By Steve Painter SYDNEY — The 5% swing against the Liberal NSW government of Nick Greiner in the January 18 Entrance by-election confirms the result of last May's general election: working people around the state are angry with the
Issue 40
News
Community opinion has been outraged by the decision of the Supreme Court to uphold a lesser sentence for convicted rapist Heros Hakopian, on the ground that the victim would have suffered less trauma because she was a prostitute. Melbourne newspapers and radio stations have been filled with the debate.
Emerald Beach fight continues By Kim Spurway The Look At Me Now headland, at Emerald Beach near Coffs Harbour, is still threatened by a proposed sewage outfall, despite a court ruling against the plans of the Coffs Harbour Council. On
Evans attacks picket of Indonesian Embassy By Sue Bolton CANBERRA — Foreign Minister Gareth Evans is attempting to put an end to the East Timor picket of the Indonesian Embassy here. The picket has been maintained for the last two months
Paula Nassif SYDNEY — TAFE teachers in NSW are concerned over threats of disciplinary action for making public comments. Labor Party assistant shadow education minister John Murray noted recently that two Wollongong teachers were reprimanded
Anti-bases protest at Toowoomba By Brendan Greenhill BRISBANE — About 40 demonstrators gathered at Borneo Barracks, Cabarlah on New Year's Day as "Toowoomba Mobilisation Opposing Bush". Cabarlah Army base, 19 km outside Toowoomba, is
Human rights groups and spokespeople for the East Timorese resistance movement have condemned as a whitewash the Indonesian government-appointed inquiry's preliminary report into the November 12 Dili massacre.
By Tom Flanagan HOBART — Ian Jamieson, former president of the Tasmanian Mining Industry Union Council and current chair of the Rosebery Hospital Action Committee, is to contest the seat of Lyons as an independent in the February 1 state
By Tom Flanagan HOBART — The Green Independents' lunchtime campaign launch on January 15 filled the 400-seat Hobart Town Hall to capacity, with another 200 people on the steps listening to speeches broadcast by loudspeakers. With the
DSS hassles Aidex protesters By Brendan Greenhill BRISBANE — People who have attended the anti-Aidex protest in Canberra have been harassed by the Department of Social Security for their involvement. Beneficiaries who were arrested or
Winners The Business Review Weekly, in association with Alcatel, held its business awards dinner in Sydney's Queen Victoria Building in early December. Then prime minister Bob Hawke awarded the Business Leader of the Year award to then chief
By Melanie Sjoberg MELBOURNE — An important element of the ACTU's drive to amalgamate Australia's roughly 300 unions into about 20 mega-unions ran into trouble in December when rank and file workers defeated an attempt to shotgun the
Renfrey Clarke, Green Left's Moscow correspondent, is getting married. Renfrey and Larissa, an actor from Novosibirsk, will be married in Moscow on January 22. Best wishes to both of them from the GL staff. Photo by Peter Annear.
Analysis
A second chance The break-up of the former Soviet Union provides humanity with its second chance in a decade to rid the world of nuclear weapons. The first was in the mid-'80s, when Mikhail Gorbachev announced a sweeping, unilateral nuclear
"Australia Day", January 26, is a day of joy and festivities for most Australians. But what about the feelings of the real Australians? The original occupants of this country were happy, contented and peaceful
There's a seditious push by the socialists who have destroyed this country to go on destroying it, in the hope that workers will become disillusioned with capitalism and overthrow it. You've got to give a deal of grudging credit to those rabid socialists Don't Be a'Wally and Joan and Brian Hoo and the others who have set this up.
The reports of the prime ministerial task force on "ecologically sustainable development" stack up to more than the height of former prime minister Bob Hawke. But environmental groups are divided on how productive the process is.
After a phase of fiasco, the Moscow city administration's plan for the privatisation of housing seems to have reached its mature form — rank injustice. Under an earlier plan, abandoned in late November,
Over the past three years, stratospheric ozone depletion over all areas of the globe except the tropics has accelerated alarmingly. Predictions of increases in the rates of skin cancers and eye cataracts are being lent weight by recent news from Chile, where scientists are linking ozone depletion to reports of blindness in animals and mutations in plants.
