Chris Williams, Wollongong As part of the campaign for peace and justice in Palestine and Lebanon, 80 people gathered in Wollongong University's Hope theatre on September 6 to discuss "Mass media, mass lies — exposing the truth about Israel's
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Graham Matthews As the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks in the US approached, PM John Howard and treasurer Peter Costello launched another barrage of racist attacks on Muslims and people of Arabic background. On talk-back radio on
Peter Boyle We received this note from a reader last week: "My beloved won $100 cash and asked me to donate it to the Green Left Weekly fighting fund. That's when I noticed that there is no direct deposit details given in the terrific page two
On August 31 Ghana's government banned an international conference for gay men and lesbians that was due to take place on September 4. Information minister Kwame Bartels said: "Unnatural carnal knowledge is illegal under our criminal code.
Eva Cheng Although Chen Shui-bian has won twice in Taiwan's three presidential elections by popular vote — ending the half-century, mainly military, rule of the Kuomintang (the KMT or Nationalist Party) — and his term isn't up until March 2008,
Alex Miller On September 2, close to 400 members of the Scottish Socialist Party attended a Glasgow rally dedicated to "Unity, integrity and socialism". It took place in the wake of the announcement that two former SSP platforms, those controlled by
On September 7, Hector Navarro, the former Venezuelan minister for higher education, arrived in Australia as a presidential envoy for Venezuela's socialist president, Hugo Chavez. Navarro, who is visiting the Pacific region on behalf of Venezuela's
Leo Zeilig The July 30 elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo were the first national elections in the country for more than four decades. In the first round, the sitting president Joseph Kabila took a 45% share of the vote, while his nearest
SYDNEY — "The greatest obstacle to peace in the Middle East is US policy." That's how Dr Bouthaina Shaaban, Syria's minister for expatriates, framed her lecture to 150 people at the University of Western Sydney's Bankstown campus on September 7.
Rachel Evans Homosexuality is illegal in Lebanon, but queers are organising to eradicate this discrimination. Chadi Sankary, an Australian-Lebanese communications student, told Green Left Weekly that Helem, an organisation of Lebanese lesbians, gay