MELBOURNE — Riding a tram in Bourke Street recently, I caught sight of a middle-aged man in an expensive suit with his chin resting upon his chest, his head intermittently jerking to "attention" as his body instinctively prevented
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Dishonest advertising"It is hard to accept that the federal government's latest GST advertisements are anything more than political propaganda ... the television campaign is devoid of any information that could plausibly be
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"If the profitable third of our farmers were able to represent the industry and set the agenda for debate we would hear a rural voice with constructive ideas ... Instead, the debate is driven by the unprofitable rump ... who yearn for
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Actively Radical TV — Sydney community television's progressive current affairs producers tackle the hard issues from the activist's point of view. CTS Sydney (UHF 31), every Sunday, 9-11pm. Ph 9565 5522. Access News — Melbourne community TV,
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Dismantling Abstudy: the Coalition's 'practical reconciliation'For almost 30 years, Abstudy has been one of the key components of ensuring increased educational opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait
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Road genocide There's a growing disparity between the haves and the have-nots in our society, and you don't have to look much further than the family car. While many low-income families get around in 20-year-old Fords or Holdens, the well-heeled
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Timorese: we're being forced to leave AustraliaEast Timorese asylum seeker and independence activist Naldo Rai is being forced by immigration authorities and government officials to leave Australia. Along with around 1600 East
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Be part of the solution The following speech was presented by JOHN PERCY to the May Day celebration jointly organised by the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) and the Worker Communist Party of Iraq at Granville Town Hall, Sydney, on May
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Compensate the stolen generations! Last month, the federal minister for Aboriginal affairs, John Herron, questioned the use of the term "stolen generation" to describe the victims of decades of Australian government policy to forcibly remove
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NO RECONCILIATION WITHOUT JUSTICE! Sunday, March 28 Join the "No reconciliation without justice" contingent in the Corroboree 2000 walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge. Rally at 10am, Clark Park, Lavender St, Milson Point to demand: A treaty and
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The suicide of New Left ReviewFor 40 years, New Left Review was a symbol for the radical intelligentsia throughout the world. Now, this journal is no more. There is another journal which bears the same name, but it is
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Remember that BY BRANDON ASTOR JONES "Michael's happiness is all the affirmation I need." — Jane Smith Jane Smith, 43, is an eighth grade science teacher who lives in North Carolina. Michael Carter, 15, is one of her students. One of
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and ain't a woman: Sex(ism) and the city In May, the Finance Sector Union (FSU) lodged a complaint with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission against the ANZ bank because it had decided to cut the hours of its part-time workers. The
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Do you want tax with that? Please control yourselves. The Olympic torch may have touched down and the footy season is under way, but don't get too carried away. I fear that the introduction of a new tax system may be too much excitement for one
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Networker: The bubble is still to burst The bubble is still to burst It's that time of year again, when all the stupendously overpriced internet-related stock prices crash. For the second year in a row, a huge rise in high technology share prices
News
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MELBOURNE — La Trobe University faces its gravest ever crisis. If a new, budget-cutting plan prepared by university management is implemented, it will mean the end of countless subjects across nearly all of the university's
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Easter forest camp destroyed BY SEAN MARTIN-IVERSON PERTH — Police and officials of the Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) stormed the Easter forest camp in Western Australia's south-west forests on May 11, evicting
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Solidarity with refugeesSYDNEY — Danger. Displacement. Despair. The experiences of refugees are undeniably grim, and the difficult, often demoralising process of seeking asylum in Australia makes their struggle even harder. But
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Refugee advocates have condemned as "a policy to manufacture xenophobia" federal government withholding of welfare services to refugees released from the Woomera detention centre in South Australia. Ninety percent of the 1300 held at
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New England students occupy 'underhanded' university BY ANDREW DEVENISH-MEARES ARMIDALE — Students occupied the administration building at the University of New England (UNE) here on May 18 to protest against cuts to subjects and services, and
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Heat still on at Bondi Beach SYDNEY — Protesters are maintaining their presence at the construction site of the Olympics beach volleyball stadium at Bondi Beach. Hundreds of people stopped at stalls on May 13 and 14 to sign a petition against the
