SYDNEY — While the federal Coalition government siphons $700 million from public to private schools through its commonwealth state grants act, the NSW Labor government is planning to sell off Marrickville, Maroubra, Hunters Hill and
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Really works wonders! "Radio stations could be meaningful forces for rehabilitative change in the hearts, souls, minds and spirits of prisoners. These are perilous times ... and America needs a good deal more than music and commentary on the
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BY PATRICIA CORCORAN & ARUN PRADHAN The immediate measure to demand of "our" government is the unconditional right of entry and residence for all those who come here — an open door. Upon arrival, immigrants should be given equal access to
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"Set against the richly variegated backdrop of history, this is the story of a unique American who started with virtually nothing and built a worldwide security empire. An extraordinary life story spanning over seven decades, as
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Mahmood lives in Perth. He was released from Port Hedland detention centre six weeks ago, on a temporary protection visa. Mahmood is Kurdish and lived in Iran. Mahmood was involved in the Iranian journalists' union and was a student leader in
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Melbourne's M1 Alliance, fresh from its successful May 1 blockade of the Australian Stock Exchange, has set itself a new target for militant, mass action: the Commonwealth Business Forum, which protest organisers say is proof
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Just weeks after another uprising at the Port Hedland refugee detention centre, federal immigration minister Philip Ruddock introduced the immigration detainees bill into federal parliament, which proposes to allow guards to conduct strip searches of
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M1, the first May Day of the new century, will be remembered by many of us for a long time. Twenty thousand students, workers, pensioners and mothers chanted, yelled, spoke, sang, danced and linked arms across Australia in a
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NEWCASTLE — "M1 shares its name with a recent generation US Army tank, the M1 Abrams. It's ironic that today's crisis-addicts campaign against US imperialism — economic and cultural — when they enthusiastically take-up all the
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Anyone who has attended a recent rally in Sydney knows that there is more to the police than cheesy grins and helping the elderly. Despite already knowing this, I was completely unprepared for my experience of police at the May 17 blockade of the
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Organisers of the protest against the Commonwealth Business Council Forum point to the record of the corporate leaders involved as motivation for their action. Hugh Morgan, chief executive, Western Mining Corporation,
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George Pell, the newly appointed Catholic archbishop of Sydney, is once again under attack from angry community groups, in particular those at the sharp end of Pell's bigoted, anti-gay and anti-lesbian stick. Sydney gay and lesbian
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In a dawn raid on May 26, state and federal police, immigration officials and Australasian Correctional Management staff descended on the Port Hedland immigration detention centre to seize and remove detainees involved in a May 11
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BY PATRICIA CORCORAN & ARUN PRADHAN "Listen! Please, just for a moment. Who is crying? Who is moaning? Since long ago we detainees at the Woomera Detention Centre have been suffering. We are human ... We have got blood in our vessels like you."
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Police violence at Perth M1 Jon Mayhew (Write on, GLW #449) raised the point that no riot shields were used on protesters. On this point he is correct. The mistake in my article was due to an error in the editing process. Police did not use riot
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MELBOURNE — One feature of the new anti-corporate movement has been revived activism amongst queer groups, in particular amongst students, which has sought to link the discrimination and vilification faced by gays and lesbians to
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Global waste From the closing months of 1998 until March 2000 the world was bombarded with an image of capitalist success, the "dotcom". Named after the internet's abbreviation for commercial companies, the propaganda was unremitting. Companies
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Curtin Immigration Detention Centre Location: RAAF base outside Derby, in the far north of Western Australia. Capacity: 1000 people (1200 people being held). Description: Tents and pre-fabricated huts used as accomodation, surrounded by
News
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Workplace relations minister Tony Abbott has called for an inquiry into the construction industry, alleging widespread corruption, fraud and intimidation of workers. What this really represents is a blatant political
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CANBERRA The Socialist Alliance was the best thing to happen on the left in Australia since the formation of the Communist Party following the 1917 Russian Revolution a bold claim from the National Tertiary Education
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HOBART — In a move that has shocked workers in women's and children's refuges, the Tasmanian Labor government announced plans on May 11 to close one of the four refuges in the south of the state, while the other three will have
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Fearful of being embarrassed by large anti-corporate protests at the October Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Brisbane, Queensland Labor Premier Peter Beattie is preparing a concerted effort to either intimidate or co-opt
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Ken Fry was the Labor member for Fraser, one of Canberra's two lower house seats, from 1974-1984 and is best known as one of the leading parliamentary supporters of independence for East Timor, having visited the country shortly before its
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Rally saves planetarium BRISBANE — The Brisbane City Council has backed off from a threat to cut funding to the Brisbane Planetarium, after some 60 people rallied at the planetarium's Mount Coot-tha site on May 20 to demand it be kept open.
