Story by Laura Bahnisch
Photo by David Dettrick
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
Issue 119
News
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
By Lisa Macdonald
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
By Shayn McCallum
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
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
Adelaide universities go out
By Alison Dellit
ADELAIDE — 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
By Nick Everett
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
By Nikki Ulasowski
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
By Bernie Brian
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
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
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
250 at Women in Asia conference
By Helen Jarvis
MELBOURNE — 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
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
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
By Margaret Bowman
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
Aboriginal march in Adelaide
By Tully Bates
ADELAIDE — 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
Kennett to close more schools
By Peter Boyle
MELBOURNE — 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
ANC rep's home attacked
By Chris Spindler
ADELAIDE — 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
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
World
By Ana Kailis
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,
[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
By Max Lane
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
By Dave Riley
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,
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
By Alex Chis
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
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
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
By David Robie
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
By Norm Dixon
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.
Comment by Sam Solomon
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.
By George Petersen
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
By Dave Riley
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
Referendum on voting system
By Kim Linden
UCKLAND — 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
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
By Renfrey Clarke
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.
Culture
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
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
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
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
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
By Norm Dixon
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
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
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
By Holly Hammond
and Tamara Desiatov
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
Editorial
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