Serie A - Italian footballers to go on strike

On September 10, the players of the Serie A - Italy's top-flight football league - declared they would go on strike on September 25-6.

AC Milan defender Massimo Oddo - speaking on behalf of the Italian Players' Association (AIC) - made the declaration as part of an ongoing dispute over the renewal of the collective contract for the game's top players.

The statement - signed by the captains and union representatives of all 20 Serie A clubs - read:

"The association, in perfect symphony with the players of Serie A, has decided not to go on the field for the fifth round of matches of the Serie A championship in protest against requests to impose new contractual rules,"

The football league, Lega Serie A, is attempting to introduce a new collective contract that would strip players of their existing transfer rights and bring larger profits to football clubs and their owners, at the players' expense.

Newtown residents rally to defend homes

On August 14, over 400 people marched in protest against plans to demolish residences in the heritage-listed Pines Estate Heritage Conservation Area in Newtown.
 

Angry local residents and supporters marched from Redfern to Leamington Avenue, which was decked out in red balloons and reverberated with the sound of the MC Hammer song “Can’t Touch This”.

RailCorp is currently considering a proposal to compulsorily resume and demolish all the houses on Leamington Avenue, and more on Holdsworth and Pine Streets, as part of a plan to build a railway tunnel to relieve extra traffic expected on the western rail line.

As well as destroying heritage homes built in 1887, the plan would see the destruction of the iconic "Three Proud People" mural depicting the “black power salute” at the Mexico 1968 Olympics, painted on the side of 39 Pine Street.

Marrickville Deputy Mayor and Greens candidate for the seat of Marrickville in next year’s State election, Fiona Byrne addressed the crowd, saying the planned changes were unnecessary, and wouldn’t work anyway. Instead she argued that trains speeds and timetables should be improved. 

Trains are currently slower than they were in the 1940s, she added.

Ecuador beläßt Erdöl im Boden

Yasuni Nationalpark

Am 3. August 2010 hat die ecuadorianische Regierung ein richtungsweisendes Dokument unterzeichnet, um Ölbohrungen in den ökologisch einzigartigen Gebieten Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini des Yasuni Nationalparks (Yasuni-ITT) zu verhindern.

Das Abkommen, unterzeichnet von der Regierung des linken Präsidenten Rafael Correa und dem United Nations Development Program (UNDP), garantiert, dass die geschätzten 900 Millionen Barrel Erdöl, die unter der noch unberührten Amazonas-Region liegen, nicht angerührt werden, so wenig wie der Wald darüber.

Im Austausch erhält Ecuador 3.6 Mrd. $ als Kompensation für die Einnahmen, die es ansonsten durch das Öl gehabt hätte – etwa die Hälfte des geschätzten Wertes.

Der Yasuni Nationalpark ist einer der artenreichsten Plätze der Welt und besteht aus 982 000 ha Regenwald am Fuße der Anden. Er enthält mehr Baumarten auf einem Hektar als es in den ganzen USA und Kanada zusammen gibt.

Er beherbergt mindestens 28 höchst gefährdete Säugetiere, wie Jaguar, Weißstirnklammeraffe, Riesenotter und Rundschwanzseekühe sowie hunderte Arten, die es sonst nirgends auf der Erde gibt.

Yasuni ist auch die Urheimat der Huaorani und zwei weiterer indigener Völker, die in freiwilliger Isolation leben, die Tagaeri und die Taromenane.

Ecuador signs historic deal to "leave the oil in the soil"

On August 3, the Ecuadorian government signed a landmark deal to prevent drilling for oil in the ecologically unique Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini areas of the Yasuni National Park (Yasuni-ITT).
 

The agreement, signed by the government of left-wing president Rafael Correa and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), guarantees that the estimated 900 million barrels of oil that lie beneath the pristine Amazonian region will remain untouched, as will the forest above.

In exchange, Ecuador will receive US $3.6 billion as compensation for the revenue it would otherwise have made from the oil – about half its estimated value.

The Yasuni National Park is an area of world-significant biological diversity, covering 982,000 hectares in the Amazonian rainforest and Andean foothills. It is considered one of the most biodiverse sites on Earth, containing more tree species in one hectare than in the entire United States and Canada combined.

It shelters at least 28 highly endangered vertebrates including jaguars, the white-bellied spider monkey, the giant otter and the Amazonian manatee, and hundreds of species found nowhere else on Earth.

Yasuni is also the ancestral territory of the Huaorani people, as well as two other indigenous tribes who live in voluntary isolation, the Tagaeri and the Taromenane.

German court approves spying on Die Linke

Germany’s Federal Administrative Court ruled on July 21 that the Verfassungsschutz — Germany’s domestic spy agency — had a right to spy on the left-wing party Die Linke.
 
Bodo Ramelow, Die Linke’s leader in the eastern state of Thuringia and others were appealing against the agency spying on them. The justification for the spying are claims Die Linke contained “anti-constitutional” elements because of its origins in the former East German state.

Die Linke was formed after 2005 by a merger between disaffected western Social Democratic Party members, left-wing academics and trade unionists, and the eastern-based Party of Democratic Socialism. The PDS was made up of members of the former East German ruling party. 

Die Linke won almost 12% in the last national election, making it the fourth largest party in parliament. It has won seats in almost every state parliament. Polls consistently show it is the most popular party in eastern Germany and its social justice policies are making it increasingly popular in the west.

Die Linke is the only party with parliamentary representation to support the view of a large majority of the population by callings for German soldiers to leave Afghanistan.

Merkel embarrassed in presidential election

On June 30, the German parliament met to elect the country’s largely symbolic president. What should have been a fairly straightforward affair, however, may spell the beginning of the end for German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The new election was made necessary by the resignation of Horst Köhler on May 31, after his comments suggesting German military deployments were commercially motivated caused a public outcry.

