BY DANTE TAGLE
SYDNEY — "There is no such thing as an illegal refugee", Iraqi community leader Zainab Al Turkey told the 50 anti-racists who crammed into an upstairs room of Parramatta's Town Hall on February 26 to launch the Free the Refugees
Issue 439
News
BY TIM GOODEN
GEELONG — Victorian building unions, lead by the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, walked off the job for 24 hours on March 1 to kick off a campaign to win a better long service leave scheme.
Only 23% of construction
BY TONY ILTIS
MELBOURNE — About 150 people rallied outside the Maribyrnong detention centre on February 25. It was the first in a campaign of weekly vigils that will occur every Sunday until it is closed down.
Victorian Trades Hall Council
BY FEDERICO FUENTES
MELBOURNE — The Democratic Socialist Party and Friends of the Earth have initiated a second "Global Action" conference to discuss corporate globalisation and the movement against it as a follow-up to the very successful
SYDNEY — The mass sackings and police repression of protesting Daewoo workers in South Korea prompted a solidarity rally outside the South Korean Consulate in Martin Place on May 1. Organised by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, the rally
BY DANNY FAIRFAX & NICK EVERETT
SYDNEY — City workers are being encouraged to nominate their most hated "corporate scumbag" to be visited by a March 17 "Corporate Scumbag Tour", being organised by the M1 Sydney coalition as a prelude to the
BY CHRIS SLEE
MELBOURNE — On February 26, the Industrial Relations Commission rejected an appeal by the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union against the termination of its bargaining period with Yallourn Energy.
The union had appealed
BY ANTHONY BENBOW
PORT HEDLAND — "BHP posted out 537 workplace agreements. We've got over 400 of them piled here in the union office, still in the envelopes. We expect another 70 or so when people return from annual leave. Probably 20 more were
BY SARAH PEART
MELBOURNE — Demands to cancel Third World debt and abolish multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation will feature prominently in M1 Alliance publicity for the May 1 blockade
BY KATHY NEWNAM & REBECCA MECKELBURG
ADELAIDE — Declaring that "M1 will pick up where S11 left off in building the people's movement for global justice", M1 Adelaide served a "Notice of Closure" on the Australian Stock Exchange on March 1. The
BY SUE BULL
GEELONG — In a corner of a building that once housed the Australian Federal Police, a new group of decidedly more radical tenants committed themselves to vastly different aims when they opened Geelong's new Resistance Centre on
Union delegate sacked
MELBOURNE — Australian Manufacturing Workers Union members at the McConnell Dowell concrete silo construction site in Fisherman's Bend walked off the job on February 27 after their new shop steward, Jose Zuniga, was
BY ROBYN MARSHALL
BRISBANE — Every square inch of green space is precious in the overdeveloped, inner city ghettoes — which may be why 150 people turned out on February 24 to protest the building of more townhouses on one such area of green
For the first time that anyone can remember, an International Women's Day march and rally is being organised in the Central Queensland coastal city of Rockhampton, sometimes referred to as the "beef capital" of Australia. One of the key organisers of
BY JAL NICHOLL & SAM KING
ADELAIDE — While students may have been embracing anti-corporate activism during university orientation weeks, the official festivities have often become appalling mixtures of apoliticism and corporatisation — they
BY ROHAN PEARCE
A growing mood of active opposition to corporate globalisation is emerging among Australia's university students, if campus "orientation weeks" are anything to judge by. The socialist youth organisation Resistance has joined over
Ruddock slams shut NZ door on Pacific Islanders
BY ALISON DELLIT
Thousands of New Zealand residents, many of them migrants from the
Pacific Islands, will be denied residency in Australia under changes to
the reciprocal relationship
BY LOWITJA O'DONAGHUE
[Desperate to "prove" that the genocidal policy of separating Aboriginal children from their parents was essentially "humane" the establishment press embarked on an outrageous beat up on February 22, based on an interview with
BY VIV MILEY
SYDNEY — The dean of arts at the University of New England in Armidale has agreed to "sell" the department of modern Greek studies and its students to the University of New South Wales for $2 million.
