Didn’t know there was such thing as too much. For me it’s a nice warm soup.

Haven’t checked the official .gov What’s On site in a while, but it’s always good for a quick look if nothing else is on.

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.

Even wins which are on-the-grand-scale symbolic are important demonstrations of what can be done. Take the port actions against ZIM - economically and logistically, the direct impact was a blip. However, they showed that the community can stand side by side in solidarity with union workers taking industrial action. This has a real effect on workers in the industry (and there are reports workers still insider were taking go-slow actions against ZIM) and can translate across to other industries like weapons manufacture. These actions also highlight that Australia isn’t irrelevant: this country is making critical bomber jet components, trading with the Zionist Regime, diplomatically failing to adequately counter the genocidal invasion. There are actions we can take, and if those small actions can grow and snowball, then we can become a meaningful catalyst for change, like we were during South African apartheid and the Vietnam War.

HMAS SYDNEY CONFIRMED?!