BY NOREEN NAVIN
SYDNEY — One thousand people packed into a meeting at the Marrickville high school hall on March 29 in response to plans by NSW Premier Bob Carr's Labor government to close the school.
The walls were lined with posters, banners
Issue 443
News
ADELAIDE — Howard was given a roasting on March 25 by opponents who had gathered to raise funds for Green Left Weekly. After Howard cracked under the pressure and nearly fell off the spit, debates ensued as to whether he had become twisted because
BY ANGELA LUVERA
SYDNEY — Emily Low, a Resistance activist, spoke at an Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET) organised forum, Indonesia: students on the frontline fighting the IMF — an eyewitness report, at the University
BY MOLLY WISHART
SYDNEY — Three hundred people attended a rally at Cronulla on March 25 to protest the federal government's plan to build a new reactor in the nearby southern Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights.
Cronulla was chosen as he site of the
BY BEN COLLINS
MELBOURNE — 27-year-old Palestinian asylum seeker Mohammed Dawood has spent the last eight months in solitary confinement, first at the Woomera Immigration Detention Centre and then at the centre in Maribyrnong, in Melbourne's
BY JENNY LONG
SYDNEY — Unions at the NSW Labor Council meeting on March 29 vowed to campaign against changes to workers' compensation which the state ALP government is attempting to ram through.
Industrial relations minister and ALP right
BY JANET PARKER
SYDNEY — "It's the emergence of the anti-corporate globalisation movement and people's growing frustration with Labor and Liberal that have really made this possible", said Sam Wainwright, secretary of the Democratic Socialist
BY PAUL BENEDEK
SYDNEY In the days following the escape by 14 refugees from the
Villawood detention centre on March 26, more than 50 homes of people who
had visited detainees were raided by officers from the Department of
BY BILL MASON
BRISBANE — Tensions are rising in the central Queensland coalfields as mine workers hold firm in their strike against BHP over a new enterprise agreement.
Around 1500 workers at six coalmines are involved in the dispute, which
BY PAT BREWER
CANBERRA — An added sense of immediacy will be added to the next National Labour History Conference — because it will be immersed in a labour struggle of its own.
According to conference organiser Phil Griffiths, the conference
BY ANDREW HALL
CANBERRA — Canberra Hospital and community care nurses again protested on March 27 as the stand-off with the ACT Liberal government and the independent health minister Michael Moore continued.
Australian Nursing Federation (ANF)
BY BRONWEN BEECHEY
ADELAIDE — Activists from the National Union of Students, the Australian Education Union, M1 Adelaide and the socialist youth organisation Resistance travelled from to Glenelg in a chartered tram on March 23 to protest outside
World
BY MARGARET GLEESON, LINDA WALDRON & RAY FULCHER
NEW DELHI — The rising popular movement against corporate globalisation had caused a crisis of legitimacy for, and deep divisions within, the world's ruling elite, and now had to press its
BY SEAN HEALY
The military regime of General Pervaiz Musharraf has bowed to domestic and international pressure, finally releasing the last of 20 leaders of the opposition Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy almost a week after they were
BY ALISON DELLIT
Yet another Japanese prime minister is set to fall onto the well-polished sword of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party as Japan lurches inexorably towards a deep recession. Amidst mounting calls by capitalist investors for his
BY BORIS KAGARLITSKY
ROSTOV — Among analysts, there is general agreement that the affair of Colonel Budanov should have split Russia. It should have split it into people who are sure that their country's army is always in the right, and that the
Canadian journalist NAOMI KLEIN is one of the chief spokespeople of the anti-corporate globalisation movement. Her book, No Logo, foretold the events of Seattle in 1999. She explained how many young people are fed up with corporations for all kinds
BY NORM DIXON
The protest action by rank and file Papua New Guinea Defence Force soldiers — described by the Australian capitalist press as a "mutiny" — came to an end on March 26. Following assurances that the PNG cabinet would abandon plans
BY MARGARET GLEESON
NEW DELHI — The third national conference of the All-India Progressive Women's Association held in Patna, Bihar state, on March 17-18 resolved to put up the strongest opposition to globalisation, and to forge ties with
BY EVA CHENG
Chinese vice-premier Qian Qichen paid a rushed and urgent visit to Washington, DC, on April 18-24, deeply concerned that US President George W. Bush's next two major foreign policy decisions may turn out unfavourably for the People's
BY FELIPE PEREZ ROQUE
This an abridged version of a statement delivered by Cuban foreign Felipe Perez Roque at the 57th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Geneva, March 27, 2001. It has been lightly abridged.