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BY CORRINNE BATT-RAWDEN AND TONY ILTIS LISMORE — "Since John Howard said that there was no stolen generations, communities have gotten angry, and the people of Lismore have taken to the streets ... We can beat racism", Edda Lampis of the Northern
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Queensland teachers to strikeBRISBANE — Teachers at Sarina High School in north Queensland are to defy the state Industrial Relations Commission and strike for 24 hours on May 23, and other schools will hold stop-work meetings to
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SYDNEY — The death of a 26-year-old student at the University of NSW has sparked anger on the campus about unsafe work practices. A lunchtime protest on the issues was held on May 18. UNSW has been undergoing construction work
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Care residents to be hit by GSTSYDNEY — Residents at a group home for people with disabilities will be whacked with a $8 per week rent rise after July 1, a rise the home's management claims is made necessary by the GST. However,
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"The manufacturing industry campaign, which is already underway and escalating in Victoria ... presents a serious threat to the workplace relations system", minister for workplace relations Peter Reith told parliament on May 11,
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Strikes disrupt government's tax plansMELBOURNE — In the first of a series of snap strikes over stalled pay negotiations, several hundred Community and Public Sector Union members in the Newcastle branch of the Australian
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Opponents of food irradiation will return to the Queensland Planning and Environment Court on June 5 seeking to block an application to allow medical and biotechnology company Steritech to build a nuclear irradiation plant in
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Tasmanian students rallyHOBART — Thirty students, many from the threatened physics department, rallied at the University of Tasmania on May 17 in support of a recently launched log of claims which calls on university
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Strong militant showing in AMWU elections The returning officer overseeing national office-bearer elections in the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union announced on May 19 that incumbent national secretary Doug Cameron has managed, with some
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NO RECONCILIATION WITHOUT JUSTICE! Sunday, March 28 Sydney Join the "No reconciliation without justice" contingent in the Corroboree 2000 walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge. Rally at 10am, Clark Park, Lavender St, Milson Point to demand: A
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Fighting corporate terrorismSYDNEY — The socialist youth organisation Resistance has announced it will be holding forums across the country to explain the "globalisation of corporate terrorism" and the need for the
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Queensland's national parks under-fundedBRISBANE — Queensland's national parks could take up to a decade to recover from years of under-funding and the state government should triple funding to the national standard, a report for
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SA dump battle turns into 'nuclear war'The South Australian Liberal government on May 17 announced it would legislate in an attempt to stop the federal government storing high-level nuclear waste in the state. Federal science
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Cuban women's tour July 22-30 Representatives of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) will be visiting Australia on July 22-30. This is a special opportunity to share experiences and learn from revolutionary women. If you would you like to
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Capacity "[It is] subject to having the capacity to pay." — Tax office second commissioner Michael D'Ascenzo on why some of the income, fringe benefit and superannuation taxes evaded by high-income individuals via employee benefit schemes might
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Support for teachers urgedSYDNEY — One hundred and seventy people, angry at the diversion of federal and state funds from public to private schools, were urged to support the NSW teachers' industrial campaign and calls for
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James Cook protest against PM Several hundred students and staff at James Cook University in Cairns protested on May 18 against a visit by Prime Minister John Howard, on campus to open a new library. "At first he smiled as if he was being
Analysis
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Reconciliation requires justice On May 27, in the Sydney Opera House forecourt not far from where the attempted genocide of Australia's indigenous people began, the spokespeople for the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation will hand their
World
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SOUTH AFRICA: Students killed at uni protest Police killed one student and injured scores during a protest at the University of Durban-Westville (UDW) in Durban on May 14. Witnesses believe that another student was also killed. Students were
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CZECH REPUBLIC: Communist Party's velvet return A spectre haunted last November's celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the "velvet revolution". After years on the margins, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM) had suddenly doubled
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HANOI — Pham Van Dong, one of Vietnam's most prominent revolutionary leaders, died on April 29 at the age of 94. Born in the central province of Quang Ngai, he began his revolutionary career in 1924 at the age of 18. Two years later he joined the
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Less than a month ago, Peter Boyle walked the sad and dusty one-kilometre stretch of the only open land border crossing between Pakistan and India, at Wagha.
