[Premier Jacinta Allan] also defended the state government's sponsorship of the Land Forces conference, and said delegates attending the event had the right to gather.

"Any industry deserves the right to have these sort of events in a peaceful and respectful way."

When your industry is undeniably dedicated to murder and maim, you don't deserve peace (or, for that matter, respect).

Rubber bullets are especially concerning. Many of us saw the damage they did to journalists and protestors who were shot with them in the US protests by police a few years ago.

Hi OP, when quoting the article in your post, it's helpful to use the quote formatting to show us you're giving quotes and not just supplying additional commentary.

Writing: > You need to only look at the modern crossbench

becomes:

You need to only look at the modern crossbench

Sounds like something out of a futuristic dystopian movie.

spoiler

I haven't seen a terrorism act invoked in my state but police have called a few designated areas this year and they bring the cavalry mounted troops to most protests.

I’m calling it now. Somebody’s gonna die or get seriously injured

Big ten-thousands protests generally try to be more big-tent than radical, so as eager as police are to make a show of force against anti-military protesters, my bet is that it will be limited to shoving. But honestly, I won't be shocked if your call turns out right.

Seriously, watching that interview is a little painful with all the interrupting to try and railroad the conversation, and attaching weird attacks and assertions to make loaded questions, or rather, framing a claim as a question. I haven't seen it so bad outside of Faux News in the US.

Glad to hear Max got a quick mention of the Green Bans of the BLF in.

This article is very clear and to-the-point. Thanks for sharing.

In order to ensure the administrator doesn’t run wild, the administrator has to be satisfied that the administrator is acting in the interests of members.

Great system.

It's a sharp reminder of the industrialisation of art as entertainment, more than as expression.

When we're talking about ads and media, I highly recommend reading the relevant chapter in Manufacturing Consent (PDF version can easily be found for free online).

But really, intuition will get you the raw basics: using the ad revenue model gives the advertiser control over a media outlet. If media truly 'need gambling ads', then this implies they cannot afford to lose them. So, they therefore cannot offend the gambling industry or especially the companies advertising with them. And therefore, they are pressured into media bias, into failing to be critical of an obviously harmful, corrupt industry dealing in addiction manufacture AND laundering at the same time!

This is very bad news for the worker movement.

The bottom line is that, despite their flaws, the CFMEU management enables construction workers to fight for better working conditions, including those working in roles where people regularly die in workplace incidents, where safety standards are a life and death matter. If they are replaced by a state-supplied dictator against the will of the workers which a union is created to represent, this introduces a conflict of interest somehow even worse than that in any of the accusations. We've seen in history how state-enforced class collaboration screws over workers. When employees are working for huge multinational companies like Lendlease, they need ways to defend themselves from all the corruption that comes with that. The CFMEU in its current state is not ideal, but it's a hell of a lot better than nothing, or one assigned by the government.

This has already had a chilling effect on the other more-militant trade unions, word-of-mouth is that some are asking members not to draw attention to themselves e.g. by flying banners at the recent NSW Labor conference. Giving the government this power to weaken unions at will is a horrible precedence which I sincerely believe will cost lives when it comes to safety regulations, let alone cost of living, preventing financial abuse of immigrant workers, and the inability to support social movement, such as the Green Bans of the BLF (who were deregistered in various states in 1986 and essentially brought into the coverage of what would become the CFMEU).

Randwick Mayor Philipa Veitch has addressed protests at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and outside the offices of US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin in Matraville.

A few councils and senators have been standing up on this issue and it's great to see elected officials getting involved and not afraid to take stances. Veitch is a Greens member, so they have party support there, but it's still nice and encouraging to see some support within certain governments (despite my reservations with current electoral politics).

Greens and Labor councillors combined to vote against the motion, which was defeated by 10 votes to five.

The motion was amended to remove the vote of no confidence and became a motion condemning anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and acknowledging the council's role in promoting community cohesion.

I wonder what that means in practice, will supporting human rights protests like this violate "the council's role in promoting community cohesion"?

[Liberal councillor who launched the motion] Cr Rosenfeld told ABC Radio Sydney local politicians should leave international affairs to the federal member. "We're in the local sector of government, not the federal sphere," he said.

hahaha this is just silly. Of course a local politician should be allowed to care and engage with international politics. Particularly in Randwick, one of the areas with a major university involved in the war effort (e.g. weapons manufacturers connections to campus), their local area is relevant to international affairs so they shouldn't just block their ears and offload responsibility because it's over 10 kilometres away.

Both US athletes intended to bring black gloves to the event, but Carlos forgot his, leaving them in the Olympic Village. It was Peter Norman who suggested Carlos wear Smith's left-handed glove. For this reason, Carlos raised his left hand as opposed to his right, differing from the traditional Black Power salute.

Classic "no worried, she'll be right" attitude, Pete.

I haven't really thought about this much, because military commemoration is just normal here and I thoughtlessly assumed it was similar around the world. And I didn't really consider how unnecessarily big many of them are. Sure, it's easy for me to point to the US and say 'that's what real military worship is!' but you're right that there are many reminders of war around, most obviously the monuments in parks and national ceremonies (ANZAC Day, Remembrance Day). You mention that you have a foreign background; do you mention this because the monuments are not normal where your background is, or is it because our wars are offensive and seem atrocious to have statues for?

It's important to understand the intended purpose of many of these as similar to a gravestone, it's meant to be a respectful reminder of the town's loss rather than glorifying war, like Aussiemandeus said it's the towns wanting future generations to be aware of their town's sacrifice for the war effort. However, there is also the fact that national ceremonies are sometimes used as propaganda to glorify wars of invasion or imply they were all honourable: the only one of those ANZAC wars where Australia was actually invaded was WWII (various attacks), all the others were joining political allies (first UK, then US) in other continents in imperialist wars, and in many of the wars they were clearly invasive and Australia's participation should be denounced (including the Korean War, Vietnam War and Middle Eastern conflicts).

So while I can tolerate (critically) the community monuments commemorating dead soldiers, especially those built after WWII when sacrifice was in the self-defense of the country, we must also be critical of those trying to glorify war and imperial conflicts, just as we should be critical of those who glorify or trivialize the colonial invasion of this continent.