By Peter Boyle
A cacophony of outrageous racist statements by the likes of Northern Territory Chief Minister Marshall Perron (Aborigines are "backward", sleep with dogs and share their germs, he says) and Western Mining director Hugh Morgan
Issue 106
News
By Joy McEntee
BRISBANE — More than 500 women from around the country met here July 13-15 for the seventh annual Network of Women Students of Australia (NOWSA) conference. This is the largest NOWSA ever, and twice the size of the last
By Katrina Dean
MELBOURNE — The 22nd national conference of Resistance was held here over the weekend of July 3-5. The overall tone of the conference was clear: young people will think for themselves, speak for themselves, act on their own
By Anne Casey
SYDNEY — A dangerous precedent has been set in NSW with the criminal conviction of five logging protesters who appeared in Cooma Local Court on July 7.
The five conservationists were arrested in April during a peaceful
By Deb Sorensen
Darwin — At sunrise on July 5, a symbolic fire was lit and the ashes of the first World Indigenous Youth Conference were thrown into it. Traditional dances were performed in the light of the flames.
More than 2000
By Michael Karadjis
SYDNEY — About 25 Australian Kurds barricaded themselves inside the United Nations building in Sydney on June 28, demanding that the Australian government pressure the Turkish regime on its brutal oppression of its
By Stephen Robson
PERTH — Industrial relations minister Graham Kierath tabled the Workplace Agreements Bill, the Industrial Relations Amendments Bill and the Minimum Conditions of Employment Bill in the WA parliament on July 8.
When
Swift response to Indonesian repression
By Vannessa Hearman
MELBOURNE — The news that students at the Jakarta campus of the National Science and Technology Institute had been beaten and arrested by the Indonesian military for protesting
Public services on Qld hit list
By Bill Mason
BRISBANE — In the latest of a series of planned savage cutbacks in the Queensland public sector, up to 12,000 government workers could lose their jobs in the education and health area, it
Speaking tour by Palestinian woman
By Jenny Long
SYDNEY — Dr Ilham Abu-Ghazaleh, assistant professor at Birzeit University on the West Bank, will be speaking at meetings here between July 14 and 16. Dr Abu-Ghazaleh who has been
Demonstration at opening of consulate
By Bernie Brian
DARWIN — Members of Darwin's East Timor Independence Support Group organised a peaceful but angry picket on June 25 to protest at the opening of an Indonesian consulate in the city.
Indonesian workers group condemns ACTU
The Jakarta-based worker support organisation Yayasan Maju Bersama (YMB — Advance Together Foundation) has called for Australian unions to boycott plans by the ACTU and the Australian government to
Workcover protests begin
By Di Quin
MELBOURNE — About 1000 building workers braved Melbourne's wintry conditions on July 7 to protest against the Kennett government's Workcover Act.
The law, which came into effect in December,
Hamersley sacks union activist
By Stephen Robson
PERTH — One hundred and eighty members of the Metal and Engineering Workers' Union (MEWU) struck after Hamersley Iron sacked John Mercer, the union convener at the Tom Price operation,
Analysis
"Not since the Romans salted the land after destroying Carthage has a nation taken such pains to visit the war on future generations", wrote Ngo Van Long of the US war against Vietnam. John Tully describes the ongoing ecological catastrophe.
World
By David Robie
PORT MORESBY — Ever since Prime Minister Paias Wingti gained power last year, his government has had its sights on a second national daily newspaper.
Although Papua New Guinea had long enjoyed the most vigorous press in
By Irina Glushchenko
MOSCOW — "I'm standing before a sign: Construction Administration of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The name of this modest little town is to be transferred to one of the giants of nuclear power generation ... The
No room for Le Pen
France's National Front führer, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and his European Right faction in the European parliament had to cancel a planned conference in Edinburgh when all the hotels refused to accommodate them.
The
The Cuban government has rejected as "grotesquely false" US claims that Cuban guards had shot and killed Cuban citizens seeking asylum in the US military base at Guantánamo.
In Havana on July 8, Cuban foreign minister Roberto Robaina,
Irish unsafe in British prisons
"Catholic, Irish nationals, once found guilty of offences against the security forces, are subject to systematic or retaliatory harm, physical detention or potential death in Northern Ireland. The security
US role in Salvadoran atrocities
The US embassy in San Salvador directly assisted in at least one death squad disappearance, according to Lauren Gilbert, who coordinated investigations for the UN Truth Commission.
Gilbert told the US
By Max Lane
Three student activists from the democratic movement are now on trial in central Java.