A significant victory has been won for workers at a paper factory at Emu Plains in Sydney's industrial west. After 42 weeks on a 24-hour picket line, 33 Vista Paper Products workers learned on December 16 that the Industrial Relations Commission had ordered their reinstatement. Penrith resident and activist Gail Lord, a supporter of the picketers, recounts some of the highlights of the struggle.
Croatian coverage If your newspaper has regular articles on the war in Croatia, I urge you to have someone sell the paper at Croatian clubs throughout Australia as you will have many people supporting you. Thank you for the unbiased, truthful
Labor Premier Michael Field's decision to call a snap election was the only way to avoid certain defeat on the floor of parliament.
World
By Andy Feeney Tougher emission standards recently adopted by 11 north-eastern states of the USA will force the car industry to manufacture cleaner cars for the entire nation, pollution control officials and activists say. The 11 states —
By Bronwen Beechey AUCKLAND — "We declare our total commitment to the advancement of New Zealand and its people and the need to rebuild and re-establish a society where human worth, dignity and respect for each other becomes the norm,
By Steve Painter Croatians around the world celebrated their country's independence on January 15, the day a range of European and other states recognised the breakaway former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia. The European decision
By Steve Painter A year after the Gulf War, the United Nations embargo against Iraq remains in place, with Australian warships helping to enforce it. As a result, most Iraqis have spent the past 12 months living amid a catastrophe even worse
PNG mine closed by land dispute By Alex Bruhl PORT MORESBY — The Mt Kare alluvial gold mine, near Porgera in a remote area of the Papua New Guinea highlands, remains closed after being raided by armed men on January 9. The raid,
By Dan Connell and Angela Matheson JEBEL MUKABER, Occupied West Bank: A convoy of 15 Israeli vehicles recently drove into this small Palestinian village and stopped in front of the newly constructed house of Anwar Kalil. Within minutes, two
By Sally Low MOSCOW — So she will not lose heart, environmentalist Ann Rubin concentrates on the small and not the large picture in the former USSR. The extent of damage, the breakdown of any recognised central political force, people's daily
By Renfrey Clarke MOSCOW — In the huge food store at Taganskaya Square, the mood at the bread counter was growing surly. Some 50 people pushed and argued, while the white-coated sales staff gestured helplessly. As usual, there was plenty of
By Irina Glushchenko and Renfrey Clarke MOSCOW — When Boris Yeltsin chose Air Force Colonel Alexander Rutskoi as his running mate in the June 1991 Russian presidential elections, the Afghanistan war hero and former leading figure in Russian
Representatives of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the Salvadoran government signed a peace treaty on January 16 to end the country's 12-year civil war. The agreement, including a cease-fire from February 1, had been
Peter Gellert MEXICO CITY — This city's legendary air pollution problem is bad and getting worse. City authorities have responded with an emergency plan to address partially the deteriorating environmental situation in the world's largest
Culture
AIDS radio plays It's been a few years now since the Grim Reaper appeared on our TV screens, bowling an unsuspecting group of heterosexual couples and little children into HIV oblivion. Since then, attempts to educate the public about AIDS have
Cape Fear Starring Robert de Niro, Jessica Lange Directed by Martin Scorsese Reviewed by Steve Painter Put together a 1950s plot with some modern ultraviolence, and you don't need to know much more about Cape Fear. A number of reviewers have
Left Face: Soldier Unions and Resistance Movements in Modern Armies By David Cortright and Max Watts Greenwood Press. 1991. 282 pp. $58.50 (hb). Reviewed by Allen Myers This book is the product of decades of research and, more importantly,
Sexual Democracy: Women, Oppression, and Revolution By Anne Ferguson Allen and Unwin, 1991. $24.95 Reviewed by Vivienne Porzsolt Ann Ferguson attempts to construct a materialist explanation of women's oppression which takes into account all
By Nigel D'Souza When blacks rose against their oppression in Britain in the '80s, the images on newsreel and documentaries confirmed or constructed images in the popular imagination of blacks and their place in British society. Out of the
By Craig Brittain Magazines don't often get reviewed. This is a shame, because unless you happen to stumble across them, you might never know of their existence — especially left-wing magazines which don't make the newsstands. Dissent was
Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? By Marion Meade London: Minerva. 459 pp. $15.95 Reviewed by Phil Shannon Dorothy Parker was the USA's "foremost female wit in the 1920s", writes Marion Meade. Parker certainly excelled at the one-