Many who defended Bolivian President Evo Morales against right-wing attacks and the meddling of US imperialism are demanding that the government act on their demands.

The United Nations has pointed out yet again that racism is systemic in Australia.

It was with great sorrow that we learnt that the life of our dear friend and comrade Tom Behan had ended after a bout with cancer.

When 89 Afghan refugees pushed down the fences of Darwin Detention Centre on August 31, they sat down en masse under a handmade banner that said simply: “We need protection, not detention.”

There’s a new religion in the United States. Despite the toll it is taking, the human victims of this sacrificial cult – let’s call it capitalism – are largely invisible.

Governments are defending attacks on workers’ living standards as “necessary” to promote “the health of the economy”. But the evidence to date suggests they’ve had the opposite effect. 

Detainees who took to the roof of Darwin immigration centre and set fires in protest at their treatment should not even be in detention.

Reactionaries started the frenzy about building a mosque near the World Trade Centre site in New York. But the willingness of small-l liberals to give ground to the racists has allowed the bigotry to thrive.

Sydney-based Aboriginal activist Greg Eatock started his political life early. His activism for Aboriginal rights and social justice continued for the rest of his life. (We advise that this article contains a picture of Greg Eatock.)

The University of Queensland Liberals have continued their long tradition of corruption and union bashing with their latest attack on democratic student representation on campus.

An asylum seeker from Afghanistan died on the weekend in Curtin, one of Australia’s most notorious immigration detention centres.

What we should – and shouldn’t – expect from the “end of combat operations” in Iraq proclaimed by the Obama administration.

The prospect of independent MPs like Bob Katter holding the balance of power in a new government should be cause for fear, not celebration. And yet over the past few days there have been many voices – including on the left – waxing lyrical about the prospects for a wonderful new era of democracy.

From former activists writing tell-all accounts of how feminism ruined their lives, to men reclaiming the lost art of masculinity, the 1980s marked the beginning of a severe backlash against the gains of the women’s liberation movement, and one that continues today.

There is something truly inspiring about seeing thousands of mostly black South Africans blockading roads and hurling rocks at police in Soweto, Johannesburg, again.

It’s hard to believe anything could deepen the humiliation of checkpoints, racial segregation and systematic dispossession of the Palestinians – until you hear the term “trophy photographs”.

The key reason Labor has done so badly in these elections is that the ALP’s appalling right-wing policies offered nothing to its working-class supporters. 

Labor’s devastating election result deepens the long-standing crisis of Laborism. The ALP’s inability to provide a left-wing alternative demonstrates the almost complete exhaustion of the ALP as an avenue for progressive social change.

In an election where the major parties put forward nothing but right-wing policy, the Greens have seen a massive boost to their vote – a clear indication that significant numbers of people are looking for a left-wing alternative.

Rather than addressing the systemic problems of poverty and lack of opportunities facing disadvantaged and working-class youth, Labor has announced a plan to introduce new ways of punishing people receiving Centrelink payments.

America and Australia’s war of terror in Iraq and Afghanistan has exacted a terrible toll on the population of those countries. Far less obvious has been the toll suffered by the soldiers that the war machine uses, chews up and spits out. 

Jason Farbman reports from Bolivia on the indigenous movement’s challenges to the government of President Evo Morales.

Usually, when one hears of conflict in Lebanon, it is between the militarist sectarian forces that were in bedded into the Lebanese state’s constitution by the occupying French in 1943 or conflict with the aggressive regional power, Israel. Not this time.