BRISBANE — On August 17 former Australian soldiers who served their country in Vietnam marched proudly through the streets here — at last expunging the shame and indignity of the past 19 years. Finally the Australian
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MELBOURNE — For two days last week, the city was engulfed by black clouds of toxic fumes as fire raged through the Coode Island chemical storage facilities. Emergency services were stretched to the limit. Evacuations around
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"The last thing the green movement needs is the back-stabbing and party political game you have in the Liberals, Labor and, now, the Democrats", says Bruce Welch, who was the South Sydney Greens candidate for Marrickville in
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Abortion bill an attack on the poor The NSW Legislative Council will soon be debating women's right to abortion. If passed, new abortion legislation, introduced by Reverend Fred Nile, will ban doctors from performing abortions in privately run
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MOSCOW — A recent opinion poll indicates that Soviet citizens are not universally impressed by the glimpses they are getting of capitalism — from privately owned firms to stock exchanges and dole queues. Published in the
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ADELAIDE — The official Multi-Function Polis logo is three linked circles representing people, environment and technology. But people and environment are not faring very well in plans for the project, and it appears even the
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BRISBANE — Anti-nuclear activists here gathered outside the French consulate on August 23 to demand an end to nuclear testing in the Pacific by Bastille Day (July 14) 1992. The group resolved to return to the consulate every Friday from 8 to 10
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MOSCOW — While the Western media hail Boris Yeltsin as a democrat following the defeat of the old guard's coup attempt, many citizens of the Russian federation may have cause to doubt this as an attack on the trade union
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The gun-related deaths of 11 people in Sydney over the last week have brought renewed calls for tighter gun-control laws. On August 17, a man armed with a semi-automatic rifle killed eight people in Sydney's suburban
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PLO on coup CANBERRA — In an August 23 statement, the PLO representative to Australia and ambassador of Palestine to Vanuatu, Ali Kazak, said that claims that the PLO had expressed support for the attempted military coup in the Soviet Union
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The defeat of last week's disastrous attempt by the Stalinist old guard to turn back the clock opens a new political phase in the USSR. In particular, it marks the first big victory for mass political action over the repressive
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An extra quiet week — just a Stalinist coup in Russia, a capitalist counter-coup in Russia, a compassionate and economically responsible federal budget, great news for Johnny Pain and Jolly Robb on the Tricontinental front until
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In a new twist of thinking globally, acting locally, a group is proving that non-violence in action is effective. It's a practical experiment in peace making. Peace Brigades International began in Canada in 1981 and has
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SYDNEY — Community groups housing up to 10,000 low income people around the state could be forced to close down because of a Department of Housing bungle. Representatives of 62 Community Tenancy Schemes say that new conditions and actual funding
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Pornography Tracy Sorensen's centre spread on pornography (GLW #23) disturbed me. I have been following the pornography debate fuelled by the film Silence of the Lambs and the novel American Psycho, and feel uneasy over the uniformity of debate
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"We ran at the tanks and they ran away", 19-year-old Moscow engineering student Kostya Borodyenko told Green Left Weekly by phone last week. The fact that relatively small demonstrations around the Russian
News
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WA Aborigines oppose minePERTH — Aboriginal people in the Eastern Goldfields area are opposing the proposed Yakabindie Nickel Project, a Dominion Mining operation approved by the state in 1990. Approval for the mine
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World heritage push for Blue MountainsKATOOMBA — A committee to push for World Heritage listing for the Blue Mountains was elected at a meeting at the Ellerslie Road Public School on August 16. Geoff Mosley, who has been a
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Chemicals close schoolPERTH — Dryandra Primary School in the outer suburb of Mirrabooka has been closed indefinitely following widespread sickness caused by chemical solvents used to clean graffiti. More than 600 students and 30
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MELBOURNE — Teachers voted unanimously for a campaign against budget cuts and a breach of their award restructuring agreement at a stop-work meeting here on August 20. The campaign will include bans on school closures, new
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Students confront Baldwin summitSYDNEY — Angry students broke through police lines and into the Hotel Nikko at Kings Cross in a 500-strong August 23 protest against a "Higher Education Summit" attended by federal education
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SYDNEY — An exhibition of pottery, including the work of several of Sydney's top potters, ran over the weekend of August 24-25. The Potters for Peace exhibition was a fundraising event for People for Nuclear Disarmament. Special guest Jane
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Demands for resignation over racist slurBRISBANE — Calls are mounting for the resignation or sacking of Queensland Labor government whip Bill Prest over racist comments in state parliament on August 20. Prest described former
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Robert Hudson, executive director of the Victorian Council of Social Services, is blunt in his assessment of the Hawke government's ninth budget, presented on August 20: Labor has turned its back on the unemployed at a time when
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SYDNEY — Nine protesters were arrested at a demonstration outside the Malaysian consulate on August 22. Organised by the Sydney Rainforest Action Group (SRAG), the action coincided with debate on a bill introduced by Democrat
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About 5000 government workers gathered outside state parliament for the NSW Labor Council's August 21 protest against the Greiner government's plans to cut public sector jobs by more than 12,000. There were also large rallies
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ADELAIDE — Workers occupied part of the Workcare building here during a 600-strong protest in freezing winds and hailstorms on August 23. The building workers, cleaners and corrective service employees were protesting against proposed changes to
