“I think it’s torture when I have to ride in the car with my kids and they have loud rap music on.” – John Brennan, a former CIA official under George W. Bush and now a member of President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, explaining why he thinks CIA “enhanced interrogation” isn’t so bad.
Kill Khalid: Mossad’s failed hit ... and the rise of Hamas
By Paul McGeough
Allen and Unwin (2009) 440 pp $35
The first major political incident after the July 8 Indonesian presidential election were two co-ordinated suicide bomb attacks on Jakarta’s Marriot and Ritz Carlton luxury hotels on July 17, which killed seven people, including six foreigners. These were the first suicide bomb attacks in almost five years.
We stand for the transformation of human society, from its current basis of greed, exploitation, war, oppression and environmental destruction, to a commonwealth of social ownership, solidarity and human freedom, living in harmony with our planet’s ecosystems.
There has been a renewed campaign of anti-Iran propaganda and threats of more severe economic sanctions by the US and its imperialist allies, including Australia, following the mass protests in Iran triggered by the June 12 presidential election and the charges by defeated candidates of electoral fraud.
[The following article is based on a speech given on behalf of the war veterans group Stand Fast at a public meeting in Rockhampton on July 10 as part of the Peace Convergence protests against the bi-annual joint Australian and US Talisman Sabre war rehearsals that occur in and around environmentally and culturally sensitive Shoalwater Bay.
August 30 marks 10 years since the UN-sponsored referendum on Indonesian-occupied East Timor’s political status.
For 17 years, from 1990 through to 2007, I regularly contributed articles on Indonesian politics to Green Left Weekly, a newspaper published by the Democratic Socialist Party (Democratic Socialist Perspective since 2005).
On July 14, federal environment minister Peter Garrett approved the construction of the Four Mile uranium mine, 550 km north of Adelaide.
A few years ago it might have appeared that the process of radical social change underway in Venezuela had little in common with the socialist revolutions of the 20th century, including that paradigm of Latin American people’s power revolutions, the Cuban Revolution.
The revolutionary socialist government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on July 9 proposed a reform to democratise the media and stop the corporate media endlessly campaigning to violently overthrow the elected government.
Only a few years ago, the economic “experts” quoted in the commercial media were assuring us that major recessions were a thing of the past. The economists had figured out how to manage the economy, and as long as governments followed their advice, there would be nothing more serious than the occasional statistical blip. Then the real world intruded.
On August 20, Afghanistan will conduct its second presidential election under the US-led occupation. Current Afghan President Hamid Karzai is the clear frontrunner in the election, despite a December Gallup poll having found that only 10% of Afghans supported Karzai’s government.
While the UN was busy promoting its latest carbon trading scams and encouraging people to attend “celebrations” for World Environment Day, the people in the town of Bagua in northern Peru were fighting a life-and-death struggle to save their environment from corporate plunder – a struggle that achieved a partial victory.
Rallies and other public shows of support have remained weak for the three candidates and their running mates in the weeks leading up to the July 8 Indonesian presidential election. Two of the rival candidates head the current government – incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his vice-president, Jusuf Kalla.
I found Sam King’s letter in the May 2009 edition of Direct Action to be slightly disingenuous.
I write in response to recent letters in the daily papers about fuel loads and control burning. These are only one small element of confronting the threat of firestorms. They are by themselves though not a lasting solution to the dry and hot climatic conditions we are experiencing and do not address the real problems we are facing.
[The following article is based on a report on the Australian political situation presented to the first congress of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, held over the June 6-8 weekend.]
Once again Iran has captured world attention. The 10th presidential election period has presented a new element in Iran’s politics not seen in the previous exercise of universal suffrage in the country: massive mobilisation of the people.
San Francisco – “What’s good for General Motors is good for America” became a catch phrase in the 1950s. GM was a symbol of US industrial might. Workers at GM, Ford and Chrysler enjoyed some of the best wages and working conditions in the country, and the United Auto Workers was the flagship of the union movement. Now GM is in bankruptcy and the UAW is a shell of its former self.
If you’ve picked-up this paper for the first time, you’ll appreciate it’s not the same as the capitalist press and street mags filled with lies, half-truths and distortions peddled as ‘news’.
“... the medium-term future of GM’s foreign operations will depend on whether they generate sufficient revenues and attract enough government subsidies to be self-sustaining.” – Anne Davies in the Sydney Morning Herald, June 2.
Sravan Kumar Theerthala, a 25-year-old Indian student studying in Melbourne, was stabbed through the head with a screwdriver on May 23 leaving him comatose and in intensive care. The day after Theerthala was attacked, Indian student Rajesh Kumar, also 25, received burns to a third of his body after a petrol bomb attack in Sydney.
[The consul-general of the Republic of Cuba in Australia, Nelida Hernandez Carmona, presented the following greetings to the first congress of the RSP]
Some revolutionary socialists remain convinced that no revolution has taken place and that the government of President Hugo Chavez is substituting ‘socialism from above’ in place of grassroots working-class struggle.