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Around 50 workers from the Fosters brewery at Yatala, south of Brisbane, and their supporters rallied outside the Carlton United Brewery (CUB) head office in Fortitude Valley on July 27 in support of their campaign for a union agreement. The protesters held up placards and waved to passing traffic, who honked their support.
Three-hundred people packed Griffith University’s Multi-Faith Centre on July 22 for an emergency community forum in support of Mohamed Haneef and democratic rights.
A mass anti-Howard rally is being planned for Melbourne in September. The rally will be in opposition to the Howard government’s Work Choices laws as well as other abuses carried out by the government, such as the unjust imprisonment of Dr Mohamed Haneef under “anti-terrorism” laws.
On July 21 the East/Hills branch of the Socialist Alliance pre-selected Annolies Truman to run for the seat of Pearce in the up-coming federal election.
Pharmaceutical giants have put profits before lives when it comes to Third World people’s access to HIV medications, Andrew Hewett, executive director of Oxfam Australia, said.
The July 26 premiere of Tasmania’s Clean, Green Future: Too Precious to Pulp at the State Theatre was packed out, with many would-be viewers missing out. Heidi Douglas created this short film to expose the true effect on Tasmania of the pulp mill proposed by Gunns Ltd. Douglas is one of the “Gunns 20", who have faced legal action for speaking out against the mill. Also shown was Roger Scholes’ Franklin River Blockade.
Personnel in the Australian navy have broken down and cried while carrying out duties that include repelling refugees from Australian waters, according to documents released under Freedom of Information laws and reported on by the July 22 Sun-Herald.
The Venezuelan revolution, led by socialist President Hugo Chavez, has captured the imagination of millions of people around the world with its increasingly successful challenge to US imperialism and US-backed neoliberal policies that have caused widespread impoverishment across Latin America. Since Chavez’s re-election in December on an explicitly socialist platform, there has been a struggle to significantly “deepen” the revolutionary process towards creating a “socialism of the 21st century”.
Various leaders of Venezuela’s primary pro-government labour union, the National Workers Union (UNT), have called on all sectors of the organisation to join together and hold elections later this year. At a press conference on July 17, labour leaders Marcela Maspero and Orlando Chirino invited all sectors of the UNT to a general meeting on July 26 to organise general elections and, in that way, unite the principal labour union of the country that has remained divided in recent years.
The Socialist Alliance’s New South Wales state conference, held in Newcastle on July 21, emphasised the struggle against global warming and against the Howard government’s hated Work Choices legislation.
“In weighing how to deal with the al Qaeda threat in Pakistan, American officials have been meeting in recent weeks to discuss what some said was emerging as an aggressive new strategy, one that would include both public and covert elements”, the July 18 New York Times reported following the release the previous day of the public version of a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Islamist terrorist threats to the US.
Hard Choices: Unchain My Heart — The story of a Burmese refugee who has voluntarily shackled himself in chains to draw attention to the plight of his suffering homeland. SBS, Friday, August 3, 3.30pm.