BY JUSTINE KAMPRAD
MELBOURNE — Last week FairWare activists held lively protest actions against the Australian Retailers Association (ARA), marking a change in the focus of the FairWear campaign.
ARA-affiliated companies control over 70% of the
Issue 427
News
BY DANIEL KELLY
SYDNEY — The Central New South Wales branch of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA)is taking legal action against Patrick Stevedores over the work conditions of straddle operators at the company's Port Botany container terminal.
BY GAIL LORD
SYDNEY — A group of pro-public education activists, including members of the Democratic Socialist Party and the Internationalist Socialist Organisation, demonstrated outside the Kings School in North Parramatta on November 2 to
BY STEVE SHEPHERD
MELBOURNE — For anyone who's ever wondered what happens to all the toxic waste produced by the global corporations operating in Australia, there is a disturbing answer.
It seems a substantial proportion is simply being dumped
Labor rolled on student solidarity
CANBERRA — Following heated debate, the University of Canberra Students Association has given its support to the April 2001 Student Solidarity Conference. Motions to the general committee called for
The following motion was adopted at the November 1 meeting of the Melbourne S11 Alliance.
The success of S11 and the continuing international movement against corporate globalisation suggests the need for ongoing coordination and cooperation of
BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE
HOBART — Resolutions proposed for the upcoming ALP state conference by party branches will have only symbolic meaning if the ALP leadership gets its way. The ALP hierarchy is seeking to formalise a situation where resolutions
S11 activist, Marcus Brumer who cream-pied the Victorian Premier Steve Bracks last week is facing five charges after being arrested at his Upwey home on October 31.
He was taken by two members of the Protective Security Intelligence Group to the
SYDNEY — Women's Abortion Action Campaign members and supporters gathered outside an abortion clinic near Penrith on November 3 to counter an anti-abortion picket. The anti-choice campaigners have been harassing the clinic regularly. The pro-choice
BY CHRIS SLEE
MELBOURNE — Members of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) employed in power stations in the Latrobe Valley stopped work for several hours on the night of November 2, causing power blackouts in many parts of
BY JORGE JORQUERA
MELBOURNE — On November 1 a meeting of the S11 Alliance in Melbourne decided to support as a "global strike" against corporate tyranny on May 1, 2001. This meeting of the alliance had been called with the specific intent of
The main speaker was Dr , Council of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Island Studies, Wathaurong, BRONWYN JENNINGS">
Geelong meets for reconciliation
BY BRONWYN JENNINGS
GEELONG — On November 1, about 200 people packed into the Geelong West
BY PAUL BENEDEK
SYDNEY — The campaign against the amalgamation of the campuses of the University of Western Sydney has been boosted following a successful half-day strike by 2300 staff on November 1. Staff and students joined forces to picket all
The following Palestine solidarity actions were confirmed as of November 5. Further actions may be called in your city. For more information, contact your nearest Resistance Centre (details on page 2).
ADELAIDE — Action planning meeting. Wed Nov
The Palestinian people are rebelling against the past 52 years of occupation and injustice. They have been betrayed by a false peace process that did little more than readjust the terms of Israeli occupation of their land.
The Palestinians have
Global Exchange, a human rights organisation based in San Francisco, has launched an instant fax-away that demands justice for the people of occupied Palestine.
Go to <http://www.globalexchange.org/getInvolved/palestinefax.html>, enter
BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE
HOBART — Feminists and socialists have opposed the appointment of a male women's officer at Tasmania University's Launceston campus, calling it a step backwards for women.
"Whichever way you look at it, having a man as
Anger at the war unleashed against the Palestinians by Israel drew members of the Palestinian community to a special forum organised by Green Left Weekly in Adelaide on November 1.
John Nebauer reports that the forum featured a talk by Leslie
BY JEREMY SMITH
BALLARAT — The largest union meetings in the history of the University of Ballarat have supported a proposal for a campaign of industrial action. Meetings at the School of Mines and the Mt Helen campus on November 2 brought
BY MAXINE CARON AND GARETH SMITH
BYRON BAY — About one hundred people gathered at the Great Northern Hotel here on October 29 for a fund-raising meeting organised by Byron Friends of East Timor and the Helping Ordinary People Exist(HOPE).
Isa
BY BEA BREAR
HOBART — "No more woodchips!" was the chant arising from 700 protesters outside an international "environment" conference here last week.
