The Vatican
Vatican City is an independent state with a population of roughly 1000 people, who are principally Vatican employees, including a large number of priests and nuns.
The pope is the monarch for life of the Vatican. The state is
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Green Left Weekly uses a wide variety of sources to bring you the most accurate national and international news each week. We use the resources of progressive international journals, electronic mail, telephone interviews with
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International Playhouse: Every Traveller Has Some Luggage — A radio play by Carlos Cerda. Chilean writer Carlos Cerda spent 10 years in political exile in Germany. He returned to Chile in 1984 to write this play. The play's main character finds the
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What's it like?"What's it like to be an African-American male in America?" Well, come with me on a non-fictional walk through Washington, DC, and I'll tell you how it's been for me. The distinct hum of an
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Comment by Rob McKinnon-Lower Chemicals don't procreate, living things do. So they are obviously inherently different — more organised, hence the term "organism". In the 1850s the laws which govern organic matter were unknown, and one of the
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The past year has been a bad one for the Catholic Church hierarchy. In the Catholic heartlands, in so far as there are any these days, popular support for the "moral fads" which Pope John Paul II attacks in his new encyclical
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SOWETO — As preparations for South Africa's first non-racial election gather pace, 1600 delegates attended a special Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) congress on September 10-12. Discussion focused on COSATU's role
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We are not a 'target market' Oh goody, just what we need — another "women's interest" magazine. The New Weekly, launched on October 14, is the latest offering from the man who brings us Woman's Day, Women's Weekly, Cleo, Cosmopolitan, Dolly
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Market economies The market or capitalist system of economies redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich and from future generations to the current generation. It degrades the human spirit by cultivating greed at the expense of all other
News
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250 at Women in Asia conferenceMELBOURNE — The Fourth Women in Asia Conference was held at the University of Melbourne October 1-3. More than 250 people (including about 10 men) attended. Women came from throughout
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Kennett to close more schoolsMELBOURNE — At least another 159 state schools are to be closed in Victoria according to an announcement by the Kennett government on October 15. Teachers' unions warn that the real number to
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Adelaide universities go outADELAIDE — Academics from all three South Australian universities joined the national strike on October 18. The president of the Adelaide University Staff Association, Rod Crowther, said
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Darwin Reclaim the Night DARWIN — The Reclaim the Night march will take place here on Friday, October 29. The March starts at 7.30 p.m. at Raintree Park with marchers making their way to the Workers Club for a night of celebration, music
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BRISBANE — "Australia and its citizens ... have an opportunity before them to do something about the dispossession and alienation of Aboriginal people. If Australia doesn't at this particular time pick it up, then this
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Cuba calls for support SYDNEY — The Cuban consul general in Australia, Marcelino Fajardo, has appealed to friends of Cuba to express their solidarity in the coming weeks. The United States government is again to raise the spurious question of
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ADELAIDE — Sixty workers from the Department of Family and Community Services gathered in their lunch break on October 11 to protest against staffing cutbacks at DFACS. Public Service Association representative John McGuinness told the workers that
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BRISBANE — More than 100 people gathered at City Hall here on October 12 to hear about the toxic waste dump in Gurulmundi. The forum was organised by PATCH (People Against Toxic Chemical Hazards), which has been campaigning
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Members of the National Tertiary Education Industry Union (NTEU) held a 24-hour strike on October 14 which closed university campuses around the country. The strike was the first action in an industrial campaign to protect
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SYDNEY — On September 28 more than 40 people demonstrated outside the Chinese consulate here in a protest, organised by the World League for Protection of Animals, against the cruel farming of Asiatic or "moon" bears in
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Competent managers "[NSW] Treasury wanted to conduct an analysis of the risks of holding the Olympics, but Cabinet decided not to proceed with this until after Sydney won the Games." — Sydney Morning Herald, October 15. Now they tell us
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Cuban film fest SYDNEY — The Fairfield School of Arts will host a video festival of films from and about Cuba on Sunday, October 31, at 2 p.m. The films are presented by the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society. Proceeds from the event will
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KINGSCOTE, S.A. — The nationally endangered dwarf bush, Kangaroo Island phebalium, is under threat from unnecessary clearance of roadside vegetation by the Kingscote Council, according to the Nature Conservation Society of South Australia and the
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HOBART — The Pasminco-EZ zinc plant was forced to close down on October 11 when the Federation of Industrial Manufacturing and Engineering Employees, the plant's largest union, voted to joint the strike by the AMEU, the EPU
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HOBART — More than 300 people rallied on October 13 and marched to the office of local MP Duncan Kerr (for Denison) to protest against the Labor government's education policy and call for free
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Chilean President Patricio Aylwin was met by a vigorous protest by members of the Chilean exile community and their supporters on his October 5 visit to Sydney Town Hall. The main demand of the demonstrators was "No to impunity", referring to moves
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Aboriginal march in AdelaideADELAIDE — One hundred and fifty people marched from Parliament House to the Tandanya Aboriginal Cultural Institute on October 13 to show their opposition to the proposal to scrap the Racial
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WOLLONGONG — Twenty-four workers at the Jervis Bay naval training base, HMAS Creswell, have been on strike since September 9. They are maintaining a 24-hour picket line in the dispute over Defence Department plans to contract
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ANC rep's home attackedADELAIDE — In what was obviously a premeditated attack, windows in the house of Algernon Van der Hoeven, African National Congress representative in Adelaide, were smashed with bricks in the early
Analysis
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Next on the chopping block? In its decade in office, the federal Labor government has repeatedly demonstrated its lack of commitment to public ownership. Already partially privatised are the Commonwealth Bank, Qantas, the manufacture of defence
World
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AUCKLAND — 1400 people packed into the Civic Theatre on October 10 for the campaign launch of the Alliance (Democrats, Greens, the Maori party Mana Motuhake, NewLabour, Liberals). Alliance candidates speak on their environmental,
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Nuclear bid will continue: Bhutto Should Benazir Bhutto and her Pakistan People's Party succeed in forming Pakistan's next government once counting from the October 6 general election is completed, Pakistan's program to acquire nuclear weapons
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The African National Congress has rejected suggestions by South African President F.W. de Klerk that a referendum be held if right-wing parties opposed to the April 27 elections do not return to multiparty talks within four weeks.
