BY JOHN McGILL& BRONWEN BEECHEY
ADELAIDE — On April 2, Adelaide City Council voted to make the streets and parks of the inner CBD a "dry zone". The issue had been under consideration by the council since last year, when it commissioned a market
Issue 444
News
BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE
HOBART — Forestry Tasmania's planned Southwood Resources woodchip mill in the Huon valley is under intense pressure from increased public opposition. This was reflected most strongly in a rally here of thousands of people on
BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE & ROHAN GAISWINKLER
HOBART — For the first time in the company's 20 year history, workers at boat-building company Incat took strike action on April 3, after management walked away from negotiations on a new enterprise
East Timorese band Five from the East performing at Darwin's March 31 Rage Against Racism band night, organised by the socialist youth organisation Resistance. Despite persistent rain, 350 people attended the event and raised $1500 for Green Left
Due to a sub-editing error, the sentence in the article Refugee kept
eight months in solitary by Ben Collins (GLW #443) read: While the agreement
between the government and Australasian Correctional Management, which
runs the centre,
SYDNEY — About 120 Palestinians and their supporters rallied at the Sydney Town Hall on April 7 as part of the International Day of Action for the Refugees' Right of Return. The rally heard from Susan Nasser about the trauma faced by the people in
SYDNEY — Hundreds of local residents and supporters of public education rallied in the suburb of Marrickville here on April 7 to denounce the planned closure of the local high school. Marrickville High is but one of several inner-city schools
BY JIM McILROY
BRISBANE — Beautiful slides of Cuba were a highlight of a solidarity night held at the Resistance Centre on March 31. The slides were taken by Tim Stewart during his January-February visit to Cuba on the "In the Footsteps of Che"
BY JO BROWN & ROB MILLER
MELBOURNE — The international community had to recognise that a war criminal was now prime minister of Israel and act accordingly, a March 30 public meeting here in support of Palestinian freedom has been told.
Academic
BY NIKKI ULASOWSKI
Thousands of students took to the streets on April 5 in a national day of action called by the National Union of Students. Students and supporters demanded an end to corporate control of universities, a liveable income for all,
BY RA GREEN & SIMON BUTLER
BRISBANE — In a bid to access an extra $15 million of state government funding, the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has decided to abolish its arts faculty and replace it with a new faculty called "creative
BY ANDREW HALL
CANBERRA — Seventy supporters of refugee rights have called for the resignation of immigration minister Philip Ruddock at an emergency protest here on April 3, barely a day after Pakistani refugee Shahraz Kayani set himself on fire
Building workers walk off over safety
BRISBANE Building workers walked off 100 major construction sites in
south-east Queensland on April 4 in response to the death of a worker.
Unions demanded a safety audit of all building projects
BY ROBYN MARSHALL
BRISBANE The International Women's Day collective here has launched
a petition campaign to demand that Peter Beattie's Labor state government
repeal sections of the criminal code which make abortion illegal.
The
One hundred and seventy Green Left Weekly subscribers and supporters gathered at the Granville Town Hall on March 31 for western Sydney's annual Green Left Weekly dinner. Organised by the Sydney West branch of the Democratic Socialist Party, the
BY JOHN GAUCI
SYDNEY — On April 6, 140 people gathered in the Resistance Centre to hear speakers discuss the political crisis in Indonesia. The event was organised by Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor. "In May 1998, Indonesian
World
BY JIM GREEN
By supporting the March 26-29 shipment of high-level radioactive waste from France to the German town of Gorleben, the German Greens have ditched all four elements of their original platform — environmental sustainability,
BY NORM DIXON
The Pacific Concerns Resource Centre, the Fiji-based group that campaigns against the nuclear fuel cycle and supports independence movements in the Pacific Ocean region, on April 2 strongly condemned the Australian and New Zealand
BY FALEH A. JABAR
The once moribund Iraqi National Congress (INC) has apparently gained a new lease on life. After weeks of intensive talks in Washington, Ahmad Chalabi — leader of the self-appointed Iraqi opposition in exile — visited Iran to
BY PIP HINMAN
The Indonesian government's "limited" military operation, currently underway, is not just against the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), but against the majority of Acehnese who want an end to the violence and a referendum on
BY LINDA WALDRON
LAHORE — More than 200 activists of the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) activists, members of other opposition parties, community activists and unionists packed the Lahore Press Club here on April 2 to welcome LPP general secretary
BY EVA CHENG
Thousands of progressive and environmental activists from across North America are expected to converge on Quebec City, Canada, from April 16 to declare their rejection of the US-led push to extend the notorious pro-business North
BY MALIK MIAH & RICH LESNIK
SAN FRANCISCO — George W. Bush campaigned for president on two broad themes: "compassionate conservatism" and against "big government" interfering in the lives of the American people. Workers in the airline industry
BY SEAN HEALY
Thousands of Turkish workers filled the streets of the country's major cities on March 31 to protest against the terms of a "bailout" package agreed between the country's government and the International Monetary Fund.
