Critical Times

The Federal Government is pursuing fines of millions of dollars against senior trade union leader for, alleging he tried to halt the spread of wage-cutting individual contracts.

Construction Division CFMEU Assistant National Secretary Dave Noonan faces the charges, as 107 Perth workers prepare to face charges that could see them fined up to $28,600 each.

Mr Noonan faces fines of up to $2.

The Ethics of What We Eat
By Peter Singer & Jim Mason
Text Publishing, Melbourne
2006, $32.95

REVIEW BY BELINDA SELKE

The Ethics of What We Eat by world-renowned ethicist and animal liberationist Peter Singer, and Jim Mason, a journalist, lawyer and animal-rights activist, is a compelling, challenging and highly readable book that is bound to make a lot of people uncomfortable with their food choices.

In recent years there has been a resurgence of awareness and concern about the hidden nature of industrial capitalist food production.

“We’re not a protest organisation, we’re a law enforcement organisation. We’re planning on shutting down the Japanese whaling industry”, Peter Hammarstedt, coordinator of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS), told a public meeting at the Kaleide Theatre on August 7.

The MV Farley Mofat, a converted 1958 North Sea trawler, is the SSCS’s flagship.

With the price of crude oil predicted to remain high, a voter backlash against record petrol prices and the predicted dire consequences of climate change would seem enough to motivate any government into breaking Australia’s dependence on polluting and increasingly expensive fossil fuels.

With Australia’s petrol prices having soared by 63% over the last four years to an average of $1.40 per litre, oil companies are raking in huge profits.

(The recent decision taken by the federal government to subsidize the breast cancer drug Herceptin lacks justification.

Last week the Federal Government Health Minister Tony Abbott agreed to list Herceptin on the Pharmacuetical Benefit Scheme. This decision comes after a campaign by patients, advocates and the manufacturer and means that 2000 women with early-stage breast cancer will be given treatment costing $50,000 a year with a cost to the taxpayer of $400 million over four years.

Minister Gail Gago publicly defends her right to issue rodeo permits on TV and describes rodeos as ‘popular’!

Is she supposed to be the Minister for Animal Welfare or the Minister for Cowboys?

Please email the new ‘Minister for Animal Welfare’ to let her know you will be disgusted if she issues any more permits for rodeos, at minister.gago@saugov.sa.

THRONGS of Hezbollah supporters booed UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and blocked him from touring a devastated suburb of Beirut overnight, underscoring the difficulties ahead for Lebanon to become what Annan has envisioned as “one law, one authority, one gun”.
Beirut was Annan’s first stop on an 11-day tour of the Middle East to shore up the fragile truce between Israel and Hezbollah militants after a monthlong conflict that killed at least 1000 Lebanese and demolished swaths of the country.

Annan also renewed calls for Israel to lift its air and sea blockade on Lebanon, and for Hezbollah to free two Israeli soldiers whose abduction July 12 provoked the fighting.

UNIONISTS across the country have rallied in support of more than 100 West Australian construction workers whose rowdy court appearance today launched their fight against unprecedented fines for striking.

The 107 workers on the Perth to Mandurah railway project face fines of up to $28,000 each in the Federal Court for going on strike, in February and March, over the sacking of a shop steward.

The Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) issued writs against the workers last month under the federal government’s building industry laws, introduced last year in response to recommendations of the building industry royal commission.

Relatives say Capovilla was in good health and her death was a shock
Maria Esther de Capovilla – officially the world’s oldest woman – has died in Ecuador aged 116, relatives said.
Capovilla died at dawn on Sunday in the coastal city of Guayaquil after succumbing to pneumonia. Her funeral was planned for Monday.

Whoever is declared winner stands to lead a sharply divided country
Mexico’s top electoral court has rejected claims July’s presidential election was riddled with fraud.
The court decided not to order a full recount of votes from the disputed election, as demanded by leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Mr Lopez Obrador narrowly lost the election according to the official count.

Chadian President Idriss Deby says the firms must go on Sunday
Chad has ordered two major foreign oil firms, responsible for 60% of Chad’s production, to quit the country in a row over taxes.
President Idriss Deby gave the order to US firm ChevronTexaco and Malaysia’s Petronas.

“ChevronTexaco and Petronas must leave Chad because they have refused to pay their taxes,” Mr Deby said.

The War In Iraq Is Between The Occupation And Iraqis Fighting For Their National Independence

[from: GI Special]

SYDNEY’S Martin Place was turned into a makeshift morgue today with hundreds of body bags symbolising civilian victims of world conflict.

Volunteers of all ages, races, religions and political persuasion worked overtime to make the 296 bags filling the public area in Sydney’s CBD, said organiser Omeima Sukkarieh.

“It’s all about honouring victims of war, whether they’re soldiers or civilians,” Ms Sukkarieh said.

WORLD oil production will peak in just 1500 days. After that, oil shortages will force massive changes to our lifestyle and business, experts have predicted.

Higher petrol taxes to deter people buying as much, strict petrol rationing and Adelaide production of small fuel-frugal cars were urged yesterday by an Australian group concerned with “peak oil”.

HUNDREDS of detainees and workers who have been through Sydney’s Villawood Immigration Detention Centre may have been exposed to deadly asbestos fibres after a federal government department wrongly declared the site to be safe four years ago.
Documents obtained by The Australian under Freedom of Information laws reveal that in July 2002 the Finance Department declared the land free of contamination when it was transferred to the Immigration Department as part of an expansion of the centre.

However, in April this year scientific tests confirmed parts of the 20ha site in Sydney’s western suburbs were contaminated with asbestos.

PRIME Minister John Howard has been forced to take refuge in a council building to avoid angry protesters in northern Tasmania.

About 100 unionists confronted Mr Howard and Braddon MP Mark Baker in Ulverstone, near Burnie, after the politicians left a community afternoon tea by a back door.

The protesters yelled insults such as “Howard the Coward” and “Back Door Baker” as the politicians sheltered inside the Central Coast Council building waiting for their vehicles.

Venezuela will dramatically increase oil exports to China in a deal made during a meeting between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao in Beijing.

“We have raised the strategic relationship to a very high level,” Mr Chavez said after the meeting with Hu.

The meeting significantly strengthened ties between the two countries.

August 24, 2006 THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

The first British army camp to be handed to Iraqis was looted almost bare within days of the soldiers’ departure.

The transfer last month was widely heralded as a signal that Iraq would soon be ready to run itself.

But a British soldier said that as the last men drove away, they saw pick-up trucks being filled with valuable equipment.

The Howard government has announced a $10 billion plan over 11 years to boost the armed forces by an extra 2,600 soldiers. Greens Senator Kerry Nettle attacked the plan saying “The answer is not to get a bigger army but to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan and rethink the ADF’s involvement in supporting US foreign policy adventures,”. The rationale for this increase is to prepare the defence force for intervention in more failing states in the asia/pacific region.

Behind the backs of the Australian population—without any mention in the mass media or serious opposition in parliament—the Howard government has introduced sweeping new electoral laws that aim to suppress any electoral challenge to the mainstream political parties.

Behind the backs of the Australian population—without any mention in the mass media or serious opposition in parliament—the Howard government has introduced sweeping new electoral laws that aim to suppress any electoral challenge to the mainstream political parties.

The cynically titled Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Act 2006 automatically de-registers all non-parliamentary parties and blocks the registration of new ones, while systematically disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of ordinary voters.