Environment and social justice campaigners will be confronting top executives of BHP Billiton, the largest mining conglomerate in the world, at their AGM scheduled to occur in Brisbane on November 26. The campaigners will be focussing on BHP Billiton’s abysmal record in the areas of Indigenous rights, environmental sustainability and climate change.

In August Direct Action organised a speaking tour of Australia by Venezuelan revolutionary youth leader Heryck Rangel. In September-October, Direct Action organised a speaking tour of Australia by Indonesian feminist socialist Vivi Widyawati. These tours and the continued existence of Direct Action depend solely on the support of our readers.

Earlier this year I criticised the decreasingly radical Green Left Weekly for echoing the conservatives’ claims about the “underlying causes of domestic violence” (see Letters, DA #8).

In the early hours of October 9, the Latin American House (Casa Latina), Hut 47 at the Addison Road Community Centre in Marrickville, Sydney, was destroyed by a fire. Casa Latina had been the meeting place of various Latin-American solidarity groups, with the hut being used to raise funds for these groups through raffles, concerts and a Latin-American BBQ held every Sunday.

Tamil asylum seekers from Sri Lanka, diverted from entering Australia and put on the Australian Customs ship Oceanic Viking, had been refusing food for two days and refusing to leave the ship at Kijang for the Indonesian immigration detention prison, Tanjung Pinang, on Bintan Island on October 26.

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.

Sam Wainwright, the Socialist Alliance candidate for the Fremantle City Council (FCC) ward of Hilton, was elected to the FCC on October 17 with 33.4% of the vote. Wainwright received 438 out of 1310 valid votes, 100 more than his nearest competitor, Dave Hume, a member of the Australian Labor Party. (The election was first past the post, not preferential.)

During October, Richard Downs, an elder of the Alyawarra-speaking community from the Northern Territory township of Ampilatwatja (300km north-east of Alice Springs) toured major eastern Australian cities to raise support for a protest camp established 3km from the township.

On November 28, rallies will take place across Australia to demand same-sex marriage rights. Organised by the Equal Love Coalition, the national day of action will demand the passing of the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2009 – legislation put to the Senate by the Australian Greens to remove discrimination in the Marriage Act on the basis of sexual orientation.

Among the heads of government gathered at the September 25 G20 summit held in Pittsburgh, Australian PM Kevin Rudd didn’t particularly stand out much in the hoopla surrounding US President Barack Obama’s self-congratulatory speech claiming that action by his and the other governments of the world’s 20 largest national economies had “brought the global economy back from the brink” o

A Cairns couple were committed to trial on June 11 on charges brought under the anti-abortion laws in the Queensland criminal code. The charges carry sentences of seven years’ prison for the woman for having an abortion and three years for her male partner for assisting her. The case against the couple rests upon their admission to having used an abortion drug.

As a longtime anti-nuclear and anti-uranium campaigner, former member of MAUM, former state coordinator of the Nuclear Disarmament Party (Tasmania) and other organisations, I write to publicly express my utter disgust with Peter Garrett’s and the Australian government’s decision to open a new uranium mine in South Australia.

“If there is one principle that governs the export of Australian education, it is now simply money”. This was the introduction to a Four Corners program titled “Holy Cash Cows” aired on ABC television at the end of July.

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.

Australia has just experienced its hottest August on record. During that month, some parts of New South Wales experienced fierce bushfires over a month before the “normal” start of the bushfire season. In the face of this climate chaos, it might be hoped that there would be some good news about Australian government action to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution.

One aspect of the Democratic Socialist Perspective’s course of dissolution into the Socialist Alliance, analysed by John Percy in Direct Action #15, is the DSP’s increasing unwillingness to discuss politics, particularly with others on the left.

On September 16, members of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) took to the picket lines for a 24-hour strike to protest conditions and secure new collective agreements at 16 universities across the country.

A 300 strong protest was held in Brisbane on August 29 to demand the dropping of the abortion charges against a Cairns couple. The rally also demanded the immediate repeal of the anti-abortion laws under which the couple have been charged.

According to data published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on August 20, the H1N1 influenza strain, commonly known as swine flu, has killed at least 1799 people and infected 182,166.

The Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) has decided to press ahead with the final stage of liquidating itself into the Socialist Alliance (SA), which claims to be the largest socialist organisation in Australia.

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 is perhaps no better reflection of the health of a society than the way it treats those who have no or limited access to power or control over decisions that affect their daily lives. This is especially so for the rights of indigenous people, women, migrants and young people.

In August 2008, the NSW Labor government announced plans to privatise both the Parklea and Cessnock prisons in the wake of a budgetary blowout of $23 million in overtime payments to prison guards.

Recent reports and revelations have conclusively shown that the Rudd Labor government is using the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) policy to dispossess Aboriginal people. Under the Australian government’s “emergency protection measures”, the situation for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory has become worse.

Since its inception, Direct Action has been proudly internationalist. DA draws upon the rich socialist tradition that upholds working-class international solidarity as a cornerstone of the fight for social justice for all oppressed peoples.