Demonstrators
BY IGGY KIM
SEOUL — As political relations between the leaderships of South Korea and North Korea thaw, the generals and bureaucrats around North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il are not yet united on a clear, single objective. They are sure of
BY VIV MILEY
Following the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Washington launched many unsuccessful attempts to overthrow the popular revolution that had triumphed just 140 kilometres(90 miles) from US shores. The most notorious attempt was at the Bay of
BY KATHY LOWE
The first political prisoner to perish in the long-running hunger strike in Turkey's jails met his death on March 25. He was Cengiz Soydas, who died in an isolation cell in Turkey's Sincan prison after fasting for 133 days.
Despite
BY EVA CHENG
News of what appear to be spontaneous rebellions by workers against attacks on their social rights and living standards resulting from the Chinese Communist Party bureaucracy's drive to restore capitalism continue to seep out of
The Anti-Privatisation Forum — an organisation that unites trade unions, township residents' groups, left-wing parties, anarchists and social justice activists — has forthrightly rejected the South African government's plan to privatise the country's electricity utility, Eskom.
BY NORM DIXON
An Indian Fijian rights group in Suva is seeking compensation from the Indian, Australian and British governments, reported the Times of India on April 3. The Peoples' Organisation for Indo-Fijian Rights and Land Resolution said these
Culture
BY SARAH CLEARY
"Got pissed off and ripped Pamela Lee's tits off/And smacked her so hard I knocked her clothes backwards like Kris Kross ..." — so go the lyrics of popular rap artist Eminem's "My name is", a song that has been receiving high
REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON
IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful CorporationBy Edwin Black Little, Brown and Company, 2001519pp., $30 (pb)
IBM, as it delights in telling us, is the "Solutions
Global Finance: New Thinking on Regulating Speculative Capital MarketsEdited by Walden Bello, Nicola Bullard and Kamal MalhotraZed Books 244pp., A$48.95
Taming Global Financial Flows: A Citizen's GuideBy Kavaljit SinghZed Books237pp., A$43.95
REVIEW BY ALISON DELLIT
Yolngu BoyWith Sean Mununggur, John Sebastian Pilakui and Nathan DanielsDirected by Stephen JohnsonAt major cinemas
Yolngu Boy is better than most "teen" flicks. Set and filmed in the remote Aboriginal communities of
General
BY KAREN FREDERICKS
BRISBANE — The decision to blockade the Australian Stock Exchange was the subject of much debate here at the March 31 "Fighting for the Future" conference, with some arguing that the movement needed to be more positive in its
BY ANDREW HALL
CANBERRA — The ACT Trades and Labor Council has decided to back the planned M1 blockade of Mining Industry House and to move its traditional May Day march from the following Saturday, May 5, to May 1 itself.
The TLC voted at its
BY SARAH PEART
MELBOURNE — Activists here have begun to consider what should happen after the M1 blockade of stock exchanges, with many participants in a "Global Action" conference here on March 31 welcoming a proposal for a September 11, 2001,
BY LISA MACDONALD
SYDNEY — With just three weeks to go until the big day, M1 Sydney has begun to plan in detail how it will fulfill its stated aim, to "shut down corporate Sydney".
The plan involves quickly establishing a strong blockade at the
BY SARAH PEART & JACKIE LYNCH
Activists around the country are once again practising their anti-corporate chants for the blockades of stock exchanges and business districts on May 1, buoyed by the success, beyond most people's imaginings, of the
BY LESLIE RICHMOND
ADELAIDE — Activists livened up a quiet Sunday afternoon here on April 1, marching around the city in a Corporate Scumbags Tour of some of Adelaide's leading businesses.
As curious shoppers looked on, a noisy and vibrant tour