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BY SIBYLLE KACZOREK & JO ELLIS DARWIN — The AIDS Council's annual candlelight vigil, held on May 20, provided solidarity for those living with HIV and encouraged people to join the fight against discrimination and oppression. Gary Meyerhoff,
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WOLLONGONG — Unions claimed victory over BHP in last week's dispute over individual contracts and workplace safety. After a three-day strike, BHP was forced to delay its contracting out of protective services workers at its Port
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If anyone expected the 2001-2002 federal budget to kick-start a vibrant and exciting election contest between the two major parties, they will have been sorely disappointed by Treasurer Peter Costello's latest effort. Facing an
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HOBART — Seventy of ship-builder Incat's 900 workers finished work on May 25 after accepting voluntary redundancies. The company extended an earlier deadline for workers to apply for redundancies but threatened forced sackings
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GEELONG — Victorian teachers are set to strike on June 19, if the Premier Steve Bracks' Labor government does not reconsider its allocation of funds for education. The Australian Education Union has called on pre-school, primary,
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SYDNEY Coming hard on the heels of launches of local Socialist Alliance groups across the city, 25 students at Sydney University gathered on May 23 to launch the alliance on their campus. Student activist Dom Rowe,
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SYDNEY — The details are emerging of the NSW Labor Council's deal with the state Labor government to resolve the debacle over industrial relations minister John Della Bosca's proposed changes to workers' compensation. Although the
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ADELAIDE This is an occasion we should all be rejoicing about, was how veteran socialist Norm Taylor began his address to the launch of the Socialist Alliance here on May 21. The alliance was urgently needed, Taylor
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Mea culpa? "While the GST is basically here to stay, it is now clear its benefits were grossly exaggerated by economists who climbed on the 'tax reform' bandwagon." — editorial in the May 26-27 Australian Financial Review, one of the chief media
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BRISBANE Twenty-nine years ago, the Labor Party came to Musgrave Park and promised to do something for Aboriginal people, 29 years later and nothing's changed, indigenous activist Sam Watson told the 135 people who
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The Australian Financial Review's May 23 headlines said it all, "There's a hole where the surplus used to be", "Even the 1.5 billion isn't as good as it looks" and, on May 24, "The incredible shrinking surplus". Behind the
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Environment groups have slammed the May 22 federal budget for failing to provide much-needed funding for environmental repair, for creative accounting and disguising corporate welfare as environmental reform. The Coalition government
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SYDNEY — Angry at federal budget plans to further erode access to social security and toughen "mutual obligation", local residents, indigenous community representatives, welfare recipients and Centrelink staff met in inner-city
Analysis
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@box text intr = The June 3 demonstrations to free the refugees will be the first nationally co-ordinated actions in support of refugees in Australia's history. It is a tragedy that they are necessary. Australia offers no welcome haven to those
World
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Some media commentators have ridiculed the fact that the Scottish Socialist Party doesn't expect to win any seats in the UK general election on June 7. The unfairly high deposit of 𧺬 combined with the "first past the post"
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"The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants", George 'Dubya' Bush, January 14, 2001. Bush and his administration definitely know
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Eight protesters who took part in the April 20-22 protests in Quebec City against the US-led plan for a Free Trade Area of the Americas have been sentenced to up to nine months imprisonment. Stephane Paquet, based in Quebec City, was
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ACCRA — There are signs of genuine hope in Ghana. In May, I was privileged to witness a careful regrouping of the country's former revolutionary student/community movement, which is strengthening its political base by addressing
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LAHORE — A 250-strong demonstration at the Lahore Press Club has supported a boycott by social and political organisations here of World Bank consultations for a new "Country Assistance Strategy". Representatives of the Joint
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JAKARTA — More than 500 people, Acehnese and Indonesians, attended a series of lively debates and cultural events at conference organised by the Acehnese People's Democratic Resistance Front (FPDRA) and the Popular Youth Movement
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Israel's use of F16 jets against Palestinian civilians on May 18 departed from all military norms of the previous 33 years of occupation [of the West Bank and Gaza Strip]. This extreme step shows an imbalance of judgement. When a nation-state uses
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Since it called off its truce in late 1999, the Basque armed independence organisation ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom) has carried out a spate of bombings and assassinations across Spain. These have aroused such disgust among
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As a result of the May 13 elections, Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing La Casa delle Liberta ("House of Freedom") coalition will hold 177 seats in the 315-member upper house and 368 seats in the 630-member lower house of Italy's
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JAKARTA — If opponents of President Abdurrahman Wahid have their way, when it meets on May 30 the Indonesian parliament will call a special session of the People's Consultative Assembly, the only body which has the power to impeach
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Failing to coopt the activists who were planning to protest at its Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) in Barcelona on June 25-27, the World Bank announced on May 19 that the meeting has been called off.
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One of the corporations which had a direct part in drawing up George W Bush's new energy policy was Houston-based corporate giant Enron, a US$100 billion empire which trades energy in every corner of the world. Enron and its chief
Culture
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Links No. 18128pp, $8.00Available at Resistance Bookshops REVIEW BY ALLEN MYERS The latest issue of Links magazine sets out to provide an indication of the breadth and depth of Marxist political activity and theory in Asia. It contains a
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REVIEWED BY PHIL SHANNON The Tombstone Imperative: The Truth About Air SafetyBy Andrew WeirSimon & Schuster, 2000372 pp, $14.95 (pb) "Nothing is more important to us than safety", "Safety is our number one priority": all the variations on this
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Lemonade & Buns/Tog E Go Bog EKilaGreen Linnet records REVIEW BY BILL NEVINS Kila play Irish music the likes of which you've never heard. Forget your notions about tiddly diddly dee and them boring auld laments and dirges. This lot of young