Annette Peardon was nine years old when she and her brother were forcibly removed from their family on Cape Barren Island. They spent their youth in a series of foster homes and institutions around Tasmania. Last November, Tasmania’s parliament passed the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal Children Bill 2006, the country’s first compensation law. Green Left Weekly’s Susan Austin spoke with Peardon about the significance of this law, and her struggle for justice.
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Greens MP Lee Rhiannon slammed the police operation at the Big Day Out, saying that the use of sniffer dogs against recreational drug users had put peoples health in danger.
Debra and Jon Cooley met at the Blundstone boot factory, where they have worked most of their lives. They had just taken out a loan for their dream home when Blundstone announced, on January 16, that it was closing up shop. Three hundred and thirty staff like the Cooleys, and Jade Archer and his partner, who are too old to start apprenticeships, now face an uncertain future as their skills are made redundant.
On January 21, Prime Minister John Howard condemned the organisers of the Big Day Out (BDO) music festival in Sydney for asking those planning to attend not to display Australian flags at the events as an “insult to the freedom it represents”.
On January 21, a day after 25 US soldiers died in Iraq (the third-highest death toll for a single day since US troops invaded Iraq in March 2003), 3200 additional US troops arrived in Baghdad as part of US President George Bush’s plan to boost US forces in Iraq by 21,500 troops. All but 4000 are to be sent to Baghdad, already occupied by 24,000 US combat troops.
On January 22, the Lebanese parliamentary opposition, led by the Shiite-based Hezbollah movement, organised a general strike to demand the resignation of the US-backed government of PM Fuad Siniora.
On January 8, Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chavez swore in his new cabinet, including five new members, calling upon them to take an oath that they would “never rest arm or soul in the construction of the Venezuelan path towards socialism”. One the ministers sworn in was Hector Navarro, previously higher education minister and now Venezuela’s minister of science and technology.
Last November, Hu Deping, the deputy chief of the united front department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) central committee, called for a halt to the popular campaign that seeks to force mainland Chinas new class of capitalists, most of whom acquired their initial wealth from embezzling the state sector, to return their ill-gotten gains for the public benefit.
On January 22, El Salvador’s main opposition party, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), held commemorative activities for the 75th anniversary of the 1932 Nahua-Pipil indigenous peasant revolt led by indigenous leader Jose Feliciano Ama and Agustin Farabundo Martí Rodríguez , leader of the newly formed Communist Party (PCS).
Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
By Barbara Ehrenreich
Granta Books, 2005
237 pages, $24.95 (pb)
By Barbara Ehrenreich
Granta Books, 2005
237 pages, $24.95 (pb)
American Hoax: Undercover in the USA (sort of)
By Charles Firth
Pan Macmillan, 2006
272 pages
$32.95 (pb)
By Charles Firth
Pan Macmillan, 2006
272 pages
$32.95 (pb)
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