Salvadoran workers stand firm over racism
By Bill Mason
BRISBANE — Latin American workers at the Steel-Line Doors factory at Sumner Park, in the western suburbs here, are standing firm in their month-long strike over allegations of racist
Issue 171
News
36-hour shifts for doctors
By Tim E. Stewart
DARWIN — Doctors at the Royal Darwin Hospital (RDH) have expressed outrage at comments by NT health minister Mike Reed that shifts of 36 hours have no effect on patient care. These comments
By Kerryn Williams
MELBOURNE — More than 200 activists from campuses around the country gathered here on December 5-6 to plan a national campaign in opposition to fees.
The conference, held at Melbourne University, was initiated in
By Rebecca Collerson
Environmentalists have won the battle to save sections of Croobyar State Forest. However, the battle to save our forests from woodchipping and logging continues.
The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service is creating
By Graham Matthews
SYDNEY — The University of New South Wales was the setting for the public day of the 32nd annual conference of the Australia New Zealand Solar Energy Society on December 3. The keynote speakers were prominent
Peace action planned
A national women's peace action and festival is planned to be held at the Australian Defence Industries Munitions Factory in Benalla, Victoria, during Easter next year, from April 14 to 16, 1995.
The action will be an
Victorian actions against woodchipping
By Rachel Evans
MELBOURNE — Two actions were held in Victoria on December 9 against renewal of 10 woodchipping licences. One action, at the woodchipping mill in Eden, was organised by the Wilderness
Row over banning of magazine
By Brendan Greenhill
BRISBANE — The Queensland Department of Consumer Affairs has refused distribution of the December issue of the lifestyle magazine Simply Living. The department has banned the magazine
By Liam Mitchell
WOLLONGONG — The decision by mining giant CRA to close its Illawarra subsidiary Southern Copper Ltd (SCL) has raised questions about the motives. Organisers in the Australian Workers Union-Federation of Industrial
World
By Norm Dixon
As the African National Congress (ANC) prepares to hold its first national congress since winning an overwhelming majority in the April elections, there has been no let-up in the wave of struggles by workers, students, the landless
By Max Anderson
LONDON — A conference on "Economic Policies for Full Employment and Defence of the Welfare State" was held at Congress House on December 3. It followed a conference on "The Future of the Welfare State" in December 1993 which
By Jackie Coleman
HAVANA — Miami-based TV Marti has succeeded in broadcasting less than an hour of programs into Cuba since it started transmissions in March 1990. While Cuban technicians have been able to scramble its signal and thus block US
Kurdish newspapers bombed
The offices in Turkey of Kurdish daily Ozgur Ulke were bombed on the morning of December 3. The first bomb went off in Istanbul at about 3:30am. About five minutes later, the Ankara office was also bombed. The last bomb
KAREN WALD in Havana gives her impressions of last month's World Cuba Solidarity meeting.
Havana has been flooded with people from every continent, practically every country of the globe, for the past two weeks. They overflowed the Karl Marx
By Liang Guosheng
Amid the rumours of a cover-up of Deng Xiaoping's death, larger foreign investors are becoming increasingly frustrated and concerned by the stop-start nature of the "market reforms" which have become a feature of "market
Following its narrow defeat in Brazil's 1989 presidential elections the Workers Party (PT) believed that outright victory in 1994 was possible. But though the PT significantly increased its initial vote in comparison with 1989, it was not enough to
Cuba has boldly initiated alternative and ecologically sustainable methods of food production with the aim of improving food self-sufficiency among urban communities. Luis Sanchez Almanza, agronomist, permaculture activist and horticultural community
NABIHA MORKUS is a Palestinian member of Women in Black and secretary in Tel Aviv of Democratic Women, which, like Women in Black, includes both Jewish and Arab women. VIVIENNE PORZSOLT interviewed her for Green Left Weekly.
How did you come to
The signing of the Oslo Declaration of Principles in September 1993 has posed a dilemma for Women in Black, the women's movement in Israel of Jewish and Palestinian women aimed at stopping the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In October VIVIENNE
Culture
Eat Drink Man Woman
Directed by Ang Lee
Mandarin with English subtitles
To be released nationally on December 22
Screening in Sydney at the Pitt Centre, Cremorne Orpheum and Stanmore Cinema
Reviewed by Peter Boyle
There have been quite
Poem: Lies, Laurie, Lies
By Geoff Francis and Peter Hicks
[This song has proved very popular at rallies against the Sydney airport's third runway. Several weeks ago, Peter Hicks sent the text to Laurie Brereton's office, figuring that
The Pacification of Central America: Political Change in the Isthmus, 1987-1993
By James Dunkerley
Verso, 1994. $34.95
Reviewed by Neville Spencer
In Central America the 1980s were dominated by civil wars, with casualties numbering into
Poem: I Becomes We
By Denis O'Neill
When I awake
Who is there? I
When I drink my tea
Who is there? I
When I take my walk
Who walks? I
I go home again
Who is there?
I again.
Again I.
Best I go
To the Resistance
Green It Up finishes '94 with a bang
By Bill Mason
BRISBANE — Green It Up, the weekly alternative cultural event held at the Shamrock Hotel here every Thursday night, finished up for 1994 with a huge end-of-year party on December 1. Green
By Christopher Phelps
"Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons", said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
The continuing terror against Libya
By Fan Yew Teng
Kuala Lumpur: Egret Publications, 1993. 119 pp.
Reviewed by Pip Hinman
Apart from Jonathan Bearman's 1986 scholarly work, Qadhafi's Libya, there has been very little published about this
Renewable hero
Home
Spearhead
EMI Music
Reviewed by Sujatha Fernandes
Michael Franti, hip-hop artist formerly from the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, has released Home with his new band Spearhead. Franti, together with vocalist Mary
A short story by Craig Cormick
Any of the townspeople of Dangawullah could tell you exactly when the Devil arrived. It was that hot afternoon of October 29, 1929. It was the last day that it rained that year until Christmas Day, and it was the
Poem: Pleasures
By Walter Jones
Visiting the toilet
To read.
Eating
In company.
Drinking wine.
Good comedy
This newspaper
and
Dialectics.
How pleasing it is
To change the world.
In my need
To
There is freedom.
In the stars: your coming year
By Lucifer Skycrawler
What's in the stars? Hydrogen, say some people. Heat, say others. Tonnes of orange Smarties, say still others. All of these answers are silly. In reality, the stars are occupied by
Auschwitz Admonishes
em= By Denis Kevans
["Auschwitz admonishes" — Pope John Paul II]
"Auschwitz admonishes"
Pope John Paul says it's so,
"Auschwitz admonishes",
The Popentate says so.
And Maidanek's a caution,
I'm sure
Editorial
History lessons
It seems only yesterday that we were told of the end of history: that for better or worse, things were the way they were and no more could be hoped for. We'd arrived. This message, universally proclaimed by government and media,