THE BELIEF that the Rudd government will bring change is still strong. But many people wish the government was moving more quickly to undo Howard’s legacy.

VICTORIAN BUILDING unions are set to hold a mass stopwork rally in defence of Noel Washington, the construction union official facing six months jail for defying Howard’s industrial laws.

AT THE end of July, the Immigration Minister Chris Evans announced changes to the administration of immigration detention. He described the changes as fundamentally overturning the current model of detention.

ANTI-INTERVENTION campaigners Barbara Shaw, Paddy Gibson and Nat Wasley recently traveled to Tennant Creek to find out about how the intervention is affecting people’s lives. They spoke to Margaret Anderson, who is living under the harsh income management regime in Tennant Creek.

WITH MORRIS Iemma’s position as NSW premier looking ever more fragile, a further demonstration against his proposed power sell-off will be held on September 20. There needs to be an effort to mobilise for this in every union, and across Labor, Greens and community networks to ensure it is large enough to make an impact.

ON JULY 15, 150 people including Climate Camp participants, local Newcastle residents, and unionists, held a lively picket of NSW Treasurer and climate change denier Michael Costa, against electricity privatisation and for green jobs.

IN THE wake of the federal election victory for Labor, the CPSU is holding a series of Agenda For Change discussions around the country.

HUNDREDS OF workers rallied across NSW on July 30 against the NSW government’s attempt to cap public sector pay rises at 2.5 per cent. Public sector workers from the PSA, AWU and FBEU were well represented at the Sydney rally, with strong support from building industry unions.

NSW TEACHERS are to take industrial action in August unless the NSW government commences negotiations on teacher provision and salaries. The action of stopwork meetings followed by rolling stoppages will be ratified by the August meeting of the union state council.

COAL TECHNOLOGY company HRL (run by Channel Seven boss Kerry Stokes), the Chinese corporation Harbin Power and the Brumby Government have signed a formal contract to build a new $750 million dollar coal-fired power stations, in the La Trobe Valley.

AT THE heart of both Ross Garnaut’s interim report and the Rudd government’s Green Paper is the proposals for an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The ETS is presented as the only option in the mainstream debate over how to deal with global warming.

AUSTRALIA’S ENERGY [R]evolution is a useful tool for the climate movement. Greenpeace researchers have drawn together the best science and technology to build a concrete and achievable vision of a viable transition to a low-emission society.

THE LARGEST party of the European radical left, Rifondazione Comunista of Italy, held its national congress in July and made a decisive shift to the left.

MANY ANALYSTS thought the worst of the credit crisis passed four months ago, when the US Federal Reserve orchestrated a bailout of investment bank Bear Stearns. But recent events suggest otherwise.

YET AGAIN the presidents and prime ministers of the richest countries have put their “national interests” ahead of the need for urgent cuts in carbon emissions.

ONLY A few months ago Democrats’ presidential nominee Barack Obama was a source of hope for those wanting to see an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, since his nomination, Obama has been steadily moving to the right, leading to a pro-war consensus in the US presidential race.

OLYMPIC CHIEF Jacques Rogge said in 2005 that, “the staging of the Beijing games will do a lot for human rights.” In fact, staging the Olympics has already thrown tens of thousands of Beijing residents into deeper poverty and made the political environment across China even more terrifying.

REMEMBER TIBET? Only six months ago, as Chinese authorities cracked down on Tibetan protesters, there was widespread talk of an Olympic boycott by major world leaders. But as the opening ceremony drew near, all the major leaders keenly lined up in Beijing.

SHORT OF war, sport between nations is the best way to generate, express and manufacture “national pride”. How else can you “go for” your country?

Amy Thomas looks at Howard’s homophobic legislation and Rudd’s continuation of his legacy-and what we can do to fight it

With Barack Obama set to accept the Democratic nomination for president in Denver on August 28, Mark Goudkamp looks back on the turbulent events surrounding the 1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago

James Robertson details the history of 1968 in Czechoslovakia, when masses of workers and students challenged the Stalinist order, calling for “socialism with a human face”.

By Chloe Hooper, Hamish Hamilton, $32.95

CHLOE HOOPER, a novelist whose first book won international praise, recently released The Tall Man, a book on the Palm Island inquest into the death in police custody of Cameron Doomadgee.

Review: Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq
By Patrick Cockburn, Allen and Unwin $29.95

COLIN CAMPBELL passed away on July 17, a comrade and member of Solidarity/ISO for over three years. He worked in homeless men’s shelters for 10 years, not for the money, but to defend marginalised people in society.

Letters on gay marriage rights, World Youth day, Cuba and NSW Labor’s crisis

THE RUDD government is set to hand down its “review” of the Northern Territory intervention at the end of September. All signs point to Rudd retaining the racist policies aimed at dispossession. Paddy Gibson spoke to Walter Shaw, an Aboriginal leader from the Mount Nancy town camp in the NT. Shaw is speaking around the country alongside screenings of the new documentary This is Our Country Too. The tour is designed to build the campaign against the intervention.