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro handed over collective land titles to 14 original communities. Maduro also established a presidential council for indigenous peoples, lowered the threshold age for indigenous pensioners, and announced the creation of an institute to protect the country鈥檚 44 native languages.

Exhibition, Art Gallery of Western Australia Until November 17. More than ever, we live in the 鈥渟ociety of the spectacle鈥 that Guy Debord theorised in 1967. Bourgeois commodification is augmented by reducing reality to a shallow image of itself. However, the spectacle itself 鈥渋s the historical movement in which we are caught鈥.
The Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) has written to Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop over the banning of rallies in West Papua that had been called for October 13. The purpose of the rallies was to call on the Indonesian government to free the two French journalists Valentine Bourrat and Thomas Dandois who were arrested on the 6th of August in Wamena and remain detained in Jayapura. They could face up to five years in prison.
As 35 busloads of teacher-training students from Michoacan headed for Guerrero state to join increasingly militant protests for justice, students from major universities in Mexico City called a two-day strike on October 13. The protests were in response to the disappearance of dozens of students.
is a new three-part documentary series that will premiere on SBS on October 30. The series follows Gourmet Farmer star Matthew Evans as he uncovers the state of Australia's seafood industry and begins a campaign for labelling laws.
Woolworths was caught out this month selling T-shirts with the slogan 鈥淚f you don鈥檛 love it, leave鈥 emblazoned over an Australian flag. After George Craig posted a photo of the shirt on Twitter with the caption: 鈥淍woolworths cairns, selling racist singlets for everyday low prices! #racist鈥, the T-shirt was quickly and widely condemned. Woolworths immediately pulled the stock from its shelves and apologised.
Vladimir Putin and Tony Abbott.

Now I know things seem pretty bleak in this country right now, but we must remember there is always hope. After all, in 1967, an Australian prime minister entirely disappeared without any warning after he went swimming 鈥 and Tony Abbott loves to swim! So don't give in to despair 鈥 it might happen again. The key thing is to not lose all hope.

The article below was is taken from a longer message released by Malalai Joya, the renowned Afghan feminist who has resisted the Taliban and US-led occupation of her nation, on October 12. It is abridged from . ***