Köhler’s resignation came at a particularly bad time for Merkel, whose governing rightwing coalition has been struggling in recent opinion polls.

Support for Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has dropped to just 32 percent, while their free-marketeer coalition partners, the Free Democrats (FDP) – who had surged around 15 percent support at the federal election in September last year – have dropped to barely 4 percent, the July 4 Angus Reid Global Monitor reported.

Popular opposition and protests continue to build against Merkel’s austerity measures, the ongoing war in Afghanistan and the economic bail-out of Greece as German standards of living continue to decline.

Memperjuangkan Sepakbola: Apakah `permainan sedunia' ini permainan rakyat?

Oleh Duroyan Fertl

5 Juli 2010 -- Berdikari -- Piala Dunia FIFA 2010 di Afrika Selatan telah memulai putaran final 16 besarnya pada 26 Juni. Ia hadir di tengah dengungan terompet vuvuzela yang tak pernah surut, kekalahan tim-tim besar seperti Italia dan Perancis, dan aksi-aksi protes di jalanan oleh warga setempat yang marah atas dana 40 miliar rand yang dibelanjakan pemerintah untuk membiayai acara yang dikelola swasta ini. Sementara itu, kaum miskin Afrika Selatan menderita karena perumahan dan akses layanan mendasar yang di bawah standar.

Sepakbola adalah “permainan dunia” yang dimainkan oleh jutaan orang di seluruh dunia dan ditonton oleh ratusan juta lainnya. Tapi benarkah itu “permainan rakyat”?

Sepakbola itu sendiri seringkali merupakan suatu pertunjukan menegangkan yang menampilkan kepiawaian manusia. Suatu pertandingan sepakbola yang bermutu tinggi dapat dibandingkan dengan seni. Maka tak heran ia begitu populer di seluruh dunia.

Namun permainan itu, tak dapat dipungkiri, disertai serangkaian aspek buruk. Persoalan hooliganisme sepakbola, terutama di Eropa, sudah dikenal baik. Banyak kelab-kelab dan kelompok penggemarnya menjadi lahan subur bagi perkembangan kelompok neo-Nazi dan ekstrim sayap-kanan, seperti English Defence League.

Di tingkat interasional, dukungan terhadap tim nasional mudah sekali diekspresikan menjadi rasisme terang-terangan.

Sebuah “kostum pendukung” Belanda yang dirancang untuk Piala Dunia di Afrika Selatan menggambarkan seorang pendukung Belanda menduduki pundak seorang warga Afrika Selatan berkulit hitam. Iklan yang menyertainya memberikan instruksi untuk “menyetir” kaum “Afrika” dengan menarik-narik kupingnya. 

The fight for football: Is the ’world game’ the people’s game?

The 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa began its final round of 16 on June 26. it came amid the unrelenting drone of vuvuzela horns, the knockout of big teams such as Italy and France, and street protests by local residents angry at the 40 billion rand the government has spent on the corporatised event.

Meanwhile, South Africa’s poor continue to suffer substandard housing and access to basic services.

Football, or “soccer” in Australia, is the “world game”, played by millions of people around the world and watched by hundreds of millions more. But is it truly the “people’s game”?
On its own terms, football is an often thrilling exhibition of human skill. A high quality football match commands comparisons with theatre, poetry, and - all too often - opera.

It's also excitingly unpredictable - more so than other art forms. Where else could you see Macbeth get away with fouling Duncan, eke out a nil-all draw with Malcolm, and cheat Banquo of his dreams of the crown on goal differences?

Little wonder, then, that it is so popular worldwide.

However, the game is accompanied by a series of undeniably ugly aspects. The issue of football hooliganism, especially in Europe, is well-known. Many clubs, with their tight-knit fan groups, provide a fertile breeding ground for neo-Nazi and extreme right-wing groups, such as the English Defence League. 

On an international level, support for national teams all too easily finds expression in crude racism. 

Germany in turmoil as president quits

The government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel is in crisis, following the resignation of Germany’s President Horst Koehler on May 31.

Koehler – a former head of the IMF, and German president since 2004 – resigned after public backlash against comments he made connecting the German economy with increased military deployments.

On a May 22 visit to the German military mission in Afghanistan – something which eighty percent of the German population are opposed to – Koehler told German radio that further military deployments were necessary “to protect our interests, for instance trade routes … or preventing regional instabilities that could negatively impact our trade, jobs and incomes."

Constitutional lawyer Ulrich Preuss called it a “discernably imperialist choice of words”, while Klaus Ernst, co-leader of the antiwar leftwing party Die Linke claimed that Koehler had “openly said what cannot be denied”. Ernst asserted that Afghanistan is a “war about influence and commodities” and defending the export interests of large corporations.

Facing enormous public outcry, Koehler resigned as President, citing a “lack of the necessary respect” for his position. A new president must be appointed within 30 days.

Germany: Left party conference renews leadership, steadies course

On May 15, the far-left German party Die Linke held its national congress in the eastern city of Rostock, electing a new national leadership and debating a new draft program. 

At the conference, charismatic and popular left-wing firebrand – and renegade Social Democrat – Oskar Lafontaine, 66, stepped down as the party’s co-leader due to health reasons after a cancer operation.

Lafontaine helped co-found Die Linke, formed in 2007 from a merger of the Electoral Alternative for Jobs and Social Justice (WASG – an amalgam of disgruntled Social Democrats, militant unionists and various left groups and individuals) and the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS – the successor to the old East German ruling party). Party co-leader and East German moderate Lothar Bisky, 68, a former leader of the PDS, also stepped aside.

While both men were instrumental in the merger that created Die Linke, they represent widely differing views in the new party.