Anger at the massacres in Gaza exploded onto streets around the world in January. From Beirut to Sydney, huge crowds denounced Israel, their chief backers the United States and the complicity of many Arab and western governments.

Despite its claims, Israel failed to achieve its objectives in Gaza of smashing Palestinian resistance. Its ceasefire means little while it continues to blockade Gaza and reserve its right to invade at a moment’s notice.

A not-for-profit consortium led by Community Childcare Co-operative NSW has made a bid for 241 ABC childcare centres that the company’s receivers had deemed “economically unviable”.

The new Thai government has launched a wave of prosecutions against government critics and opponents of the 2006 military coup. In a major attack on democratic rights, it is using charges of lèse majesté (insulting the king) which carry a maximum 15 year jail term, to spread a climate of fear.

Throughout 2008, Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan remained optimistic to the point of absurdity about the state of the Australian economy in the face of the global economic crisis. How quickly things change.

Union members in the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) have faced down compulsory redundancies at Victoria University (VU) and the University of Melbourne (Melbourne Uni) by taking industrial action.

Under the cover of the NT intervention, governments are once again trying to force Aboriginal people off their land. If history is a guide, they are in for a hard fight. Aboriginal people have always fought doggedly to live on and control their land. One such struggle was at Nookanbah in Western Australia in 1980.

The intervention is more than a policy about what happens within 78 “prescribed communities”. It is a radical new ideology that combines a fierce new push for assimilation of Aboriginal people with a rapid pro-market economic agenda.

Late this month the first national summit of climate action groups will be held in Canberra.

Rudd’s method for reaching his meagre 5 per cent reduction target is the carbon pollution reduction scheme, a version of emissions trading.

A common response to the climate crisis is to argue for restrictions on individuals’ energy use. As a result some environmental activists have supported initiatives like congestion charges or carbon rationing and even welcomed recent increases in petrol prices, since they might result in people being forced to use less petrol.

Just after his election, Kevin Rudd called climate change “the defining challenge of our generation”. But his targets for emission reductions will not even go close to meeting the threat we face.

The world may be in great danger, but the annual summit of governments designed to progress a global agreement on climate change did very little to bring action.

The US has blamed Hamas for causing Israel’s assault. Kevin Rudd has called them a “terrorist organisation”. Israel would have us believe they are “Islamic terrorists” who cannot be negotiated with. In fact Hamas are the legitimate elected leaders of the Palestinians.

Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza has, once again, been willingly backed by the US. Israel is the key US ally in the Middle East. Its army is, in effect, an extension of the US military due to massive US military aid. This is set at $3 billion a year for the next decade—the most received by any single country.

There are worrying signs from the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) that policy measures associated with the NT intervention will soon be imposed on Indigenous communities around the country.