Bethlehem connection
Your article "Marrickville and Bethlehem twinned" (GLW #723) made two inaccurate statements which it is important to correct. It claimed that the visas of the Bethlehem delegation were delayed "due to complaints" made by me.
724
On August 23, NSW education minister John Della Bosca announced the state Labor governments intention to close Macquarie Boys Technology High School in Parramatta by 2009. The school occupies a large site near Parramatta.
US combat deaths in Iraq have dropped by half in the two months since the buildup of 28,000 additional troops reached full strength, Associated Press reported on August 31. In the days following, most of the US corporate media repeated this claim. But what they didnt report was that the number of US combat deaths in June-August a total of 264 made it the deadliest summer for US occupation troops since the war began in March 2003. Last summer, 169 US soldiers were killed in Iraq.
Twenty-five years ago this September after its 1982 invasion of Lebanon had achieved its military objectives by forcing an evacuation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to Tunisia Israel unleashed the Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia on the defenceless civilians of Beirut refugee camps Sabra and Shatila. Under the Israeli occupation of West Beirut, the Phalangists, armed by and in liaison with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), carried out a three-day spree of killing and rape, massacring an estimated 3000 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians.
I'd like to thank the students from the schools,
For getting off their stools,
And coming out to protest against these tools.
The old, the young,
The weak, the strong.
No more pain,
Stop their reign.
Confront – get out there!
Walk
On September 7, the weekly demonstration in the Palestinian West Bank village of Bilin against Israels apartheid wall became a celebration. Protesters danced and sang as they marched to the wall. Three days earlier, the Israeli Supreme Court had ordered the Israeli defence ministry to re-route 1.7 kilometres of the 703-km wall, which has been declared illegal by the International Court of Justice.
Revolutionaries
Revised and Updated Edition By Eric Hobsbawm
Abacus, 2007
368 pages, $27.95(pb)
Revised and Updated Edition By Eric Hobsbawm
Abacus, 2007
368 pages, $27.95(pb)
During the last week of August, more than 3000 workers at the state-controlled Chengdu Power company went on strike at their diesel engines producing plant in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, and protested at the city government offices. The action was a bid to pressure the factory management to honour the original agreement under which working conditions would be changed while the company is restructured for privatisation.
Fanning discontents Flames: Australian Wobbly Poetry, Scurrilous Doggerel and Song, 1914-2007
Corrosive Press, 2007
43 pages, $2
Email Entropy4@gmail.com
Corrosive Press, 2007
43 pages, $2
Email Entropy4@gmail.com
US President George Bush will add Sydney to the long list of cities that have greeted him with mass demonstrations demanding an end to the war on Iraq. PM John Howard will remember APEC as the summit that failed to bolster his domestic support.
Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten
Directed by Julien Temple
Dendy Films, 123 minutes
Directed by Julien Temple
Dendy Films, 123 minutes
For Bolivia’s indigenous majority there is no going back. The election in 2005 of Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, marked a watershed — a before and after in Bolivia’s history — after more than 500 years of struggle against imperialism and colonialism. It marked a conscious step forward by Bolivia’s indigenous majority in its struggle for justice and equality.
Earlier this year, three workers on 457 “guest worker” visas died on the job in separate incidents. Both the construction union (CFMEU) and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) are calling for an independent judicial enquiry into the treatment of all of the 50,000 workers on these visas. In many cases, these workers are underpaid and given heavy manual labour, rather then the skilled work that is stipulated in their visa conditions. Green Left Weekly’s Andrew Martin interviewed AMWU Queensland state secretary Andrew Dettmar, about the 457 issue.
Saturday September 8 was another red banner day for people’s power.
Seventy-two Tamils from Sri Lanka who have been held in detention on the Pacific island of Nauru for more than six months were granted refugee status by the immigration department on September 12. But that does not mean they will be able to live in Australia.
On August 30, western Sydney charged US President George Bush with war crimes committed during the immoral and illegal occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush was also charged with the crimes of assault on the environment, crimes against civil liberties and against workers. A People’s Tribunal was held at the Parramatta Town Hall, and prosecuting witnesses included former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib, Dennis Doherty (from the Anti-Bases Coalition and the Communist Party of Australia), Kamala Emanuel (environment spokesperson for the Socialist Alliance) and Ninos Tooma (Iraqi activist).
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