A 2011 Roy Morgan Poll found that 68% of Australians support same-sex marriage, up 6% from a Galaxy Poll taken the previous year.

The Occupy Melbourne Protest was brutally attacked on October 21 by Victorian Police, who used extreme force... Having set up an occupation site at City Square on Swanston St in the Melbourne CBD on Saturday October 15 as part of the global Occupy Together movement, the Occupy Melbourne protests were starting to consolidate.

Accepting Australian political rock band Midnight Oil’s induction into the ARIA hall of fame, the band’s drummer, Rob Hirst, commented: “Bush finally admitted that Iraq may prove to be his Vietnam. But Vietnam inspired some of the greatest protest songs ever written.

“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” If Gandhi was right about this progression of a non-violent movement, then the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel is well on the road to victory.

Israeli lawmakers are seeking to further extend state apartheid during the 2010-11 winter session of the Knesset (parliament). Key in the new legislation is a series of laws on a loyalty pledge that includes acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state.

The sinking of RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912 was one of the worst maritime disasters of all time. 1517 people died. Those killed were disproportionately poorer working class passengers and crew. While more than 60% of first class passengers survived, fewer than 25% of third class passengers did, and fewer than 24% of the crew.

In their 1977 book The Emergence of American Political Issues, Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw argued that the “the most important effect of mass communication”, i.e. the media, is its ability to “mentally order and organise our world for us.

Racism is at the forefront of the 2010 Australian election.

On January 26 (“Australia Day”), two members of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), Sam King and Van Rudd, demonstrated outside of the Australian Open Tennis Championships at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena to highlight Australia’s racism.

On January 26 two members of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, Van Rudd and Sam King received international notoriety for a stunt highlighting Australian racism where they wore Ku Klux Klan (KKK) costumes with “racism made in Australia” written on them.

As workers filed out from their shift at the Buana factory in western Jakarta, they were greeted by members of the Solidarity Alliance for Workers Struggle (GSPB) who handed them leaflets demanding wage rises and improvements to working conditions. Very few of Indonesia’s mostly women industrial workers are unionised.

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.

Bolivian President Evo Morales delivered a blow to Israel on January 16 by cutting off diplomatic ties with the Zionist state. Roberto Nelkenbaum, the Israeli consul to Bolivia, said he was “surprised and sad” that Bolivia had taken this action after the two countries shared “good diplomatic relations for more than 50 years”.

Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical novels Persepolis 1 and 2 have been adapted as the feature film Persepolis.

“Socialists argue that, while the student union bureaucracy can’t simply be ignored, it’s far more important to involve the vast bulk of ordinary students in campaigns or demonstrations rather than concentrating on the factional manoeuvres that often take place within relatively small cliques within the student unions.” This good advice offered by Gerard Morel and Jeff Sparrow in S

Salute
Documentary written and directed by Matt Norman
92 minutes

On June 14, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd complimented his predecessor, John Howard, for providing “$1 billion” in aid to Indonesia after the December 2004 tsunami.

You Don’t Mess with the Zohan
Directed by Dennis Dugan
Screenplay by Adam Sandler, Judd Apatow and Robert Smigel
Starring Adam Sandler, John Turturro, Emmanuelle Chriqui
113 minutes

Iron Man
Directed by Jon Favreau
Starring Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges
Screenplay by Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby