Keeping control
Most internet business are facing financial crises today, a year
after the dotcom bubble burst. Even the infrastructure companies, those
that manufacture the boxes and phone lines, software and PCs that connect
people
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Opponents of debt cancellation claim that such a move cannot happen because it would bankrupt the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. While such a result might be good news for the world's poor, such a claim is false.
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In urban America A reader asks, "What is it like to be a Black man in America?" I could go on for days answering that question but time and space will not permit that so I will just give you a view of a few minutes. The distinct hum of an
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After years of denial and deceit, the British government has admitted that military personnel were used in radiation experiments during the nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga in South Australia in the 1950s. Confirming statements
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Perth M1 Grant Coleman ("Police assaults fail to deter blockade", GLW #447) asserts that police attempted to get people through the May 1 Perth stock exchange blockade rather than use a rear entrance that was left open by the protesters. In fact,
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There are hundreds of thousands of people in this country who know full well that since 1996 John Howard and Peter Costello have simply been carrying on the pro-corporate policies of the Hawke and Keating Labor governments of the
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The other day, I attended a conference at the University of Sussex on the "new imperialism". What was extraordinary was that it took place at all. Julian Saurin, who teaches in the school of African and Asian studies at Sussex, said
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What does it say about the nature of the current world order when, despite expanded food production capacity and sophisticated life-saving technologies, more than 30,000 children under five still die each day in Third World countries
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Let's face it, there can be few things worse than being compared to the epitome of bland, consumer capitalism. So when someone within the movement, especially someone as prominent as Naomi Klein, compares it to everyone's favourite
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MELBOURNE - On May 18, for the eighth Friday in a row, anti-corporate protesters peacefully blockaded the entrances to Nike's superstore on Swanston Street, in the centre of the city. The authorities are hitting back, however, in
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Let's face it, the street theatre in London was a bit of a McProtest. The idea of turning London into a life-sized Monopoly board on May Day sounded like a great idea to me. The most familiar criticism lobbed at modern protesters
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On May 17 a South Carolina court sentenced a 24-year-old woman to 12 years in prison for homicide. The victim was her fetus; the method of the "murder" was cocaine use. Eight months pregnant when she miscarried, Regina McKnight is homeless, poor,
News
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@box text intr = PERTH — On May 9, 45 people attended a meeting to launch the Socialist Alliance in Western Australia. Roberto Jorquera from the Democratic Socialist Party and Wade McDonald from the International Socialist
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SYDNEY — Affiliates of the NSW Labor Council on May 17 called on the state Labor government to split its workers' compensation "reform" package into two parts, in the latest bid to force concessions on the controversial
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SYDNEY — Five local campaign groups of the newly formed Socialist Alliance held inaugural meetings across Sydney on May 15 and 16. The meetings — held in Sydney city (Ultimo), Burwood, Parramatta, Marrickville and Chatswood —
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Nobody can deny that the Medicare system is in need of resuscitation. However, nobody can deny that our most vulnerable citizens, the elderly, are the pawns in the latest debate between doctors and the federal government over
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HOBART — "If doctors in public hospitals were only concerned about money, they wouldn't be working in the public system" said Dr Kamala Emanuel in defence of the campaign by doctors to win improvements in their conditions of
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SYDNEY — Angry at the imprisonment of asylum seekers in its detention camps, more than 150 protesters descended on the offices of Australasian Correctional Management offices early on the morning of May 17. The protest to "shut
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HOBART — Shipbuilder Incat has been forced by the Industrial Relations Commission to back off from attempts to impose on its workers the "choice" of a four-day week or 200 redundancies. Incat has a legally binding agreement,
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MELBOURNE — Two hundred power workers and supporters gathered outside Nauru House on May 16, the first day of an Industrial Relations Commission hearing on Yallourn Energy's application for an arbitrated award that would take away
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BRISBANE — The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting here in October is set to be a focus for militant actions against the forum's expressed support for corporate globalisation. Groups and individuals involved in organising
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BRISBANE — The International Women's Day Collective launched its abortion law repeal petition campaign at the May 7 Labour Day festivities in Musgrave Park. The petition demands repeal of the Queensland criminal code sections
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Egalitarian society "The annual Australian rich list was released last week estimating Kerry Packer's wealth at more than $6 billion. This is the equivalent of the wealth of 38,895 average Australians." — Sunday Telegraph, May 20. Toward a
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Refugee policy condemned PERTH — Australia's policy of detaining asylum seekers in detention centres was a blatant breach of at least three international treaties, Dr Judith Watson, a former minister for multicultural affairs, told a May 21
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Vodaphone workers face sackings MELBOURNE — Forty workers for telecommunications company Vodaphone turned up to what they thought would be an ordinary day of training on March 15, only to find themselves being marched out of the gates flanked by
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At an ACTU conference in April unions representing workers employed by BHP decided to put aside demarcation differences to "walk arm-in-arm" against the hard-line industrial moves of BHP. On May 10 the Construction, Forestry,
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ADELAIDE — Despite the presentation of a petition signed by 80 students which called for the re-affiliation of the Flinders University M1 Action Group, the May 16 student council meeting of the Students' Association of
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LISMORE — Nearly 40 people crammed into a caf‚ on May 17 to hear about the newly-formed Socialist Alliance and help launch a local SA group. Edda Lampis, of the International Socialist Organisation, outlined the crisis of
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MELBOURNE — Just two and a half years after the launch of Melbourne's first private university, Melbourne University Private (MUP), confidential university documents have revealed it is in financial crisis and could lose its legal
Analysis
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HIH is not a bad apple Public calls for a full-scale royal commission into the collapse of failed insurance giant HIH are mounting. And so they should be it's high time that the insurance industry was dragged kicking and screaming
World
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Three years after the chief of clothing giant Nike, Phil Knight, promised to improve standards in the company's factories, its workers still continue to suffer repression and poverty wages, a new report released on May 16 has found. On
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Ignoring the devastating toll 30 years of reckless oil development has taken on Ecuador — particularly on the Amazon and its people — a consortium of multinational oil companies are poised to make the same irreversible mistake by moving ahead
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More than half a million people have been displaced as a result of the war between the Sri Lankan government and Tamils in the country's north demanding self-determination. Diseases like malaria and tuberculosis are spreading
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Paul O'Connor, a well-known human rights campaigner, is the projects coordinator for the Derry-based Pat Finucane Centre. The centre is named in memory of Pat Finucane, a human rights lawyer from Belfast who was murdered in front of his wife and
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OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA — "For immigrants to build a better future, they need to build a union", says Eliseo Medina, a Mexican immigrant from Zacatecas who became a leading organiser for the United Farm Workers, and now serves as
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US President George W Bush has canceled a health regulation that would have reduced allowable levels of arsenic in US drinking water from 50 parts per billion (ppb) to 10 ppb. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency
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The Scottish Socialist Party is causing a stir in the run-up to Britain's June 7 general election. The party will contest all 72 seats in Scotland, its most ambitious election campaign to date. "What we want from this election is
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The World Bank has been prominent in East Timor's transition to full independence - so prominent in fact that the country now faces a looming struggle about whether the institution's neo-liberal economic model, so renowned for the
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Seattle, Washington, Melbourne, Prague, Quebec and now Honolulu — the protests against corporate-led globalisation continue to grow. While smaller than its predecessors, the May 9-11 protests and parallel people's forum
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An outsider may observe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and see Israel as an oppressive military occupier — confiscating land, bulldozing houses, imprisoning thousands of poverty-stricken people in their homes through curfews, and
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Ten days of rioting, beginning in late April, in the Algerian Berber-speaking region of Kabylia have led to the death of scores of demonstrators — all killed by the security forces' gunfire. As ever in Algeria, there are no
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RAMALLAH — As the Palestinian uprising (intifada) enters its eighth month the gap between the Palestinian population and the interests of the Israeli government has never been wider. The systematic policy of state-sponsored
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The United States government suffered a humiliating defeat on May 4 when it was voted off the United Nations Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission's inception. It's not as if Washington didn't do its
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At 11am on May 18, as the clouds parted and the sun emerged (briefly), the Socialist Alliance launched its general election manifesto and unveiled its campaign slogan — People Before Profit — in front of Millbank Tower, Labour
Culture
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Elect the Ambassador!By Duncan KerrPublished by the Pluto Press Australia 2000$32.95 REVIEW BY GEOFF FRANCIS One side-effect of the Keating government's ignominious electoral defeat in March 1996 was that a large number of ALP politicians
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Colombia — Peace at what prices?Written & directed by Anne O'CaseyRunning time 40 minutes, $20Available from CISLAC (PO Box A431 Sydney South NSW 2000; web site: <http://www.cislac.org.au>) REVIEW BY LYNDA HANSEN The latest video
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Analysing Australia's role in reconstructing East Timor, Lansell Taudevin, Jefferson Lee, JON LAND, East Timor, Indonesia, Australia, Timor Gap, militia, Andrew Plunkett, Dateline"> East Timor: A nation betrayed East Timor: Making amends?
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Emma's NoseBy Paul J. LivingstonDirected by Neil ArmfieldBelvoir St Theatre, SydneyPlaying until June 24 REVIEW BY BRENDAN DOYLE One response to the doldrums into which Sydney theatre had lapsed was to say: okay, if the more or less well-known
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REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON Josh White: Society BluesBy Elijah WaldUniversity of Massachusetts Press, 2000336 pp, $69 (hb) Josh White is the forgotten singer of progressive blues and folk in the United States. Common coin has it that his obscurity is