The Forest Certification Conference, organised by the Forest Industries Association of
World
LONDON — Solidarity with Colombian workers will step up a notch here in November, when workers' leader Alexander Lopez visits to tell of his union's fight against privatisation in Colombia's second largest city, Cali, and to urge opposition to the
BELFAST — TOMMY MCKEARNEY, a native of Moy, County Tyrone, is a former republican prisoner and one of the founding members of the Irish Republican Writers Group (IRWG). He currently works with Expac — the ex-prisoners' assistance committee — in
Companies operating in the oil and natural gas rich Timor Gap include some of the largest multinational and Australian-based energy corporations. Anglo-Dutch giant Shell, US-based Phillips Petroleum and Australian players such as Woodside Energy and
The following appeal was made by Rahman Hoseinzadeh, secretary of the Kurdistan Worker-Communist Party of Iran, on November 1.
Mahmood Salehi, president of the Bakers' Syndicate in the city of Saqez, Kurdistan in Iran, was arrested for the second
LONDON — London-based activist group Oztudak, the Freedom Prisoners Solidarity Committee, has launched a campaign against the Turkish government's use of isolation cells, in particularly the infamous "coffin cells" introduced by the Turkish
LONDON — Since September 28, a group of 40 refugees, migrants and their supporters have been travelling across England, providing support to black and migrant communities who have suffered from racism and telling people that the campaigns for
In the last issue of Green Left Weekly, in the article titled "What went wrong with O20?", a sub-editing introduced an error. The sentence, "They had the prior agreement of the PRC and Citizens' Action for this announcement", should have read, "They
The current intifada in Palestine against Israeli occupation is clarifying United States policy towards the Middle East for those who thought President Bill Clinton was acting as a non-partisan mediator. Washington is 100% behind the Israeli state
The people of Iraq live under unbearable circumstances. Since Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath regime seized power, it has engaged in ruthless repression and led the country into economic crisis.
The living conditions of the working class, already bad due
LONDON — The pro-choice movement here is intensifying its campaign to ensure women can gain "no strings" access to abortion. The campaign was spurred on by an abortion law conference in October which backed an end to all restrictions on
BY MICHAEL KARADJIS
The ouster of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic's regime was the result of two overlapping events. The first was a rearrangement of power within the ruling elite, replacing a tainted Milosevic with Vojislav Kostunica,
While BHP's proclaims that "prevention is better than cure", the company is pressing ahead with investigations into dumping in the ocean wastes from the proposed Gag Island nickel project, 150 kilometres west of West Papua in Indonesia.
In 1996,
Hawree Latif was killed on July 14 when forces from the ruling Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) attacked the offices of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq (WCPI) in Suleimaniah, Iraqi Kurdistan. On October 27, Hawree's brother, Aram Latif, was
Striking workers attacked
Striking workers at plastics manufacturing company PT Mepoly, near Surabaya in East Java, were attacked by hired thugs and police on November 1. The company employs some 600 workers, 50% of whom are women.
Two trucks
The efforts by the West Papuan people to garner international support for self-determination have taken a number of leaps forward recently. But despite growing international concern at Indonesia's repressive policies in West Papua — including a ban
Culture
REVIEW BY EVA CHENG
Globalization: Neoliberal Challenge, Radical ResponsesBy Robert WentTranslated by Peter DruckerPluto Press170 pp, $42.80
With Ernest Mandel, the respected Marxist economist, as one of its founders, the Amsterdam-based
The Art for a Change web site (<http://www.primenet.com/~mvallen>) has just published an emergency Palestine solidarity issue that documents art activism in support of a just and lasting peace between the Palestinian and Israeli people.
REVIEW BY BILL NEVINS
Dancing in our DreamsPressGangVoxpop records<http://www.voxpop.demon.co.uk>
Cheerful harmonies, dulcimer, double bass and danceable praise of the egalitarian Chartist faith of the English working class. This is
South Africa in the mid-'70s was a deeply oppressive society. Apartheid repression was at its height and rigid racial segregation was the law. So when Sipho Mchunu, an illiterate black gardener from rural Zululand, and Johnny Clegg, a white
Editorial
The deadly November 2 firefight between rival factions of the Fiji armed forces has again revealed the true source of "regional instability", and the greatest threat to human rights and democracy, in the South Pacific: the privileged neo-colonial