Head lecturer of modern Greek
Members of the Australian Defence Industries Residents Action Group and supporters picketed federal Liberal MP Jackie Kelly's office in Penrith on February 15, to oppose the proposed residential development on the heritage-listed ADI site at St
BY JIM McILROY
BRISBANE — A bulletin issued by the Community and Public Sector Union to Centrelink staff on February 22 reported that "Recent media reports have exposed a plan by the federal government to impose a new 'fee for service' funding
World
IRAQ: No to 'smart' sanctions against Iraq
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, while in Syria on February 26,
formally announced that the United States favours "refocusing" sanctions
against Iraq so that they impact less on ordinary Iraqis
BY GREG HARRIS
GLASGOW — The third annual conference of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) held here February 10-11 adopted an ambitious program of activities for the coming months. Key among these were a decision to contest all of Scotland's 72
Most of the central leaders of the Scottish Socialist Party, including Tommy Sheridan, Alan McCombes, Frances Curran and Murray Smith are members of a revolutionary Marxist organisation, the International Socialist Movement (ISM), formerly Scottish
BY MELANIE SJOBERG
Representatives of the Daewoo Motor workers' struggle committee and Korean Confederation of Trade Unions have launched an international campaign to arrest Kim Woo-Choong, former chairperson of the Daewoo group of companies. They
BY JONATHAN STRAUSS
LISBON — In the last 10 years Portugal's Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc) has increasingly brought together some of the most important forces on the Portuguese radical left, including three groups (one Trotskyist, one formerly
BY MAX LANE
Despite the humiliating forced resignation of Indonesian President Suharto in May 1998, the political machine that he built during his 33-year reign has remained virtually intact.
Suharto's son may be on the run from a prison sentence
BY SEAN HEALY
"An absolutely classic emerging market panic" was one Western investment banker's cold-blooded diagnosis, but for 65 million citizens of Turkey the February 22 collapse of their currency, the lira, was a disaster which may rival in
BY MALIK MIAH
SAN FRANCISCO — "The World Stage, Act I" is how the New York Times called President George Bush junior's February 16 military attack on the people of Iraq. Bush, the good ol' boy from Texas with little international policy
BY PIP HINMAN
The recent well-publicised report by Global Alliance for Workers
and Communities on sexual harassment of women workers in Nike factories
in Indonesia is hardly earth-shattering news. By now, Nike's legendary
exploitation of
BY NORM DIXON
Munyaradzi Gwisai, the leading member of the International Socialist Organisation who was elected to Zimbabwe's national parliament last June under the banner of the trade union-backed Movement for Democratic Change, has survived
Culture
BY BRONWEN BEECHEY
ADELAIDE — The 2001 Womadelaide world music festival, held February 16-18, attracted a record 67,000 people. They braved high temperatures to hear an inspiring and exciting line-up of musicians from around the globe.
Sierra
BY RUTH RATCLIFFE
Between Two WorldsAt the National ArchivesKelsey Crescent, Millner, DarwinTuesdays and Wednesdays 9am-noon, until May 31Group bookings at other times by appointment
DARWIN — In 1939, the year Prime Minister John Howard was
The Philippines Left: Political Crises and Social ChangeBy Ben ReidJCAP, Manila, 2000Order through Resistance bookshops (see page 2) or at <http://www.dsp.org.au/rb/rb.htm>
REVIEW BY NICK SOUDAKOFF
The history of the revolutionary
BY GERALDINE CAHILL
MELBOURNE — Every year, community radio station 3CR serves a feast of women's programming, music and performance to celebrate International Women's Day. This year, 3CR's banquet will bigger than ever. It will kick off at
REVIEW BY SUE BOLAND
Disaffected Democracies: what's troubling the trilateral countries?Edited by Susan J. Pharr & Roberto D. PutnamPrinceton University Press 2000362 pp, US$19.95
After declaring that "Democracy itself has triumphed as a result