Last week Queen Elizabeth II commenced her 16th tour of Australia. The tour will culminate in Perth where she will open the proceedings of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), October 28-30. In the lead up to formal talks there will be other forums involving unions and some non-government organisations through the Commonwealth Business Forum, Commonwealth People’s Forum, Commonwealth Youth Forum and the Commonwealth Festival.  more ...

Trade minister Craig Emerson is telling trade ministers within the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that “the road is blocked” to reaching agreement on the Doha round of negotiations. “… pretending there is life in the Doha Round while watching it die is to surrender to protectionism,” Emerson hypocritically said. He does not say who blocked the road or squeezed life out of negotiations – the US, EU, Japan, Australia and other rich nations – but proposes “a new path” of multilateral and bilateral agreements on different issues outside of the WTO.  more ...

Despite all the babble from government about Australia missing out on the recession, Australians are suffering every day at the hands of the corporations and the financial sector which hold dominant economic and political power.  more ...

A massive push is on against effective union participation in collective bargaining and to put individual statutory workplace agreements back on the political agenda. Over recent weeks The Guardian has carried extensive coverage of the disputes between Qantas management and almost its entire workforce as the airline moves to cut 1,000 jobs in Australia and to drive down pay and conditions for its remaining employees.  more ...

Last week the Commonwealth Ombudsman Allan Asher resigned, after it was revealed that he had supplied Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young with a list of questions for her to ask him during a parliamentary estimates inquiry in May.  more ...

As insurrection in Syria lurches towards civil war, the brakes need to be put on the propaganda pouring through the Western mainstream media and accepted uncritically by many who should know better. So here is a matrix of positions from which to argue about what is going on in this critical Middle Eastern country:  more ...

As once again famine stalks grimly through the Horn of Africa, the causes of this catastrophe are the subject of debate. Doreen Stabinsky contends that the underlying cause of the drought that has metamorphosed into a famine is the slowly changing global climate that is drying out eastern Africa.  more ...

So Muammar Gaddafi, former leader of Libya, is dead at the hands of NATO and its “Libyan rebel army”, an army armed, financed and to an extent manned by NATO itself. There were of course plenty of Libyans who eventually joined the NATO-backed opposition, especially when it became clear that they had the greater firepower and would be the winning side.  more ...