By Jo Brown
MELBOURNE — The Marxist educational conference, "Campaigning for democratic socialism", to be held here over Easter, is shaping up as a major event on the city's left calendar.
To be held at the Lincoln Institute (625 Swanston
Issue 182
News
Twenty-four arrested in M2 blockade
By Sam Statham
SYDNEY — At 6am on March 29, police dispersed the "civil disobedience" blockade of the M2 Tollway, near Macquarie University in Epping, which had been costing the Abigroup-Obayashi
By Con Gouriotis
and Nadya Stani
SYDNEY — Watching the decontamination process at the Australian Defence Industries (ADI) site at St Marys is like trying to understand, while digging up a serial killer s victims, how it ever could have
By Lisa Macdonald
SYDNEY — The people of NSW gave a decisive thumbs down to "politics as usual" in the state election on March 25. The 1.5% swing away from the Liberal-National Coalition, the fact that the ALP just managed to limp over the
By Mike Bell
BRISBANE — Brisbane's Campaigning for Democratic Socialism conference, over the Easter weekend, is shaping up to be the largest such gathering ever held here. The conference is organised by the Democratic Socialist Party and the
By Pip Hinman
"Those with a conscience in the ALP will find it hard to defend the indefensible", was how WA Green Senator Dee Margetts summed up the federal government's forests package, announced on March 30. Margetts told Green Left Weekly
RMIT fees to rise
By Sean Healy
MELBOURNE — As is appropriate for a university that has just appointed smallgoods king Sam Smorgon its new chancellor, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology is leading the way on becoming a
By Pip Hinman
SYDNEY — Tasmanian Greens leader Christine Milne and Australian Conservation Foundation director Tricia Caswell were guest speakers at a public lecture organised by the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University
Having a say isn't easy
By Lisa Macdonald
The lengths to which politicians will go to make it as difficult as possible for people to express their will at the polling booth was revealed in all its absurdity during the NSW state elections.
By Rohan Gaiswinkler
Unionists from unions covering the community, health and education sectors participated in a blockade of the Heemskirk Link Road on March 24, calling upon the government to stop the environmentally destructive development.
Reports of a giant breakaway iceberg and a new 64-kilometre crack in the Larsen ice shelf in the Antarctic peninsula — dramatic indicators of warmer weather — seem to have had little or no impact on the major greenhouse gas culprits at the world climate conference in Berlin. Australia and the United States are leading the charge against strict controls of greenhouse gas emissions in the two-week conference, which began on March 28.
Green senators challenge budget plans
Greens (WA) senators Dee Margetts and Christabel Chamarette have released an alternative analysis of the economy, challenging many of the government's basis assumptions informing the May budget plans. The
World
By Sonny Melencio
Protests against the execution of Flor Contemplacion, the Filipina maid hanged in Singapore, escalated across the Philippines even after her burial on March 27. At dawn on that day, urban guerillas from the Alex Boncayao
Serbs charged with war crimes
The Hague International War Crimes Tribunal issued its first mass indictments on February 13, charging 21 Serbs with 275 counts of war crimes, breaches of the Geneva Convention, crimes against humanity and
Abortion information law goes to Irish court
By Kath Gelber
The Irish Supreme Court is to review a new "abortion information bill" allowing doctors and other professionals to give women the names and addresses of abortion clinics outside
TERESITA CARPIO is an official from the 30,000-strong United Workers of the Philippines (UWP), a trade union federation of mostly women workers, based in Metro-Manila. The federation covers workers from the textile, clothing, footwear and food
By Jennifer Thompson
Israeli military experts are helping the Turkish government combat Kurdish separatist guerillas, the French weekly "confidential" newsletter TTU said on March 17.
The newsletter, which uses unnamed sources, said Turkey
GABRIEL TETIARAHI is the national coordinator of the French Polynesian organisation Hiti Tau, which brings together 40 non-government groups working on environmental, sovereignty and social issues. He recently visited Australia, where he provided a
Easter this year will be different across Australia. In four cities, it will take on a distinctly Russian hue.
Not that Green Left is promoting painted eggs. As regular readers will know, Russian writer and socialist activist Boris Kagarlitsky
By Eva Cheng
More workers in Japan are likely to lose their jobs or have their pay packets cut as the rise of the yen to new heights encourages Japanese companies to shift more production lines to the Third World, where costs are cheaper.
By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Ask a citizen of the former Soviet Union what he or she thinks of "the market", and in well over half the cases, the answer is likely to be something unprintable. Go on to ask what ordinary people can now do to
By Emily Ross
The Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, Yellow Gate, is now embarking on its 14th year of direct action. Following the closure of the military base there, the focus is on fighting the newer Trident warheads, which are replacing
Early in 1995, citizens of Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia, marked the 1000th day of the siege of their city by the Bosnian Serb army led by Radovan Karadzic. Dr TARIK KUPUSOVIC, mayor of Sarajevo, recently visited Sydney to raise material and moral
By Arun Pradhan
Indonesian academic George Aditjondro has consistently exposed the repression that occurs in his own country, but is better known for his outspoken support for independence in East Timor. Now lecturing at Murdoch University in
Culture
Come Together: John Lennon in his Time
By Jon Weiner
Faber and Faber, 1995. 379 pp., $18.95 (pb)
Reviewed by Phil Shannon
John Lennon angered all the right people. During the Beatles' first tour of the States in 1966, fundamentalist
News From Nowhere and Other Writings
By William Morris
Edited by Clive Williams
Penguin. 430 pp., $12.95 (pb)
Reviewed by Dave Riley
William Morris was an extraordinary man. Today, a year short of the centenary of his death, perhaps a
Harold
Written and directed by Steve Thomas
A Flying Carpet Films production
ABC TV, Sunday, April 9, 8.30pm
Reviewed by Norm Dixon
This intriguing documentary reveals the story of Harold Blair, one of Australia's greatest opera singers
As it Happened: The Last Bolshevik
SBS
Thursday, April 13, 8.30pm (8 Adelaide)
Reviewed by Neville Spencer
This documentary traces the life and work of Russian film director Alexander Medvedkin (1900-1989), whose experience as a film maker
By Deepa Fernandes
While much is said, written and debated about the current situation of Aboriginal affairs, nothing makes as much of a statement as the opening of the Mangkaja print exhibition at the Australian Print Workshop in Melbourne on
By Bronwen Beechey
MELBOURNE — November 11 is the 20th anniversary of the dismissal of the Whitlam government, so we can expect to see considerable amounts of print space and airwaves devoted to analysing perhaps the most important event of
Editorial
The Canberra by-election
The establishment pundits regard by-elections as traditionally a way of letting off steam. But the result in the March 25 by-election for Ros Kelly's old seat of Canberra surprised everyone with its intensity. A swing of