We have come
BY EVA CHENG
More than 150 farmers and students dumped onions, soybeans, garlic and other products on the doorstep of a secretive regional meeting of the World Trade Organisation held in the northern city of Chiang Mai on March 27-28.
The move
BY MICHAEL KARADJIS
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has turned to the Yugoslav regime of Vojislav Kostunica to help enforce stability in the south Balkans region.
In late January, British and French troops fought pitched battles
BY IGGY KIM
SEOUL — At its sixth congress on March 24-25, South Korea's Power of the Working Class continued its advance towards creating a revolutionary working-class party. While it will continue as a preparatory group until its seventh
Culture
REVIEW BY ALISON DELLIT
The Constant GardenerBy John Le CarreHodder & Stoughton, 2001508pp., $49.95 (hb)
"The subject of The Constant Gardener is the dilemma of decent people struggling against the ever-swelling tide of heedless corporate greed,
BY LENA NAHLOUS
SYDNEY — The first Sydney Arab Film Festival will showcase international and local contemporary films, as well as experimental and documentary films. The festival will include classic Arab films loved and watched by
SYDNEY — It is generally taken for granted that plays with a political message are as dull as dishwater. This generalisation could not be further from the truth when dealing with the works of Dario Fo, Italy's Nobel Prize-winning playwright.
In
Borderlines: three short playsGriffin Theatre CompanyStables Theatre, SydneyUntil 21 AprilRiverina Playhouse, Wagga WaggaMay 3-12
REVIEW BY BRENDAN DOYLE
There were a lot of young people — always a good sign — in the audience crammed into the
Balzac: A BiographyBy Graham RobbPicador, 2000521pp., $20.78 (pb)
REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON
For Honore de Balzac, a self-proclaimed defender of "throne and altar", to have had all his works placed on the Index of Prohibited Books by the Pope in 1864
Editorial
Time for the decriminalisation of drugs
The second phase of Prime Minister John Howard's Tough on Drugs campaign
is a $27 million education campaign involving a series of TV advertisements
and a glossy booklet to be distributed to
General
BY JULIA HALDANE
BRISBANE — Women are the invisible victims of wars over diminishing resources, Susan Price, women's liberation coordinator for the Democratic Socialist Party, told an audience of 50 people at a post-International Women's Day
BY PETER BOYLE
The big corporate powers and their governments want the ministerial summit of the World Trade Organisation, planned for Qatar in November, to undo what was won at Seattle by thousands of people in the street and by the delegations of
BY NICK SOUDAKOFF
DARWIN — The M1 Alliance here launched its May 1 blockade of the Northern Territory Chamber of Commerce on March 23, drawing an overwhelming response from passers-by when they asked them to vote for who they thought should be
BY JIM MCILROY
BRISBANE — The Queensland Council of Unions has authorised a special affiliates' meeting to discuss the planned May 1 blockade of the city's stock exchange.
The QCU's executive, meeting on March 27, decided to call the
BY MATT RICH
MELBOURNE — On Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology's city campus, the Global Action club, which is building the May 1 (M1) protest at RMIT, is campaigning against the corporatisation of education.
Only two of the RMIT
BY FELICITY MARTIN & GRAHAM MATTHEWS
MELBOURNE — M1 is steadily gaining support amongst major Victorian trade unions, with the Victorian Trades Hall Council and the M1 Alliance agreeing to combine forces for an "Anti-Corporate Unity March" on May
BY NICK FREDMAN
LISMORE — Plans for re-establishing the militant, anti-capitalist traditions of May Day are striking in a chord in northern NSW, with activists meeting to organise an protest rally here on April 28 and then a large contingent to
BY LAUREN CARROLL HARRIS
SYDNEY — High school students played an integral role in the organisation and co-ordination of last year's S11 (September 11-13) protest outside the Crown Casino in Melbourne, when 20,000 people mobilised to shut down the
BY CRAIG MCGREGOR
MELBOURNE — Workers in the Australian Stock Exchange's Melbourne building got a rare taste of democracy on March 27, when a contingent of M1 activists converged on the Collins Street offices to ask them to vote for their