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Story and photos by David Brazil New South Wales forests are going up in smoke. Up and down the north coast, bush fire brigades and the Forestry Commission are going though their ritual of winter burn-off. At Chaelundi, in the name of forest
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SYDNEY — Queer Notion, an organisation in the gay and lesbian community here, conducted an "outing" at a press conference opposite St Mary's cathedral on August 21. "Outing only works as a political weapon because there is a stigma attached to a
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Doubts cast on Chaelundi EISSYDNEY — The Chaelundi court battle is still unresolved, but it has already caused severe embarrassment for the state government. The court has been told that the Greiner-Murray cabinet gave the
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Struggling "We found no problems selling in the $5000-$30,000 price range, but above $50,000 it was a struggle." — Melbourne auctioneer after a recent art auction met a "subdued response" from buyers. Take him! He's yours! "We are nostalgic
Analysis
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USSR: a stolen victory Once again, the abortive coup in the USSR demonstrates that undemocratic methods cannot serve the cause of socialism, or indeed the aspirations of ordinary people for a better life under any political system. The failed
World
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Control over women, no matter what social order we live in, is an important pillar of that order. If all the hundred or so women at the conference of the European Forum of Socialist Feminists in June agreed on anything, perhaps it was
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Interview by Andrew Nette Significant realignments are taking place among the left in the Philippines, long since the centre of the largest and most active popular struggle in the Asia Pacific. Since its establishment in the late '60s, the
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US and Philippine negotiators have announced a new military bases agreement under which the United States will withdraw from Clark Air Base by September 1992 but retain Subic Naval Base for at least 10 more years. Though
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'Apartheid still practised' The council of the International Amateur Athletic Federation has refused to allow South Africa's return to international competition, saying that apartheid is still rampant in sport in South Africa. The meeting was
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By K. ten Broke Anarchists, in the opinion of Anatoly Lukyanov, president of the Supreme Soviet, are one of the few political forces to be taken seriously in the USSR. That was certainly not meant as a compliment for the various anarchist
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A Harvard University medical team has confirmed findings of an earlier United Nations delegation to Iraq. The Harvard team, which visited 11 Iraqi cities recently, says it expects around 170,000 deaths of children under five as a direct result of war
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New Zealand's NewLabour Party claims the recent budget of the National Party government pushed the country's economy from recession to depression by cutting demand without "putting in place balancing measures to promote
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NPA leader captured MANILA — Philippine police on August 5 captured the top official of the New People's Army at a suburban hospital. He was apparently seeking treatment. Romulo Kintanar was captured with his wife, Gloria Jopson, at the Makati
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Turkish troops invade northern Iraq The Turkish government has said it will set up a buffer zone in northern Iraq. Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz says the area might not be permanently occupied by Turkish troops, but would be regularly patrolled.
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Gulf War casualties continue WASHINGTON — Eighty-seven per cent of civilian deaths caused by the Gulf War have occurred since the war ended, according to casualty estimates released by Greenpeace on July 23. Greenpeace also estimates that
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JAKARTA — A major industrial dispute and trouble with a visiting Dutch parliamentary delegation gave the Indonesian government more than its usual share of problems in the week of the 46th anniversary of independence. The
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Zarana Papic While their experiences and opinions differed in many ways some of the themes commonly expressed by women from Eastern Europe at the June conference of the European Forum of Socialist Feminists in Norwich, England were contained in
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Fire at Mexican pesticide plant Mexican environmentalists need international support for their effort to have an ecological disaster investigated by the country's Human Rights Commission. On May 3, fiery explosions engulfed a pesticide
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Only days after the worldwide condemnation of the apartheid regime's collusion with Inkatha, the South African security forces were again found to be actively aiding Inkatha violence, according to a report that appeared in the
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Vietnam is cautiously removing administrative controls over its economy. BERNADETTE MOLONEY describes impressions of a recent visit. TG682 from Bangkok to Hanoi was full of former refugees from Canada and the US returning
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Revelations that the South African government has secretly directed millions of rands to the Inkatha organisation, responsible for the deaths of thousands in murderous attacks in black townships, has put the de Klerk regime on the
Culture
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Vietnam Days: Australia and the Impact of Vietnam Peter Pierce, Jeffrey Grey, Jeff Doyle (eds) Penguin, 1991. 323 pp. $19.95 Reviewed"The struggle of people [against power]", wrote the Czech author Milan
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Black Rain Directed by Shohei Imamura ReviewedIt was a hot, still day on August 6, 1945, when the A-bomb descended from the sky over Hiroshima. Imamura's masterful
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Everyone has heard of it, but who knows what it really means? Are the debates about postmodernism relevant only in the world of academia, or do they have an impact on the green, left, feminist and other movements for social change?
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Feminist Book Fortnight SYDNEY — The second Australian Feminist Book Fortnight will be taking place from September 6 to 22 and will present a national program of activities to celebrate women as writers and readers. An important part of the
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Viennese housingSYDNEY — Brought to Australia by the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the City of Vienna, "New Housing in Vienna" is an exhibition of Viennese housing since the 1920s showing at the Tin Sheds Gallery,
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The first issue of At Ease, a new alternative journal for men and women in the Australian military forces, appears this week. It is available from PO Box 167 North Carlton Vic 3054. The publishers aim to produce an eight-page magazine every two