Mothers' Day this year, again, was a bit of a horror. According to the commercialised tradition, it's a day when we are supposed to buy appliances, lingerie or flowers for mums who're overworked, underpaid and unrecognised.
Particularly revolting
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Mention electricity supplies to a South Australian, and the answer is unlikely to be polite. As well as summer blackouts, there are pool prices that doubled during 2000 in the now-privatised state grid, and the prospect of huge
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With an eye on countering a rural backlash, the federal Liberal-National government has announced significant telecommunication policy backflips in the May 22 budget. As well as committing itself to not sell off the
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A selective and mythologised account of the past draws young people to Anzac Day celebrations. The chief of the armed forces is the Australian of the Year. Parliament passes a bill enabling the military to be used domestically
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Don't you realize that I could have killed you ten times by now your monkey boy bodyguards notwithstanding... anonymous. The hate-filled words heading this essay are from a bullying letter sent to an African-American student leader at
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A federal senate committee has slammed plans for a new nuclear research reactor in the southern Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights. The committee's majority report, released on May 23, is is a joint production of the Labor Party and the
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Socialist Alliance? It is quite obvious that, due to media bias and reactionary politics, terms such as socialism, communism, anarchy, green and left have been effectively discredited in the minds of a lot of people. The expression "Socialist
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Actively Radical TV — Sydney community television's progressive current affairs producers tackle the hard issues from the activist's point of view. CTS Sydney (UHF 31), every Sunday, 9pm. Ph 9565 5522. Visit <http://www.channel31.org> for
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COMMENT BY ROBERTO JORQUERA PERTH According to countless media commentators and letter writers, the M1 protesters who blockaded stock exchanges around the country were violent, undemocratic and hypocritical because they were denying
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BY DICK NICHOLS It was good to see two letters in last week's Green Left Weekly question whether the Socialist Alliance has a future. Paul Petit's and Lev Lafayette's doubts about the project invite us all to think about the
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Tandem Thrust 2001 is the name of the joint US/Australia military exercise conducted during May in Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area, north of Rockhampton. Some 28,000 US, Australian and Canadian troops were involved and it
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Imagine this: it's 2005, and a fundamentalist Christian regime has come to power in New Zealand. In its effort to consolidate power, it is undertaking a campaign of systematic persecution of all those who have organised against it
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BY SARAH STEPHEN Public anger is mounting at the federal government's treatment of asylum seekers, following a May 26 raid on the Port Hedland detention centre and the arrest of 22 refugees singled out from a May 11 riot at the
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RAMALLAH — The May 15 commemorations here of Al Nakba (the Catastrophe), the anniversary of the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel, held special significance for Palestinians — for not since 1948 itself have the
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The South Australian Liberal government believed that it was on a winner when it privatised the state's electricity supply. However, it now looks like the move will be a major factor in the government's defeat at the next state
News
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Unions claim that Qantas is training management to act as strike-breakers in anticipation of a labour dispute over a new enterprise bargaining agreement. Secret training operations, which include teaching up to 75 managers
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"CHOGM and the Commonwealth Business Council are the next stops for the anti-corporate movement and we're going take to the streets with a clear message — global justice not global misery", Angela Luvera, Sydney Resistance central
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health, hospitals, schools, education, state budget"> = Jails, private schools favoured in NSW budget Jails, private schools favoured in NSW budgetSYDNEY NSW treasurer Michael Egan delivered the state
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SYDNEY — After 18 robberies, Sefton newsagent Les Clark armed himself with a pick handle. He declared, "It's a big relief to know you'll be able to defend yourself without breaking the law. I've got a pick handle beneath the
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SYDNEY — Approximately 20 people came to an M1 Sydney meeting to discuss what the anti-corporate movement would do in Sydney in relation to October 3-5 Commonwealth Business Council forum meeting in Melbourne and the October 6-8
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Ruddock 'greeted' NEWCASTLE — Federal immigration minister Phillip Ruddock attended a citizenship ceremony here on May 28. With only two hours notice, 20 protesters outside greeted the "Minister for Racism" outside the Town Hall. The
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Greed is good — for the rich only "The ACA story on Monday was all about inflaming the mean, envious streak in Australians that confuses success with wrongdoing... It is a characteristic we should endeavour to suppress, not cultivate like a
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HOBART Voluntary and forced redundancies at the Incat boat-building company have resulted in Incats work force being reduced from 900 to 710. Last year the work force was 1000-strong but workers who left have not been
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SYDNEY — When the 165 employees of Metroshelf in Revesby turned up for work on June 28 they found security guards standing in front of the locked gates. Management told 50 of them that they had been sacked for
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SYDNEY — Chanting "Hands off workers' comp!", 2000 construction workers and their supporters brought lunchtime traffic to a halt as they marched through the city on May 29. The rally was smaller than originally expected due to a
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BY SARAH PEART & SEAN WALSH MELBOURNE — In scenes reminiscent of the police violence at the S11 protests last September, 250 police officers, including 10 on horseback, assaulted and dispersed a crowd of several hundred protesters peacefully
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SYDNEY — Police in New South Wales are to be given wide powers to arrest people seen entering or leaving suspected "drug houses" and those suspected of acting as lookouts. Officers will also be able to seize properties and
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SYDNEY — Community rallies and protests have resulted in the postponement of the NSW Labor government's plan to close and "restructure" several Sydney schools until 2003. However, public outrage has not prevented education
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BRISBANE — A determined band of activists are preparing a blockade in an effort to save Brisbane's last piece of inner-city bushland. The two hectares of bushland, known as "The Gully", have received council approval for a
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BADJA FOREST — The South East Forest Rescue Squad of about 30 activists is blockading two roads, one of them recently bulldozed, to stop logging in the old-growth Badja Forest wilderness on the escarpment overlooking the NSW south
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BY GRAHAM MATTHEWS & CHRIS SLEE MELBOURNE Growing up in this area, I understand that working families are doing it tough. Too many people are worried about losing their jobs or about getting by with casual work, said Josephine
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Through the first telephone hook-up of its National Liaison Committee since its founding in March, the Socialist Alliance last week decided to have its founding conference in Melbourne on the weekend of August 4-5. The conference
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BY JACQUIE MOON & RACHEL EVANS MELBOURNE — Ten years after the original "D-Day" for action on the HIV/AIDS crisis, activists in the group QUEER have called a D-Day of their own for June 6. The group, whose acronym stands for Queers United to
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The Green Left Weekly staff will be taking a well-earned break next week. The next issue of the paper (No. 452) will appear on June 20.
