Five days of heavy negotiating in Barcelona came to a disappointing close on November 6. The last negotiating session before the Copenhagen conference on climate change in December was undermined and obstructed at every turn by a group of developed countries, including Australia.   more ...

The leak has been plugged and the fire on the West Atlas rig is out but so is the dirty secret – the rich marine environment off Australia’s north-west coast is under threat from the headlong rush to exploit the region’s oil and gas reserves.   more ...

As The Guardian went to press 22 of the asylum seekers on the vessel Oceanic Viking had disembarked and been transferred to a detention centre at Tanjung Pinang on the Indonesian island of Bintan. The standoff over the fate of the Sri Lankan asylum seekers, who were rescued by the Australian Navy but had all refused to be dumped in Indonesia, has now entered its fifth week..   more ...

In 1939, as the world headed towards the outbreak of the hostilities that would become known as the Second World War, the role allotted to German imperialism by its rivals and erstwhile allies, British and French imperialism, was to spearhead the invasion and defeat of the world’s first socialist state, the USSR.   more ...

The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development has warned that unemployment in the 30 largest capitalist states will continue to rise into next year. The OECD’s Employment Outlook 2009 says “There are growing signs that the worst may be over and that a recovery may be in sight. But the short-term employment outlook is grim.”   more ...

British National Party leader Nick Griffin’s appearance on the BBC program Question Time confirmed what quite a few of us knew already – that he’s an extremist buffoon who is embarrassed by his once-open Nazi sympathies.  more ...