The day after a US-created Iraqi tribunal sentenced former president Saddam Hussein to death, a senior Iraqi official heading a committee set up by the US authorities in 2003 to purge members of the former ruling Baath Party from public life announced that it will recommend allowing most of them to take back their government jobs or get pensions.
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NSW planning minister Frank Sartor has attempted to "clarify" the outcome of a bill currently before the state parliament that would remove the current requirement that development proposals contain an adequate environmental assessment. The bill would also thwart a court case against the proposed Anvil Hill coalmine in the Hunter Valley.
“The central message of the 2006 election was so unmistakable that even George Bush couldn’t miss it. Get. Out. Of. Iraq.” This was how the November 17 US Socialist Worker weekly summed up the results of the November 7 US mid-term congressional elections, in which the Democrats won control of both houses of the US Congress for the first time since 1994.
A 550-strong lecture sponsored by the Australian Lawyers Alliance on November 13 heard David Hicks' US military lawyer, Major Michael Mori, slam the Bush administration's new military commission law, which will be used to try Guantanamo Bay detainees. Hicks is one of approximately 400 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay being held without charge.
Almost anyone else found to have been cheating, lying and secretly on the take would have been the subject of a frothing rant over the airwaves by Sydney shock jock Alan Jones, but when Jones was caught being paid millions in commercial sponsorships over the past decade to present advertising as news, there was no public self-flagellation. As Chris Masters biography of Jones argues, the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) hearings showed that Jones was for sale, despite Joness proclamations that his opinions are his alone.
Some 450 activists from a variety of countries gathered in Rostock, northern Germany, on the November 11-12 weekend for the second Action Conference to plan protests against the G8 summit in 2007. A week of protests is planned against the June 6-8 G8 summit, which will be held at the Kempinski Grand Hotel in Heiligendamm.
The Road to Guantanamo
Directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross
In cinemas now
Directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross
In cinemas now
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