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The Vote Against Discrimination
Kirrit Barreet Aboriginal Art and Cultural Centre, 407 Main Road, Ballarat
Free entry, until August 30
On June 13, explosions destroyed the two 100-year-old minarets of the highly revered Shiite Askariya mosque in the largely Sunni inhabited city of Samarra, 100 kilometres north of Baghdad. “The Askariya shrine means a lot to us, the people of Samarra”, Abu Abdullah, a Sunni who lives next to the shrine, told the June 13 Washington Post, adding: “To lose the shrine hurt us a lot, and made us afraid about what will happen next. Someone wants to create sectarian strife by doing this act.”
As the national strike by more than 700,000 South African teachers, nurses, health workers and other public servants entered its fourth week on June 22, the African National Congress (ANC) government steadfastly refused to seriously revise its miserly pay offer. President Thabo Mbeki knows that if his neoliberal, pro-big business regime relents and grants the public-sector workers a much-needed above-inflation pay increase, it will embolden the country’s private-sector workers to fight for a similar rise.
On June 18, Vilma Espin Guillois, legendary guerrilla fighter and leader of the Federation of Cuban Women, passed Away in Havana. An official note issued by the Cuban government is abridged below.
The following are excerpts from a statement made by Cuban President Fidel Castro on June 20, the day after revolutionary leader Vilma Espin Guillois died in Havana.

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