BY PAM CURRIE
BRISBANE — A November 7 forum here heard a member of the local Palestinian community, Saleh, and Democratic Socialist Party activist Stan Thompson, speak on the situation in Palestine.
Saleh gave a detailed introduction to the
Issue 428
News
BY KATHY NEWNAM
ADELAIDE — The trials of refugees charged with involvement in August's protest at the Woomera detention camp will begin on December 18, and continue daily through January. The charged refugees are being held in the Adelaide Remand
BY GEORGINA DAVIES
MELBOURNE — Victoria Police have agreed to pay $50,000 to seven environment activists who were assaulted during a peaceful demonstration by 20 people in February 1994. The East Gippsland Forest Alliance protesters are to
Bougainville struggle marked
CANBERRA — An enjoyable and informative "politics in the pub" was held at the Old Canberra Inn on November 5 (Guy Fawkes Day) to commemorate the 1989 blowing up of pylons carrying power lines to the Bougainville
BY SAM WAINWRIGHT
SYDNEY — Around 200 Transport Workers Union (TWU) members and their families attended a combined protest and service of remembrance outside NSW parliament on November 3. The action was to highlight the number of deaths in the
BY LIISA RUSANEN
SYDNEY — In response to the human rights abuses of the military dictatorship in Burma, a protest action was held outside the Grace Brothers department store in the Pitt Street mall on November 10.
The Grace Brothers store was
BY BEN COURTICE
MELBOURNE — How can you fight the boss for a pay rise when the boss locks you out of work for the next six months? This is the question workers had to grapple with at Brownbuilt, an office furniture factory in Oakleigh South.
BY GEORGINA DAVIES
MELBOURNE — A 24-hour stop work meeting by 250 members of the Latrobe Valley branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) caused power blackouts and restrictions across Victoria.
The workers voted to
BY CLAIRE FLYNNAND KATHY NEWNAM
ADELAIDE — The "Grim Reaper" and a paper mache "loan shark" were among the 70 people at a protest, organised by the Adelaide S11 Alliance, outside an address by the managing director of the World Bank, Dr Mamphele
BY MARGARITA WINDISCH
SYDNEY — On November 6, the International Women's Day (IWD) Collective commenced meetings here to organise the annual IWD march scheduled for March 10. IWD is recognised as a day of unity, solidarity and action for women's
BY MELODY COUTMAN & ALISON DELLIT
NEWCASTLE — The ballots cast in the Newcastle University Student Association (NUSA) presidential by-election on November 6-7 are to be destroyed uncounted, following a decision by the NUSA executive to uphold the
BY LISA MACDONALD
SYDNEY — The Australian campaign in solidarity with the Palestinian people's struggle to end Israel's war against them, for self-determination and the return of their land have taken important steps forward here.
Following a
BY MELANIE SJOBERGAND BRONWEN POWELL
WOLLONGONG — Four thousand BHP Port Kembla workers voted for a 24-hour strike after an angry debate at a stopwork meeting here on November 9.
"This is about job security", Graham Roberts, Australian Workers
BY KERRYN WILLIAMS
In the past week, the University of Canberra Students Association and the Wollongong University Student Representative Council have added their support to the "Global Action for Global Justice" student solidarity conference
World
Workers demonstrate against thugs
On November 6, around 250 demonstrators from the Solidarity Front demonstrated outside the East Java provincial parliament in Surabaya. They were protesting against the stabbing of a fellow worker by hired thugs
BY MERRILYN TREASURE
SYDNEY — Having won liberation after 25 years of struggle, the East Timorese people's first challenge is to defend their right to freedom, East Timorese leader Xanana Gusmao told 500 people at a "Peace and Justice in East
BY JIM MCILROY
DILI — Street stallholders selling food and drinks on the seafront near the centre of the city here faced an attempt to forcibly evict them from their established positions on November 3, as the United Nations Transitional
BY EDWARD SAID
The events of the past four weeks in Palestine have been a near-total triumph for Zionism in the United States for the first time since the modern re-emergence of the Palestinian national movement in the late 1960s. Political as well
Self-determination for West Papua now!
[The following statement was issued by Action in Solidarity with
Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET) on November 8 in response to the Indonesian
troops build-up in West Papua.]
Action in
SARI KASSIS from Friends of Palestine spoke at a Green Left Weekly forum in Sydney on November 1. The following is an abridged version of his speech.
I am a card-carrying Palestinian. The card is a small orange identity card. This card doesn't so
As the people of East Timor struggle for their independence under the weight of the consequences of the Machiavellian machinations of successive Australian governments, another resource rich country in the region is calling its independence.
The
BY EVA CHENG
The Indian coalition government led by the Hindu chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has stepped up its neo-liberal privatisation and economic liberalisation push. The 24-party government and its bourgeois counterparts are using
Some 400,000 people converged on the capital of Indonesia's nothernmost province of Aceh, Banda Aceh, on November 10 for a two-day independence rally, despite scores of killings by security forces trying to prevent demonstrators attending.
The
BY SEAN HEALY
While trade bureaucrats from the rich countries begin negotiations in Geneva to extend the World Trade Organisation's Agreement on Agriculture, a new report released by the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) shows
Seizing on Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) president Chen Shui-bian's pledge to stop the construction of Taiwan's controversial fourth nuclear power plant, the former ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party is leading a major drive to unseat Chen from the
Bougainville leaders have warned that the "peace process" may collapse if the PNG government and island leaders do not return to the negotiating table soon to resume the stalled negotiations on the future of the province.
Bougainville provincial
BY JON LAND
On November 5, the Channel 9 Sunday program screened a special report titled "On Patrol in Timor", which claimed to show "how moderate militia factions are politically battling hardline groups still ready to attack the UN peacekeepers".
The UN General Assembly on November 9 overwhelmingly passed a resolution urging that all countries refuse to comply with the 38-year-long US blockade of Cuba. It passed with the support 167 votes, with only the US, Israel and the Marshall Islands
Culture
A SHORT STORY BY RACHEL LAREDNI
Watch them travel in metallic wombs, speeding along veins of the city weaving their way through metal and concrete into the heart of the grand Mecca of capitalism. Tidy men of smooth shaven faces absorbed in the lies
Billy Elliot
Directed by Stephen Daldry
With Jamie Bell and Julie Walters
REVIEW BY ADAM GOLDSTEIN
The depiction of British working-class life in films, beginning in
the late-1950s, emerged full-bloom in the 1990s. It has taken
Promise of a Dream: Remembering the SixtiesBy Sheila RowbothamAllen Lane/Penguin, 2000262 pp, $40.00 (hb)
REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON
"Dreams have gone out of fashion" and the dreams of the 1960s generation, veterans from a tumultuous decade when
SYDNEY — You passionately committed to a political cause. You have been given $30,000 to help you bring about political change. What do you do with it? Fund a demonstration? Design a web site? Hire a lobbyist? Bribe a politician? Buy guns? Or do
BY RICHARD PITHOUSE
DURBAN — From Boksburg to Berlin, discerning ears are being seduced by a record label that measures its success in the currency of meaning. If this culture reaches critical mass, "the global village" might just stop being a