BY JEREMY SMITH
MELBOURNE — While there might not have been any students on campus, a battle has raged during the summer break at Melbourne University between staff, who are demanding a better deal in their upcoming enterprise agreement, and
Issue 432
News
BY KAREN FLETCHER
BRISBANE — A social services wing of the Uniting Church has cut the wages and conditions of its disability support workers by moving them from their current award to a lower-paid state award.
The rates of pay in the state
BY BRONWEN BEECHEY
ADELAIDE — Radio Rentals has locked out 40 technicians, members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, over a long-running pay dispute. The technicians have been demanding a 5% pay rise, which would be their first since
BY NICK EVERETT
SYDNEY — "We must work together to build a wall of public opinion against corporate greed and exploitation", Cuban Communist Party member Abelardo Cueto Sosa told the biggest meeting of left activists to be held in Sydney's
The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union launched its national "pattern bargaining" Campaign 2001 at rallies in Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide on December 6. Campaign 2001 is raising a set of demands for inclusion in enterprise agreements being
BY GRANT COLEMAN
PERTH — The Western Australian Liberal government has called a snap state election for February 10. The Democratic Socialists will be running Anthony Benbow in the seat of Fremantle and Roberto Jorquera in seat of Perth.
The
BY SIMON BUTLER
BALLARAT — The 2000 National Union of Students national conference, held here from December 11-15, closed in tumult and chaos, with members of the National Broad Left, the Labor left and the Labor right factions hurling abuse, and
BY JACQUI LEE
PERTH — The lack of funding and resources has led to a crisis in Western Australia's hospital system. In the face of low pay and an ever-increasing workload, many nurses are leaving for better paid jobs.
Nurses are to take action
BY KIM BULLIMORE
MELBOURNE — After much successful campaigning in New South Wales, the Indigenous Students Network has relaunched itself as a national network for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.
Corrie Hodson, a founding member
BY AARON BENEDEK
SYDNEY — Two solid rows of police, including some on horseback, confronted 300 people who gathered outside Newtown railway station here on December 16 for a Reclaim the Streets street party, encircling them and forcing them
BY STEPHEN O'BRIEN
NEWCASTLE — Mining company Colrock has followed in the nefarious tradition of National Textiles and Steel Tank and Pipe (STP) by sacking workers without paying them their entitlements.
Colrock, whose parent company is the
BY KATHY NEWNAM
ADELAIDE — The trials of refugees charged with involvement in the alleged August "riots" at the Woomera Immigration Detention Centre, in the South Australian desert, began here on December 18. The case against the first defendant,
The Green Left Weekly Fighting Fund got off to a flying start at the Democratic Socialist Party's January 3-7 congress. Members and supporters of the party pledged a massive $121,615 at the congress rally. It was the first of a series of special
Castro 9, US 0
"Not including Mr [George "Dubya"] Bush, the 74-year-old Dr Castro has outlasted nine US presidents since coming to power in 1959, surviving not only assassination attempts inspired by Washington but also the abortive 1961 Bay of
World
The French seaside resort town of Nice, on the country's Mediterranean coast, added its name to the list of "insurgent cities" — a list which already includes Seattle, Washington, Prague and Melbourne — when, on December 6-7, 70,000 people from
BY VIV MILEY
At 5am on the morning of December 19, Turkish military units stormed prisons across the country in a bid to force political prisoners to end a hunger strike. The operation, code-named "Return to Life", involved the use of machine guns,
BY NINA LANSBURY
Australian mining companies and the University of Tasmania are set to play an integral role in the mineral future of Chinese-occupied Tibet. The Tanjianshan gold deposit, lying within northern Tibet's Chokle Namgyal mountain range,
BY NORM DIXON
The low level of participation by voters in the December 5 South African municipal elections reflects a growing dissatisfaction among workers and poor at the African National Congress (ANC) government's repeated failure to keep its
BY KERRYN WILLIAMS
"We see the potential energy among urban poor youth, whose power has been shown many times in Indonesian history. They are brave, energetic and not afraid of new ideas and changes. We are trying to build their trust in the idea
BY MAX LANE
The process of overthrowing the Suharto dictatorship did not go sufficiently deep enough to deliver a deathblow to the political ambitions of the old regime, of Suharto's former ruling party, Golkar, and the armed forces, the TNI.
BY BORIS KAGARLITSKY
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), the child of Gennady Zyuganov, might to almost the same degree be called the child of Boris Yeltsin. Throughout the entire period from 1993 to 1999 the party had a clearly
BY PIP HINMAN
Acehnese activist Kautsar has been struggling for his people's right
to self-determination for some years. In 1998, he helped to form Student
Solidarity with the People (SMUR), the main Acehenese student-led popular
Culture
The following remarks were delivered at the dedication of Jose Villa's statue of John Lennon in Lennon Park, Havana, Cuba on December 8. It was the 20th anniversary of Lennon's assassination.
Rebel RadioCD/CD-ROM by Up, Bustle and OutNinja Tune Records
The Rebel Radio DiariesBy Rupert MouldLa Prensa Rebelde
REVIEW BY NICK FREDMAN
"On February 1958, in the Sierra Maestra Mountains to the Northwest of Santiago de Cuba, Che installed
Bougainville Voices was recorded in central Bougainville in 1998 by musicologist Justin Tonti-Filippini at the personal invitation of Bougainville's leaders. He began work as soon as a truce was brokered on the war-torn island that has been fighting
Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the PoorEdited by Jim Yong Kim, Joyce Millen, Alec Irwin and John GershmanCommon Courage Press, Monroe, MaineAvailable at <http://www.amazon.com>
REVIEW BY STEPHEN LANGFORD
For
REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON
Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XIIBy John CornwellPenguin430 pp, $22 (pb)The Catholic Church and Nazi GermanyBy Guenter LewyDa Capo Press416 pp, $38.95 (pb)
If Pope John Paul II has his way, the next newly minted