Whatever the final detail of the federal government’s carbon emissions trading scheme — the framework of which is contained in the green paper released by climate change minister Penny Wong on July 16 — there’s one thing we can be sure of: it won’t be of much use in cutting Australia’s carbon emissions.

ALP defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon has used his first visit to the US to call for an escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

A spirited rally of 1500 people protesting against the pope’s reactionary policies took place on July 19 against the backdrop of an important civil liberties victory in the courts.

Soon after Australian government adviser Professor Ross Garnaut presented his draft climate change review on July 4, world leaders gathered in a Japanese mountain resort for an expanded version of the annual G8 summit meeting.

The British lawyer Gareth Peirce, celebrated for defending victims of miscarriages of justice, wrote recently in relation to the conflict in Northern Ireland.

“As a product of four weeks of meetings between the different currents in the National Union of Workers (UNT), together with important union federations, we have democratically decided, in consultation with the grassroots, that [on September 19-21] we will hold a national congress.

With the victory of an unlikely opposition candidate in the June 29 election for prefect (governor) of Chuquisaca, the number of opposition-controlled prefectures increased to seven out of nine.

Supposedly due to “dysfunction”, NSW local government minister Paul Lynch sacked another elected local council on July 9. Based on the recommendation of commissioner Richard Colley, who headed up the recent public inquiry into the council, Lynch declared all elected offices of Shellharbour City Council (SCC) vacant.

Figures from the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) show that since the election of the Labor government in November, the commission has upped the ante in its witch-hunt of building industry workers.

An anti-privatisation rally calling for the expansion of “renewables, not coal” was held outside NSW treasurer Michael Costa’s Newcastle office on July 14.

The British government has lost three court cases in its own judicial system over the right of the original inhabitants of the Mauritian islands of Chagos (which includes the strategic US military base on Diego Garcia), to return. The case is currently before the House of Lords Judicial Committee — the court of ultimate appeal.

Reprinted from Granma International, July 11. For more information on the case of the five Cuban anti-terrorists jailed in the US for their role in infiltrating Miami-based anti-Cuban terrorist groups, or to find out how to get involved in the campaign to free them, visit http://freethefive.org.

Below is a July 10 statement from the Committees in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). For more information, visit http://cispes.org.

The following letter was presented by Sam Watson on behalf of Brisbane’s Aboriginal Rights Coalition to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd during a protest outside Rudd’s electorate office on July 14.

The Peruvian capital of Lima, faced with rapidly rising costs of living, was the epicentre of the protests on July calling for fulfilment of social and wage agreements signed by the government on July 9. Although only one violent incident occurred, some 200 demonstrators were arrested.

Venezuela has won Miss Universe again. Meanwhile, my friend in Bolivia wrote on her blog that day, “I don’t know if anyone as big as me deserves to be alive”.

“Member countries of Petrocaribe, the Caribbean energy integration organisation that Venezuela initiated in 2005, agreed Sunday to adjust the terms of financing for the purchase of Venezuelan oil in order to lower the impact of soaring oil prices on Caribbean countries”, according to a July 15 Venezuelanalysis.com report.

Below is an open letter from Herman Wainggai of the Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

The chainsaws are poised to enter Wielangta Forest in south-east Tasmania, despite ongoing community opposition and a long legal battle led by Greens senator Bob Brown.

According to a July 15 statement by Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) spokesperson Patrick Craven, a meeting of southern African trade union representatives that day had issued a call for unions to place industrial bans on goods destined for Zimbabwe in solidarity with the struggle for democracy.