704

Hanan Aruri, a Palestinian woman from Ramallah, became involved in the fight against the Israeli occupation as a teenager in the 1987 intifada. Today she is an activist in the international campaign to boycott Israel, and is also involved in campaigns for women’s rights. She is a guest at the Marxism Today conference, organised by Socialist Alternative, being held in Melbourne from March 30-April 1. Aruri spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Emma Clancy about the current dynamics in Palestinian politics and the struggle against the Israeli occupation. [This interview will be published in GLW #705.]
On March 21, in a speech to mark the fourth anniversary of Australian troops being dispatched to Iraq as part of an illegal US invasion responsible for the deaths of more than half a million Iraqis, Prime Minister John Howard conceded that despite the “surge” in the occupiers’ troop numbers “success is by no means assured”.
Build it Now: Socialism for the Twenty-first Century
Monthly Review Press, 2006
US$14.95, 127 pages
The week before the March 24 NSW state election, the Socialist Alliance launched an initiative for a three-month trial of free public transport. Alliance members and supporters mass leafleted bus terminals and railway stations across Sydney on March 20, calling on the incoming government to undertake the trial and weigh up the cost and the environmental health benefits.
Easter has become synonymous with protests for refugees’ rights. Woomera, Baxter and Villawood detention centres have each been the target of Easter convergences that have shone the national and international spotlight on the Howard government’s blatant disregard of human rights.
Ten years ago, Australia led the world in voluntary euthanasia legislation. On September 22, 1996, Bob Dent became the first person in the world to receive a legal, lethal, voluntary injection. His peaceful and dignified death occurred under the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act (ROTI) of the Northern Territory.
Human Cargo — Looks at the world of refugees and the people who sacrifice their lives to help them, as well as those who work to exploit them. SBS, Monday, April 2, 12.30am. Message Stick: Ripples from Wave Hill — The story of Australia's
Communism: A Love Story
By Jeff Sparrow
Melbourne University Press 2007
336 pages, $26.95
When former naval officer and NSW opposition leader Peter Debnam began his campaign to overthrow the NSW Labor government there were hopes in the Liberal camp that the scene was set for a repeat on March 24 of the party’s last win — Nick Greiner’s 1988 walloping of the Barrie Unsworth administration.
As the ALP’s electoral fortunes lift with each new poll, unionists want to know exactly how a federal Labor government would carry out its promise to “tear up” the Coalition’s anti-worker Work Choices laws.
#147;In the US, we are living on borrowed time in terms of a nuclear accident”, Kevin Kamps from the US-based non-government Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) told a March 21 public forum organised by The Wilderness Society.
Below is an abridged account by Tim Davis-Frank of the police raid on his home and his arrest in Sydney on March 14. His “crime” was to take part in the protests outside the G20 meeting in Melbourne last November. Davis-Frank is the University of Sydney student representative council’s global solidarity officer. Four G20 protesters from Sydney went to court on March 19, and will face court again in Melbourne on May 11.