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Despite the Chinese Communist Party's push for the reintroduction of capitalist relations of production in China, the triumph of capitalism there is not yet certain. However, if US President Bill Clinton's November deal with Beijing for the US to
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DUBLIN — It took a year and a half of wrangling between the two protagonists, David Trimble's Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and Gerry Adams' Sinn Fein, to form the new cross-party Northern Ireland government in Belfast in November. Two months later,
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UNITED STATES: Driving while black Like motorists everywhere, drivers in the United States get that sinking feeling when they hear the siren and command to pull over. Were they speeding? Is one of their headlights out? Or, worse yet, are they
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SOUTH AFRICA: Land reform blocked JOHANNESBURG — The Zimbabwean land crisis presents South African activists with an opportunity to honestly review their country's land reform program to date. South Africa's post-apartheid land reform program was
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RAMALLAH — Clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli troops broke out in the West Bank on May 15 and 16, the most violent confrontations since 1998. Four Palestinians were killed; two Palestinian children also died when they were
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"Strike cripples business, transport" was the headline of the Indian Express newspaper on May 12, referring to the nationwide 20 million-strong strike the previous day. The strike was called by the National Platform of Mass Organisations (NPMO), a
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ACEH: a history of repression and resistance Aceh has a long and proud history of struggle and has a special place in Indonesian history. Resource rich and devoutly Muslim, it is located 700 kilometres north west of Jakarta at the northern end of
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BRITAIN: London Socialist Alliance campaign an 'astounding success' Summarised below are two reports by the LONDON SOCIALIST ALLIANCE (LSA) central office which assess the alliance's performance in the May 4 election for the newly created Greater
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REVITRIYOSO HUSODO and SRI WAHYUNINGSIH of the People's Cultural Network (JAKER) in Indonesia spoke to Green Left Weekly's JULIA PERKINS during her recent visit there. JAKER is sustained by a belief in socialist realist art and
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On May 12, the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) signed a three-month "peace accord" at a secret location in Geneva. A government statement said the cease-fire would come into effect on June 2 and would be reviewed regularly.
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BY DAVID ROBIE & SHERYL HO SUVA, May 20 — George Speight, the leader of the seven gunmen who seized Fiji parliament on May 19, has defied mounting international condemnation of the kidnapping of Fiji's elected cabinet. He claims that his
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UNITED STATES: Pressure grows to lift blockade against Cuba The US Senate's Appropriations Committee voted on May 9 to lift the embargo on sales of food and medicine to Cuba. Supported by both houses of Congress, the move now has an excellent
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Texmaco black-lists strike leaders JAKARTA — Textile company Texmaco has black-listed 15 workers who led a strike at a factory here for better wages. It is refusing to allow the 15 to join the workers' negotiating team or to re-register for
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The simplest answer to the argument that countries who borrowed from the World Bank/International Monetary Fund have no right to ask for debt forgiveness is that the presupposition is false, so the argument is vacuous. For example,
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INDONESIA: Discrimination against ethnic Chinese In Indonesia, racism is one of the most pressing problems facing society. Unlike the United States or South Africa, where racism is based on skin colour, racism in Indonesia manifests itself through
INDONESIA: Discrimination against ethnic Chinese
Culture
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White House buys TV's loyalty in 'war on drugs'The United States government pays television networks and magazine publishers to promote its "tough on drugs" stance through popular TV programs such as ER, Beverly Hills 90210 and
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The Olympic Boycott Song (in three movements) 1. To the tune of "God Save the Queen". Boycott the bloody games,Boycott the bloody games,Boycott the games,Send a clear message out, join us and scream and shout,Boycott the games.Let's be
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SYDNEY — The revolution will be live at the Seymour Centre from May 31 in the form of some of the most powerful songs from the turbulent 1960s to the present. The show aims to celebrate music and its capacity to change, as well
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For a teacher in a remote area This poem was written by an urban poor member of the People's Democratic Party and JAKER (see accompanying article). Don't careA speck of rainBody and bones freezing. An old black bicyclePeddled by old feetHardly
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Stolen Belvoir St Theatre's production of Stolen, written by Jane Harrison about the stolen generations of indigenous Australians, has been described as "Inventive, moving and powerful". Try to get along before the season ends on June 4. 25 Belvoir