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PORT MORESBY — A manoeuvre by Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Paias Wingti has plunged the country into a constitutional crisis. The move follows growing unrest about Wingti's plans to abolish the nation's provincial government
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[This article first appeared in the US magazine CrossRoads. It is excerpted from a series of interview which MEDEA BENJAMIN conducted with JUAN ANTONIO BLANCO. Blanco is a former diplomat and senior analyst with the Central Committee of the Cuban
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The Manila Rizal Branch of the Communist Party of the Philippines — known as MR — comprises about 5000 members and has influence within a range of organisations with a base of 120,000 people even in quiet times. Visiting Manila
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Referendum on voting systemUCKLAND — There are two votes for New Zealanders on November 6, one to elect a government and the other to decide how governments are elected in the future. The choice in the referendum is
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Australia is home to 17 million people and 24 million cattle. On a cowpat ratio, that's one of the highest proportions of cattle to people in the world. In Queensland, beef cattle outnumber humans by more than two to one. In
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On July 26 in Richmond, a predominantly African-American industrial city in the San Francisco Bay area, more than 7000 pounds of sulfuric acid fumes poured from a leaky General Chemical railroad car for three hours, forming a
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By Bergen O'Brien and Reihana Mohideen On January 1, 1991, Sue Franknel and Bill Strait (US citizens), Moana Cole from New Zealand and Ciaron O'Reilly from Brisbane — calling themselves "Anzus Ploughshares" — seriously compromised the
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MOSCOW — Since tanks of the armed forces finally blew away Russia's parliament on October 4, President Boris Yeltsin has moved swiftly to suspend, disband or intimidate the major potential sources of opposition to his rule.
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In Green Left #117, there was a report of a meeting held in Melbourne around "Genetics and Sexuality". The current controversy centres on an article by Dean H. Hamer and co-workers in the July 16 edition of Science.
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The tradition of science — the science we are used to — looks upon events in terms of constituent parts. We find out about the whole by cutting it up into individual bits and pieces. Each bit has its own intrinsic properties,
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A year ago the British government of John Major announced a massive coal mine closure plan that within months would have closed 30 pits with the loss of 30,000 jobs. The announcement produced an outcry from the broader community which culminated in a
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Opposition to Tongan waste dump There will be a revolt if a plan to store toxic waste from the United State in Tonga goes ahead, a member of parliament, Akilisi Pohiva, said on September 27. Pohiva, who leads the movement against the king's
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Shellharbour municipality, on the coast about 20 kilometres south of Wollongong, is virtually a dormitory suburb for workers in the Port Kembla industrial area, although a growing number of workers commute to Sydney. It has a
Culture
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And the Ass Saw the Angel A play by Black Hole Productions Napier Street Theatre, South Melbourne, until Oct 30 Reviewed by Lachlan Anderson This play is an adaptation of the macabre novel by Australian rock musician Nick Cave. The story
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Tina: What's Love Got To Do With It? Directed by Brian Gibson Written by Kate Lanier from the book by Tina Turner Reviewed by Col Hesse It has always been a project fraught with difficulty to make films which seek to trace the rise of
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PERTH — It's Artrage time again, Perth's annual arts festival. Artrage has become a predominantly mainstream arts festival, with a lack of dissenting art and hence a lack of "rage". Artrage has
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Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson By Camille Paglia Yale University Press, 1990. 718 pages Sex, Art and American Culture By Camille Paglia Viking, 1993. 337 pages Reviewed by Margarita Windisch
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In August tens of thousands of people flock to the capital of Scotland from all parts of the world. They come to celebrate the curious and sad fact that the subjugated people of Scotland have provided the cannon fodder and shock
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John Albert debut solo Through a Mirror John Albert Sunset Music through Larrikin Reviewed by Ignatius Kim It's not exactly easy listening, but this debut solo album from Aboriginal singer/songwriter John Albert (used to front for
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Patricia Sharpe Inside Indonesia, Australia's best-known quarterly magazine on Indonesian society and politics, celebrates 10 years of publishing this month. Written in English it is a glossy journal of 30-odd pages presenting views and analysis
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The personal and the political Robyn Habel Robyn Habel Produced by Terry Bradford and Stuart Day Larrikin Records Reviewed by Melanie Sjoberg It will be great news to many women in Adelaide that Robyn Habel has released a CD in her
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Harvest of Fear: A History of Australia's Vietnam War By John MurphyAllen & Unwin, 1993. 335 pp., $19.95 (pb) Reviewed by Phil Shannon When the first Australian troops were sent to Vietnam in 1965, there was little public protest and little