About 1400 nurses in Fiji, who began a strike on July 25, were joined on August 2 by thousands of teachers and other public servants, resulting in at least half of FijiÂ’s 20,000 public sector workers being on strike.
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On July 29, Queensland University of Technology staged a protest on QUT’s “open day” to symbolically “lay to rest” the school of humanities and human services, and mark “the death of critical thinking and freedom of speech” at QUT.
US President George Bush and PM John Howard are the worldÂ’s biggest climate criminals. The United States emits 25% of the worldÂ’s carbon emissions, and Australia is the largest carbon polluter per person in the world. Both countries are the only two developed nations that havenÂ’t signed on to the Kyoto Protocol. For their entire political lives Bush and Howard denied climate change was even happening, but when people all around the world started to see the climate chaos taking place and put pressure on them, they grudgingly acknowledged that it is a reality.
On July 28, 45 people attended a seminar on “People’s Power in Latin America: rebellion, workers’ control and 21st century socialism”. Held at the Princess May Community Centre, the forum was a joint initiative of the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network (AVSN) and the Australia Cuba Friendship Society (ACFS).
On July 27-28, 200 trade unionists from the higher education, electricity, telecommunications, finance, municipal services, pharmaceutical and health-care sectors in the Israeli-occupied West Bank attended a conference to set up the Coalition of Independent and Democratic Trade Unions and WorkersÂ’ Committees.
Planning is well underway for the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network’s sixth brigade to Venezuela, to be held from November 23 to December 3, and registrations are open to everyone interested in this unique opportunity to witness firsthand a revolution in the making.
This appeal was issued on July 30 by Public Services International (PSI) following the assassination of Miguel Angel Vasquez Argueta, finance secretary for PSIÂ’s affiliate STSEL in the electricity sector. PSI is calling for a full and independent investigation into the matter.
In Australia, as in other major capitalist countries, the official response to global warming is to deny or gloss over the utter catastrophe confronting human society and try to carry on with business as usual, making only a few relatively minor adjustments here and there.
The front page of the July 25 Australian gushed with a headline making the astounding claim that the Australian Building and Construction Commission(ABCC) had delivered “a $15 billion boost to the economy” by improving productivity as a result of reining in “thuggish union behaviour”.
With the city of Geelong still reeling from Ford’s announcement that by 2010 it will shut down its V6 engine assembly plant and dismiss 600 workers of the company’s 2600 Geelong employees, another manufacturer has announced that it is reviewing its operations.
Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution, and in particular its experiments with workers’ co-management and in some instances workers’ control, is at the cutting edge of the global movement against capitalism. With the bosses’ lockout in 2002-03, which shut down much of the Venezuelan economy for a period of two months, hundreds of factories were closed down and workers turned out onto the streets to fend for themselves.
What do Victorian Labor Premier Stephen Bracks, his successor John Brumby and former Liberal premier Jeff Kennett have in common? A love for neoliberal politics.
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