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Vote Socialist Alliance on November 10

@box text intr = The November 10 federal election is unlikely to change much in Australian politics. The choice of an ALP or Coalition government offers no choice to stop the war against the Afghan people or to free the refugees or to reverse more

'Long grass' people demand their rights

BY SCOTT WHITE DARWIN — An Aboriginal family was forcibly removed from the Lee Point recreation area by 15-20 police officers on the afternoon of October 9, one day after the "long grass sleep-out" at Parliament House was organised to address

Criticism of asylum stand grows, but not from Labor

BY SARAH STEPHEN Refugee-bashing has proved a winner for Prime Minister John Howard, helping him boost his government's popularity to the highest it has been since the 1998 election. Yet while opinion polls are backing the government's draconian

Coalition's anti-feminist carrot and stick

BY ALISON THORNE The "First Child Tax Rebate", the centrepiece of the Liberal Party's election launch on October 28, is, as we have come to expect from Prime Minister John Howard, anti-feminist to the core. When John Howard argues that the family

AFGHANISTAN: A new colonialism?

BY SEAN HEALY While the relentless bombing of Afghanistan hasn't resulted in the quick collapse of the Taliban regime that Pentagon officials hoped for, the negotiations are well under way on the regime which will, at the point of US bayonets,

High school students hold detention centre vigil

BY ROSA ELLEN, KATE LAHIFF & TERESA FOARD MELBOURNE — Fifty people, including many high school students, held a vigil outside the Maribyrnong detention centre on October 28. The vigil was organised by Princes Hill Secondary College students and

'A nation hostile to its foundations'

BY SARAH STEPHEN Borderline: Australia's treatment of refugees and asylum seekersBy Peter MaresUNSW Press240 pages, $32.95 pb "There is a contradiction at the heart of Australian society", writes Peter Mares in Borderline. "Like the United States

SAUDI ARABIA: Ruling family faces growing dissent

BY GWENN OKRUHLIK The weeks following September 11 brought to the surface the tense undercurrents in the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia. In the aftermath of the horrific attacks in New York and Washington, word spread that

WTO: Corporate power at work

BY ERIK WESSELIUS Britain is home to a particularly influential services industry lobby, which operates through an organisation called "International Financial Services, London (IFSL)". It is more than just another corporate pressure group; it

Whatever happened to reconciliation?

BY EWAN SAUNDERS& MARCEL CAMERON Last year hundreds of thousands of Australians participated in the "reconciliation walks", the most impressive of these occurring on May 28, 2000, when at least a quarter of a million people walked across Sydney

AFGHANISTAN: The phoney war on terrorism

BY JOHN PILGER LONDON — If people were not being killed and beginning to starve, the American attack on Afghanistan might seem farcical. But there is a logic to what they are doing. Read between the lines and it is clear that they are not bombing

News briefs

Hemp party attacked LISMORE — Thirty police officers descended on the Nimbin campaign headquarters of Help End Marijuana Prohibition (HEMP) on October 31. In a two-hour long siege, 10 armed police police searched the premises. One person was