Two of the students were charged in relation to an open forum they organised in May 1992, during the general elections. The forum,
Dr RICARDO NAVARRO, president and executive director of CESTA (the Salvadoran Centre for Appropriate Technology), is being toured around Australia and New Zealand by the Overseas Services Bureau. CESTA was founded in 1980 in response to the
Students released
Students arrested during an army attack on demonstrators at the Indonesian National Institute of Science and Technology (ISTN) on June 24 have been released.
The releases followed a confrontation at a hearing of one of
By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Boris Yeltsin's campaign to concentrate near-absolute power in his own hands as president is to reach an important landmark on July 12. The Constitutional Assembly which Yeltsin summoned in order to legitimise his
By Mitchell Hamilton
East Timorese activists have drawn attention to the illegal Indonesian occupation of their country with actions on three fronts.
Seven East Timorese students created a major incident in Jakarta and internationally
By Norm Dixon An inquest into the 1985 murders of several political activists by South African security forces has heard evidence that police pioneered the grisly practice of "necklacing". South Africa's progressive weekly New Nation
Twenty factories in the steel and electronics industry went on strike in Saxony in April and May, along with six steel mills in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). Steelworkers of Thuringia, Berlin and Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt also
By Renfrey Clarke MOSCOW — "The enthusiasm voiced in 1990 and 1991 for all types of private property has ... declined, as people have become familiar with the concrete embodiment of abstract principles in practice." Not an outlandish
By Jackie Coleman
MANAGUA — In the first of a series of mobilisations leading up to the celebration of the 1979 revolution on July 19, Sandinistas commemorated the 14th annual "Repliegue" on June 26.
The original Repliegue was the
Culture
Timewatch: Dereliction of Duty
Screening on SBS Television
Monday, July 19, 7.30 p.m. (7 p.m. in Adelaide)
Reviewed by Norm Dixon
BBC reporter George Alagiah examines the United Nations' callous and wilful disregard for the plight of
Vygotsky's Sociohistorical Psychology and its Contemporary Applications
By Carl Ratner
New York: Plenum Press, 320 pp
Reviewed by Dave Riley
Psychological theories are eminently political. Psychological doctrine percolates into popular
Apache raises flap with rap
British rap singer Apache Indian is taking India by storm, stirring up controversy in both countries with songs that challenge white racial prejudice, caste and arranged marriages.
"Sometimes the truth hurts",
Art with Timor
Art with Timor
Paintings by Sebastian Silva
Beaufort Hotel Complex, Darwin, June 25-27
Reviewed by Deb Sorensen
Calm rural scenes of East Timor and local vistas were the subject matter for Sebastian Silva's debut
Homelands
Produced and directed by Tom Zubrycki
Shown at the Melbourne International Film Festival
Reviewed by Di Quin
Homelands tells the story of Maria and Carlos Robles, political refugees from El Salvador now living in suburban
The Heartbreak Kid
Directed by Michael Jenkins
Written by Richard Barrett and Michael Jenkins
With Claudia Karvan, Alex Dimitriades, Steven Bastoni, Nico Lathouris
At Hoyts Cinemas
Reviewed by Max Lane
Heartbreak Kid packs a lot
Breakout
Jimmy Cliff
JRS Records through Festival
Reviewed by Norm Dixon
Jimmy Cliff is without doubt the best loved, most sincere and most political Jamaican reggae artist around. Being the best known survivor of the classic
By Andrew Worssam
"To discuss a business proposition", he answered. That sounded interesting. We were both trying to forge a career in the same field and worked together occasionally — not always harmoniously, it might be added. But I felt
The Madonna Connection: Representational politics, sub-cultural identities and cultural theory
Edited by Cathy Schwichtenberg
Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1993. 336 pp. $19.95 pb
Review by Melanie Sjoberg
Love her or hate her, nearly
By Peter Boyle
Joan Coxsedge, the left-wing former Labor MP, says she had been wanting to visit Cuba for ages before she finally made her first visit in February 1992. "I wore two hats. One was as a long-time political activist keen to meet
Not so scatty TV
By Adam Hanieh
ADELAIDE — SCAT TV, a community-based television station is a breath of fresh air in the heavily monopolised world of media.
SCAT (which stands for student and community access television) began two
Light satire from Italy
Johnny Stecchino
Directed by Robert Benigni
Starring Robert Benigni and Nicoletta Braschi
From mid-July at the Nova Cinema, Melbourne
Reviewed by Vannessa Hearman
This is Italy's highest grossing film to
Editorial
Land rights and 'extremism'
There is nothing that frightens the racists and the moneybags more than a victory — even a partial victory — for the Aboriginal people. Even the half-hearted acknowledgment that Australia's indigenous people