When it comes to avoiding the most catastrophic impacts of global warming then whatever the financial cost, the price is still worth paying. But new research by Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE) shows Australia could meet 100% of its stationary energy needs from renewables in a decade and stimulate the economy at the same time.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, Republican President George W. Bush launched illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush enacted “anti-terrorism” policies under which people could be labelled “terror suspects” without evidence and abducted, jailed and tortured in secret.

Changes to Aboriginal employment, infrastructure and welfare programs have stripped remote Aboriginal communities of resources and left many Aboriginal people, in effect, working for rations.

Manju, one of the 254 Tamil refugees aboard the Jaya Lestari in Merak, Indonesia, is due to have her baby on 5 April.

The NSW government has just approved plans for two, 2000-megawatt power stations, one near Lithgow, the other in the Hunter Valley. If coal is chosen as the fuel source NSW’s greenhouse gas emissions will increase by 15.1%. If gas is chosen the increase will be 7.1%. It’s likely the government will go with coal.

Greek workers shut down hospitals, schools and public transport again on March 5 in protest at the government's “socially unjust” spending cuts.

United States President Barack Obama’s planned stopover in Australia on March 23 is scheduled to take place around the time of the seventh anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq on March 20.

For environmentalists, Indigenous rights activists, feminists, socialists and all progressive people, Latin America is a source of hope and inspiration today. The people of Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and El Salvador, among others, are showing that radical social change is possible and a better, more just society can be imagined and built.

Carbon trading schemes have become the most favoured government strategy to deal with climate change, including in Australia. But as economics professor Clive Spash found out, government employees who question whether such schemes can actually deliver emissions reductions can find themselves under huge pressure to be silent.

The call published below is being promoted by the Global Justice Ecology Project. The GJEP said in 2004, it “traveled to Chile for meetings with [indigenous] Mapuche organizations fighting the devastating impacts of industrial timber plantations.

The proposal by the Greens to the Rudd government that it introduce a price on carbon (starting at $23 a tonne) “as an interim measure in the transition to a functional and effective emissions trading scheme” is provoking a lively debate in the grassroots climate action movement.

The Haiti Emergency Relief Fund is a San Francisco-based grassroots organisation founded in 2004. It is working with Haitian organisations to provide relief in the aftermath of the January 12 earthquake.

On June 28 last year, Honduras’ left-wing President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown in a military coup — supported by the rich elite with United States collaboration. As well as moves such as increasing the minimum wage by 60%, Zelaya was seeking to start a process leading to a constituent assembly to democratically rewrite the nation’s pro-rich constitution.

On February 18, Niger’s President Mamadou Tandja was overthrown in a military coup. A military junta calling itself the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy, headed by Major Salou Djibo, took power.

Almost everyone has seen the iconic photo of Ernesto Che Guevara taken in 1960 by photographer Alberto Korda. In the decades since it was taken, it has been reproduced countless times, including on towels, lunchboxes, cigarette packets and especially T-shirts.

The article below from a statement released on February 28 by Chilean socialist organisation Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) about the earthquake that hit Chile the previous day. It was translated by Earl Gilman.

John Bellamy Foster is a renowned Marxist economist and ecologist. He is the editor of the US socialist journal Monthly Review and is the author of Marx's Ecology and The Ecological Revolution (published by Monthly Review Press. Foster will be a featured speaker at the Climate Change — Social Change conference in Melbourne in November (see ad on page 13 for more details).

Last year’s national Climate Action Summit was groundbreaking. It set a national grassroots movement on its feet, something I haven’t seen on such a scale in my two decades of activism. A new ongoing network has been set up, with more than 100 groups now signed onto the initial structure.

On February 25, federal education minister Julia Gillard announced the release of the new national curriculum. She sounded like a consultant for a private education firm, yet at the same time revealed her utter ignorance of education in this country.

According to the Reserve Bank of Australia, the future of the Australian economy is so bright we should all start wearing shades. Justifying the RBA’s decision to lift official interest rates a further 0.25% on March 2, governor Glenn Stevens said, “the risk of serious economic contraction in Australia [has] passed”.