UPDATE: The Australian government on 6 January cancelled Novak Djokovic's visa. The tennis player has since successfully challenged the decision in the courts.
After protesters waged an extraordinary week of mass defiance across the country, the Thai government on 22 October lifted a state of emergency that had banned all gatherings of five or more people. This is a significant crack in the facade of a military regime with a track record of gunning down pro-democracy activists, driving them into exile and even running death squads to assassinate them abroad. For now, the resurgent democracy movement has stared down the generals, and it has done so in exhilarating fashion.
Racism, like all oppression, survives so long as it facilitates exploitation and domination. It is not just a set of ideas that form for no reason and spread in defiance of all logic; it is rooted in material conditions.
On the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, Australian politicians and commentators affirmed the importance of various freedoms. Given the Chinese government’s well-known attempts to censor all mention of the 1989 uprising and the massacre that crushed it, much of this commentary focused on freedom of the press.
Ten weeks after we started the balloting process, staff at RMIT University will soon learn whether we’ve been granted the right to take industrial action. The lengthy delay was caused by our employer, three times in a row, objecting to the ballot. By the time we win our legal right to take protected action, the semester will be over and our industrial clout significantly diminished.
Management at Victoria University (VU) in Melbourne’s western suburbs have taken the gloves off in their drawn-out effort to slash jobs, cut costs and smash the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU).