“What the hell did we do to deserve this?”, BP CEO Tony Hayward asked fellow executives in the company’s London office, days after the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, the April 29 New York Times said.
Eleven workers died in the explosion that has generated the US’s worst ever environmental disaster.
BP finally managed to place a cap over the well on July 15, although its status remains tenuous. Associated Press reported seepage detected from the cap on July 21.
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Myth: Public opinion on abortion is deeply divided
Australians support access to abortion — for three decades, opinion polls have consistently shown that most Australians support women’s right to choose and believe that forcing a woman to have an unwanted child is worse than allowing abortion.
Myth: The charges against the Cairns couple relate to drug importation or the fact they didn’t see a doctor.
A draft program for the Climate Change Social Change conference, over November 5-7, has been released and is available on the conference website.
Major conference sessions include topics such as: “A safe climate — what will it take?”; “Climate justice: their agenda and ours”; “Food sovereignty for surviva”l; and “The global economic crisis and the ecological revolution”.
On July 22, Socialist Alliance Senate candidate Soubhi Iskander condemned the Australia First Party's leaflets attacking immigrants from Africa. The leaflets were letterboxed in the western Sydney suburb of Seven Hills.
Iskander is a refugee from Sudan and lives in Seven Hills.
“This is a call to incite racist violence against communities of colour", Iskander said.
“Blaming Africans for the social problems in Sydney's west that are the result of a lack of employment, affordable housing and public transportation is wrong.
On July 22, the trial of construction worker Ark Tribe was adjourned until September 13. Tribe is facing up to six months’ jail for failing to attend an interrogation by the construction industry police — the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). Thousands of workers rallied around Australia to support him.
In Adelaide, 2000 people rallied outside the court over July 20-23. On the first day, the rally included a march on the ABCC's Adelaide office. One of the most popular chants on the march was “Johnny Lloyd you're a rat”. John Lloyd is the ABCC head.
Forget about the climate science and the record high temperatures. Prime Minister Julia Gillard has decided she doesn’t need a serious climate change policy to win the federal election.
In its place, she kicked off her election campaign on July 18 with a “sustainable Australia” policy. It promised a future of low population growth, which “preserves our quality of life and respects our environment”.
Opposition leader and climate denier Tony Abbott was quick to say he fully agreed with this vision, but was even more committed to it than Gillard.
On July 18, the University of New South Wales (UNSW) administration was forced to reinstate 80 staff members and start two weeks of intensive bargaining. As a result, UNSW union members voted to lift a ban on releasing student results on July 23.
The UNSW branch of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) imposed the ban from June 30 in response to management delaying bargaining for 16 months over union demands for improved job security, pay and other conditions.
The Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union ended its 20-day strike at Kennon Auto on July 20 after voting for a new agreement with a 10% pay rise and protection for the union’s conditions.
Kennon Auto used to be part of the now-liquidated Nylex group. The new owner, Maggie Dong, at first refused to negotiate a new enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) with the union.
Brain science — neuroscience — is big business, big science and big research. Neuroscientists are offering to explain, mend and manipulate the mind. Many see no problems with this.
For example, Eric Kandel, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on memory, said: “You are your brain.”
This is an extraordinary, arid reductionism. This is the idea that you can collapse the complex phenomenon that goes on in the human mind into being simply the working of cells or molecules.
On July 24, the NSW Combined Rail Unions announced they had successfully applied to take industrial action for their enterprise bargaining agreement in 2010.
Of key concern to the unions are safety and service levels, which have declined because of a RailCorp staff review that has cut staff at many stations.
The CCTV system, a costly and inadequate method of security for train stations, is set to have its staff numbers cut — further endangering commuters and staff.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard was supposed to launch Labor's new policy to tackle climate change on July 23. But in essence she merely restated the same old Labor climate policy: delay, delay and delay again.
Gillard's speech was pages long, but her climate agenda can be summarised in just four words: more talk, less action.
“The poisoning of groundwater near Kingaroy is just the tip of the iceberg with coal seam gas [CSG] extraction”, climate change activist and Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Brisbane Ewan Saunders told 鶹ӳ Weekly.
The contamination of groundwater by toxic chemicals was revealed two weeks ago, sparking calls for urgent action against the CSG industry, which is rapidly expanding in south-eastern Queensland.
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