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Challenging ideas of gender

REVIEW BY MARGARET ALLUM All About My FatherDirected by Even BenestadScreened at the 49th Sydney Film Festival in June Even Benestad made documentary film about his father, but both had very different ideas about what the film would achieve.

Students protest fees

BY EWAN SAUNDERS BRISBANE — Around 250 students at the University of Queensland successfully blockaded the university's senate meeting on August 1, preventing a vote that would have seen course places sold to wealthy students with lower entry

BRITAIN: The great charade

BY JOHN PILGER LONDON — It is 10 months since September 11, and still the great charade plays on. Having appropriated our shocked response to that momentous day, the rulers of the world have since ground our language into a paean of cliches and

Detention of asylum seekers 'inhuman and degrading'

BY SARAH STEPHEN "Offensive to human dignity — With these four words the UN human rights envoy, Justice Bhagwati, has encapsulated the moral vacuum at the heart of Australia's mandatory detention of refugees", wrote Howard Dick, an associate

UNITED STATES: Another contra scandal?

BY GARRY M. LEECH NEW YORK — During the 1980s, the Reagan administration became mired in the Iran-contra scandal following revelations that it illegally sold weapons to Iran and used the proceeds to covertly arm and fund Nicaraguan "contra"

Museworthy: The Birds' Necks

Museworthy: The Birds' Necks The birds' necks are as fatas a baby's thighsI know, I wring themWhen the birds are deadthey look very eternallying with their headsat the spirit's angleI place my lips to their feathersand feel their speechTheir

Shame Howard on Tampa Day

BY PIP HINMAN Some of the refugees rescued by the MV Tampa last August have been given refugee status and are being resettled in Australia. After 10 months in prison camps on Nauru and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, 480 Iraqis, 56 Afghans

ALP can be changed from within

BY DAVE ROBINSON Working with the ALP presents the union movement with challenges and some immense difficulties at times. I guess, like me, many are immensely disappointed, if not outraged, at some of the decisions made by the ALP, both in WA and

Socialists launch Bankstown branch

BY NICK EVERETT SYDNEY — The branch of the Democratic Socialist Party previously located in Burwood has relocated to Sydney's south-west. A new Bankstown office was opened on July 26 with a toast to the Cuban revolution and a celebration of the

Protests wherever Ruddock goes in rural NSW

BY SIMON WOOD WOOLGOOLGA — It seems hardly a day goes by now without somebody, from ordinary people to the United Nations, criticising the Coalition government's prejudiced and inhumane mandatory detention policy. At 9am on July 26,

Loose cannons

Strict interpretation “You'll notice that I never said she should resign”, Democrats Senator Andrew Murray told a July 30 press conference, a day after explaining that Natasha Stott Despoja's leadership of the party was “an

Seafarers fight to save jobs

BY SHANE BENTLEY SYDNEY — Members of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) are again protesting against shipping company attempts to reflag Australian crewed and flagged ships as "flag of convenience" vessels with exploited Third World crews.