Gaza commemoration 27 Dec 09

War on GAZA - 1st anniverary

On 27 December 2008, without warning, Israeli forces began a devastating bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip codenamed "Cast Lead". By 18 January 2009, some 1400 Palestinians had been killed and large areas of Gaza had been razed to the ground.

Join us in a mock funeral procession to mourn the victims of the Gaza massacre by wearing as much black as possible!

Sunday 27 December 2009

12 noon, Wesley Church (cnr Hay & William Sts)

For info: friendsofpalestine@gmail.com or 0407 350 962

GLW end of year celebration

Green Left Weekly end-of-year celebration:

After the Walk Against Warming...

Retire to the cool, friendly Activist Centre to share a toast to the struggles of 2009 and a determination to push for further progressive victories on the road ahead.

Food and refreshments available.

We will also draw the Green Left Weekly raffle!

3pm, Sat 12 December

Perth Activist Centre, 15/5 Aberdeen St, East Perth (next to McIver Station)

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CAN YOU HELP GREEN LEFT OR SOCIALIST ALLIANCE AT WALK AGAINST WARMING?

This coming Saturday is the big Walk Against Warming march – part of on an international day of action timed to coincide with the Copenhagen climate summit.

Green Left Weekly and Socialist Alliance will be participating in the march as part of the “Climate emergency bloc”. This bloc will be saying “set the targets the planet needs” such as:

• Climate justice for the third world
• No emissions trading
• Phase out Coal
• 100% renewables by 2020

We will also be campaigning to spread the message that we need a people’s power movement to ensure that the changes we need happen.

We need your help!
Can you help by:

• Distributing Green Left on the day?
• Handing out leaflets?
• Holding a banner or placard?

If so, please phone Alex on 9218 9608 or 0413 976 638 to volunteer. Your help will make a difference!

The Walk begins 11am. We will meet at PICA (Northbridge Cultural Centre) from 10am.

Yours in solidarity

Alex Bainbridge
Socialist Alliance
0413 976 638

Cuba: Sustainability & Socialism - Resistance forum Wed 9 Dec

     According to the World Wildlife Fund the only nation in the world to have attained sustainable           development is Socialist Cuba. Come find out both some of the measures that Cuba has used to         become environmentally responsible, and the structures and political institutions that made this         possible.


       As the world faces catastrophic climate change, there has never been a more important time for        us to learn from the worlds best green example, so we can learn the lessons from Cuba's                     experiance and reproduce them to create a sustainable Australia.


 Wednesday 9th Dec, 6:00 pm, 15/5 Aberdeen St, East Perth.
 (Near Mc Iver Station).

 Call Ben: 0400878322 for more details.

Darlington Review column: Let the Polluters Pay!

Arguments in mainstream Australian politics around climate change are increasingly narrow.

Neither major party is prepared to force the big profiteering polluters to pay for the transition to sustainability.  They are both focused on making ordinary people carry the burden, while subsidising the polluters.

Both parties are hoping that a conservative, hip-pocket-nerve backlash from suburbanites like Darlington residents might allow them to go even softer on dealing with the climate emergency.

Added to this is a trend towards nationalism, xenophobia and racism among climate sceptics.  Talk about refugees is intruding into discussions of climate change and assertions that China is responsible for the carbon crisis.

Both arguments are specious.  There is no national solution for climate change; it is international.  And people who are worried about refugees had better get used to them; climate change will create millions more.

Australians rank with Americans as the highest per capita emitters of carbon dioxide (about 20 tonnes per year).  China’s carbon emissions per head are 5.8 tonnes but are increasing, doubling since 2001 due to expanding coal-fired power. 

This is directly linked to the behaviour of Western companies in China.

“China-fication”, a term coined by US business magazine Industry Week, is the “transplanting to China what you do well in manufacturing in the West, while exploiting the unique competitive aspects of the Chinese market.”

China’s “unique aspects” are dirt cheap wages and a dirty environment.

US environmental scientist Gregg Marland, who has studied Chinese carbon emissions, says: “We’re shipping our emissions offshore.”

The people responsible for wrecking the planet are the same whichever country they are operating in – the rich and powerful, interested in making money from polluting industries.  Those who suffer are the poorest.

In Australia, producing a safe environment also involves fighting racism and xenophobia.

Human Rights Day rally: Sat 5 Dec - Asylum is a Human Right

On the eve of Human Rights Day, tell Kevin Rudd:

ASYLUM is a HUMAN RIGHT

* Let the refugees in

* End ties with repressive regimes: Sri Lanka & Israel

* Bring the troops home from Afghanistan

RALLY AND MARCH FOR JUSTICE, DEMOCRACY & HUMAN RIGHTS

Sat 5 Dec

Gather: 12:30pm, Wesley Church (cnr Hay & William Sts)

March: through the city

Phone:

Australian Tamil Congress: 0419 942 613

Alex Bainbridge: 0413 976 638

Phil Chilton: 0417 904 329

Victoria Martin-Iverson: 0410 589 064

Asylum is a human right - let the refugees in!

In August 2001, John Howard turned back the Tampa, with 453 rescued asylum seekers on board. Declaring them 'illegal', these asylum seekers - most of whom had fled persecution in Iraq and Afghanistan - were the first casualties of Howard's 'Pacific Solution'. Hundreds more asylum seekers languished in detention centres on the Australian mainland.

Re-enacting Howard's inhumane policy, Kevin Rudd last month turned back the Australian customs ship, the Oceanic Viking, with rescued 78 Tamil asylum seekers on board. Declaring that these asylum seekers too were 'illegal', Rudd announced that their applications for asylum should be processed in Indonesia, despite the fact that Indonesia has no obligation to do so, never having signed The United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. 

 In the first half of this year, Australia accepted only 1% of all global asylum seeker applications. Since the turning back of the Tampa, in 2001, the numbers of refugees being accepted by Australia has declined as a proportion of Australia's overall migration intake.

We demand that the Rudd government allow entry to Australia by all those seeking asylum, regardless of how they arrive, and that the policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers be ended once and for all.

End ties with repressive regimes: Israel & Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka today, some 300,000 Tamils are being kept in military-run internment camps with no access to the outside world. Killings, abductions, torture and rape are rife; but not a word of criticism has been uttered by the Australian government. In just four months this year, 20-50,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the Sri Lankan government's war against the Tamil people. Discrimination against Tamils and the 'disappearances' of journalists and human rights activists, including from among the majority Sinhalese community, are standard practice of the Sri Lankan regime.

Israel's recent bloody assault on Gaza resulted in the deaths of 1400 people. It maintains a crippling economic blockade. This is just the most recent episode in the Apartheid-like campaign of occupation and dispossession against the Palestinian people.

In place of self-interested commercial and geo-political considerations, Australia's foreign policy must be governed by a commitment to human rights and global justice. Australia must condemn the wars against the Tamils and Palestinians and end ties with the repressive regimes in Sri Lanka and Israel. Further we must support full self-determination for Sri Lanka's Tamils; and the complete withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories and the dismantling of all anti-Palestinian discriminatory policies within Israel itself.

Bring the troops home from Afghanistan

The recent fraudulent elections in Afghanistan expose the fact that the puppet regime of Hamid Karzai supported by the US, NATO and Australia has no legitimacy or popular support. Eight years of occupation have resulted in thousands of civilian casualties, expansion of the war into Pakistan, growth of support for the Taliban and continued rule by warlords. The occupation is the cause of the problem, not part of the solution. Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama want to expand the war. Demand an end to the war. Bring the troops home.