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The Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee has released a new survey of post-secondary education demonstrating the effects of funding cuts on teaching. Overall the staff to student ratio for the industry has increased by 3%
Analysis
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The people's rollback versus Labor's In the five years since John Howard was elected prime minister, his government has carried through a breathtaking range of attacks on the working class. Key among these were the sale of Telstra, the
World
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A funny thing happened on the way to the third United Nations Conference on Least Developed Countries in Brussels: the representatives of the rich nations suddenly discovered that their restrictions on market access for poor
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Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair is smug in the knowledge that his government is almost certain of victory in the June 7 British general election. Blair knows that the continuing political impotence of the Tory opposition will
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While still pushing hard for a new round of trade talks, United States trade representative Robert Zoellick and other senior US officials have signalled that their government has no intention of reviewing imbalances in
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WASHINGTON — The non-profit Centre for Science in the Public Interest has launched an internet site to provide information on links between big corporations and research by scientists, mostly in the fields of nutrition, environment, toxicology and
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A majority of people put more trust in the groups who protest outside the summits of major international institutions to operate in the best interests of society than in the representatives of governments and corporations inside the
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SYDNEY — "East Timorese must ask themselves, why are we still divided? We can't go on holding other countries to blame", the new country's foreign minister Jose Ramos Horta told a public lecture at the University of New South Wales
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SEOUL — South Korea's movement for democratic unions won an important victory on May 21, when the candidate of a rank-and-file alliance, Kim Jae-gil, won the powerful post of secretary of the Korean Railway Union in a landslide. The
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SAN FRANCISCO — Consider the irony of two events that occurred a couple days apart last month. On May 23, the first Chinese American ever to be elected to the US Congress was denied entry to the Department of Energy offices in Washington, DC. The
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@box text intr = A global campaign to overturn a US patent on basmati rice has scored a further and near-fatal victory with the announcement that the US Patent and Trademark Office has thrown out 13 of 16 remaining claims from US-based RiceTec's
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The US Central Intelligence Agency worked in tandem with Pakistan in the 1980s to create the "monster" that is today Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, Selig Harrison from the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars said at a conference in London
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The Scottish Socialist Party office in Glasgow has been inundated with requests from teachers for campaign packs for school pupils holding mock elections. One teacher phoning from a school in the Gorbals told the party that she has been
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JAKARTA — On May 30, an alliance of members of parliament from Golkar (the party of former Indonesian dictator Suharto), the armed forces (TNI), the muslim right-wing Central Axis parties and vice-president Megawati Sukarnoputri's
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GLASGOW — In a powerful blow against the anti-refugee bigots, the Campaign to Welcome Refugees here held a 200-strong hustings meeting in the city's Moir Hall on May 24. Representatives of all six parties, including the Scottish
Culture
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Big Brother Channel Ten 7-7.30pm Mondays to Fridays 9.30-10.30pm Thursdays 8.30-9.30pm Saturdays 7.30-8.30pm Sundays REVIEW BY ALISON DELLIT It's just a game show, said contestant Johnny to fellow contestant Sharna, in the
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In the Blue HouseBy Meaghan DelahuntBloomsbury, 2001$35 (hb) REVIEW BY KEVIN WILLIAMSON There are few historical figures on the left who provoke such controversy, inspiration and opposition as that of the Russian revolutionary leader, Leon
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SYDNEY — Sydney has a new indigenous radio station — Koori Radio 93.7FM. After six years of campaigning by the Gadigal Information Service, the Australian Broadcasting Authority finally granted a full-time community radio
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AsylumDirected by Claudia Chidiac54 Joseph St, LidcombeShowing May 31-June 9 REVIEW BY VIV MILEY SYDNEY — From the moment you arrive at the venue — a vacant wallpaper shop in Lidcombe — there is a sense of unease. In the main room is an
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REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON War Criminals Welcome: Australia, A Sanctuary for War Criminals since 1945By Mark AaronsBlack Inc, 2001649 pp, $34.95 (pb) When justice minister Amanda Vanstone said that the alleged Latvian war criminal Konrads Kalejs was
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REVIEW BY SIBYLLE KACZOREK& JO ELLIS Organised by Michael Scott, education and community development manager for the Northern Territory AIDS Council, the recently concluded A Walk Through History exhibition presented a historical insight into the