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Anti-deportation alliance launched

BY KATRINA HECKENDORF & PAUL OBOOHOV On May 28, protest actions were held outside immigration department office in Adelaide, Canberra, Brisbane, Darwin, Perth and Sydney by asylum seekers and their supporters to launch the National Anti-Deportation

Left unity: the Scottish socialist experience

BY PAUL BENEDEK SYDNEY — "Sometimes the left spends more time fighting other socialists than fighting the establishment", Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) leader Alister Black told a May 29 public forum at the Gaelic Club, organised by the

Anti-free trade agreement rally

SYDNEY — Fifty global justice activists protested outside a "breakfast speech" by trade minister Mark Vaile, to the Australian Institute of Export in Sydney's CBD, early on the morning of May 31. They were opposing a free trade agreement with the

A day on the Morris McMahon picket line

BY LIAM MITCHELL& ADRIAN WRIGHT SYDNEY — On May 29, some 40 supporters of striking workers at can manufacturer Morris McMahon joined the picket line, then in its 12th week, to stop the scab bus in the morning, while 60 wharfies arrived during the

'Blowback' in Afghanistan

Our Woman in KabulBy Irris MaklerBantam Books, 2003356 pages, $32.95 REVIEW BY HARRY THROSSELL A revealing aspect of Irris Makler's multi-layered book, Our Woman in Kabul, is her account of the US government's support for Osama bin Laden, and

'Two-state solution' impossible, says Palestinian author

BY CHRIS SLEE MELBOURNE — Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian woman living in Britain and author of In Search of Fatima: a Palestinian Story, argued for Palestinians to return to the goal of creating a single, democratic secular state in historic

Wool combers overwhelmed by support

GEELONG — Workers at Geelong Wool Combing (GWC) are maintaining their 24-hour picket outside the gates of their employer. The 110 workers have been overwhelmed by the level of support they have received from the community.

Adrian Van Doren, workplace delegate for the Textile Clothing and Footwear Union (TCFUA), told Green Left Weekly that the workers were locked out on April 28. "We've been here all this time and if it hadn't been for the support from our union and all the other great unions, who knows what would have happened?"