Marce Cameron

In October, the Sydney branch of the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society (ACFS) toured Dr Merita Armindo Monteiro, an East Timorese doctor trained for free in Cuba. Armindo Monterio is also an activist in the Timor Leste-Cuba Friendship Association. Since 2004, Cuba has undertaken a large-scale medical training program for East Timor and sent hundreds of Cuban medical personnel to work on the island. Cuban medical collaboration in the region has since been extended to Kiribati, Nauru, Vanuatu, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands. Papua New Guinea may soon benefit from Cuba’s generosity as well.

Cuba is a world leader in ecologically sustainable practices. It is the only country to have begun the large-scale transition from conventional farming, which is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, to a new agricultural paradigm known as low-input sustainable agriculture. Thriving urban organic farms feed and beautify Cuba’s cities, strengthen local communities and employ hundreds of thousands of people thanks to government support.

For many years we were regular contributors to Green Left Weekly and proud supporters of the paper. We’ve now decided to resume writing for GLW and we urge other former contributors to consider doing the same. In May 2008, we and about 50 other former members of the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) launched the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and the monthly paper Direct Action (DA) following a bitter internal dispute in the DSP that centred on the Socialist Alliance.

BRISBANE — Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) activist Danny Dougherty was elected state secretary of the printing division of the union's Queensland branch on November 18. Dougherty comfortably won the postal

BY MARCE CAMERON& SUE BOLTON BRISBANE — Perhaps inspired by the vicious anti-communist scare campaigns conducted by Coalition governments and right-wing trade union officials against militant union activists in the 1950s, officials of the

BRISBANE — In a challenge to conservative union officials in the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, AMWU metal division activists will stand for state and national conference delegate positions in the November union

BRISBANE — On August 19, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union organiser Maggie May came to work and found a fax on her chair from AMWU national secretary Doug Cameron telling her that she would no longer be working for the

On May 1, 160 foreign intellectuals and artists — including Nobel Prize winners Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rigoberta Menchu, Aldolfo Perez Esquivel and Nadine Gordimer — launched an international declaration in defence of Cuba.

Hearing news that war had begun, more than 10,000 people jammed into Brisbane's King George Square in a 5pm emergency rally called by the Queensland Peace Network on March 20. At first the mood was sombre and reflective, but this

Hearing news that war had begun, more than 10,000 people jammed into Brisbane's King George Square in a 5pm emergency rally called by the Queensland Peace Network on March 20. At first the mood was sombre and reflective, but this

For the second time in two days, up to 10,000 people marched through the streets of Brisbane on March 22. The noon rally at King George Square drew a crowd of 5000 but people kept pouring in from all sides of the square even as the

BRISBANE — Around 100,000 protesters turned up to oppose war on Iraq on February 15, making it probably the biggest protest in the city's history. "How is the US so sure Iraq has had weapons of mass destruction?", rally chair