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Free Dr Kumar poster

Dr Jeyakumar Deveraj, a federal member of parliament in Malaysia, was one of 30 activists of the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) detained without trial on June 25.

Before they could have a face-to-face meeting with the Australian mining company company Lynas Corporation, a dozen resident activists from Kuantan, Malaysia, took a journey all the way to Sydney to launch a protest outside Lynas headquarters on July 5.

Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj

The message below from Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj, MP for Sg Siput, was dictated to Edmund Bon and Mohd Redzuan Yusoff on July 5 at Jinjang police station.

In the final days of Alan Garcia鈥檚 rancid presidency, crimes against the Peruvian people are still being committed. The department of Puno, bordering Bolivia in the country鈥檚 south-east, has now been added to a long list of locations where anti-mining protesters have been gunned down by security forces. On June 25, six indigenous activists were reportedly killed and dozens more wounded when Peruvian police opened fire on a 4000-strong crowd occupying the Manco Capac airport in the city of Juliaca.
Protesters at solidarity action

The fight to stop the James Price Point gas hub in the Kimberly in Western Australia's north reached a critical point on July 4 as police arrested dozens of people.

Community Voice 鈥 a united grassroots ticket to contest Wollongong City Council elections 鈥 was officially launched on July 8 at Wollongong Town Hall.聽

It鈥檚 been a fascinating few weeks in Tasmanian politics. On June 16, the Labor-Greens government handed down a shocking budget that cut funding to public health, education, police and other services. Thousands of public service workers gathered on parliament lawns that day to condemn the plan, saying that services were already struggling to meet demand. The education cuts included a plan to close 20 schools. Education minister and Greens leader Nick McKim started a process of 鈥渃onsultation鈥 with affected school communities around the state.
鈥淯S computer giant Apple has culled a Palestinian application from its iPhone offerings at the request of Israel,鈥 a June 27 IOL.co.za article said. 鈥淭he Arabic-language app ThirdIntifada, released by Apple just days ago, provides users with details of upcoming anti-Israel protests, access to news articles and editorials, and links to Palestinian nationalist material.鈥 Pro-Palestinian demonstrators pointed out the term intifada, which means mass uprising, did not refer to violence.
No sooner had information come out that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was undergoing surgery in Cuba than the international media was full of speculation and rumours regarding his imminent demise. Projecting their hopes that an illness could succeed in removing Chavez where military coups and assassination attempts had failed, the right-wing Venezuelan opposition went into overdrive. They demanded the president step down and hand over power to the vice president.
The Greek parliament defied huge popular opposition, including a 48-hour general strike, to pass the latest set of extreme austerity measures demanded by the 鈥渢roika鈥 (the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) in return for fresh loans. However, many commentators have pointed out it is one thing to vote up the measures and another to force them on an increasingly discontented populace.
If you are reading this column, then 91自拍论坛 Weekly has successfully completed its move to its new home in Sydney. In the process, we have missed only a week of publication thanks to the volunteers who joined the ant army that carried all we needed down those flights of stairs in our old home, loaded the hire truck and emptied it into the new office 鈥 over and over again. Our sparkling new premises is wheelchair friendly and accessible through a lift. So moving in was a lot easier than moving out 鈥 and the latter is far from over.
When the multi-award-winning journalist John Pilger needed researchers for his latest film, The War You Don鈥檛 See, he turned to David Edwards and David Cromwell. The pair run media-analysing website Media Lens, which is set to turn 10 years old on July 9. Here, they answer some of the 鈥渕ore interesting鈥 questions posed by their readers, plus a couple from 91自拍论坛 Weekly鈥檚 Mat Ward. * * * Why did you start Media Lens?