Taking office on July 30, Pru Goward will be Australia's fifth Sex Discrimination Commissioner. A close friend of hers, John Howard, appointed her to the $172,000 position, which has a five-year term.
A high-profile journalist,
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Interchangeable "The last Republican who actually did something good for African-Americans was the so-called 'Great Emancipator', Abraham Lincoln. It should be noted that the good he did was motivated by his party's need for political expediency
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"Balaclava-clad hoons", "busted-up offices", "terrorised staff", "union officials arrested" — these are the lurid makings of a corporate media scare campaign against the leaders of the militant Victorian branch of the
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A new provision in Australia's immigration intake for 2001-02 allows overseas students to apply to settle in Australia once they have graduated, without first having to return to their home country. Australia's immigration levels
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@box text intr = In order to qualify for what debt relief is on offer, poor countries must jump through many hoops. Qualify as "IDA": In order to qualify for debt relief, a Third World country must first be deemed eligible for
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@box text intr = On behalf of the Anti-Privatisation Alliance and all the people fighting against the World Bank/IMF program in Papua New Guinea, we would like to extend our best wishes and gratitude to all our friends and comrades in Australia for
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Why is the Labor left so keen on mainstream business lobbyists that it's asking for their opinions on human rights, free speech and personal freedom at its conferences — and not providing space for independent, critical voices? On
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@box text intr = [The following email letter was sent to Workers Online on July 5 and refused publication.] NSW Police Association president Ian Ball writes a poignant letter to Workers Online (29/6) about the "moral dilemma" of being a police
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Smart tags Microsoft Corporation is currently in the process of rolling out a huge new product range with names like Hailstorm and Windows XP. Meanwhile, we are being told by top Microsoft officer Steve Ballmer that because it is free, Linux, an
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The web-based Workers Online (<www.workers.labor.net.au>) published by the NSW Labor Council received a major plug in the June 5 Media supplement of the Australian. Workers Online was praised for offering innovative
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Thousands of students participated in the September 11-13 blockade of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne, thousands more participated in the May 1 stock exchange blockades. The S11 and M1 protests have rejuvenated student
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"For those who've come across the seas, we've boundless plains to share." — From Advance Australia Fair. It's an irony that despite the refrain of the Australian national anthem, many people express alarm and fear about an immigration policy
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July 28 is the fiftieth anniversary of the enactment of the UN refugee convention. To "celebrate", Australia and other rich country governments are planning to rewrite the convention, to overhaul what determines a refugee and to
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Forests and farmland eaten up, watersheds paved over, noise and air pollution from road traffic — a seemingly endless list of problems confronts the 2.85 billion people who reside in urban agglomerations. And the problem is rapidly
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@box text intr = Multilateral debt: is money owed to international financial organisations such as the IMF and World Bank, as well as regional development banks such as the African Development Bank. Forty-five per cent of HIPC debt is multilateral.
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Asylum seekers The vilification of asylum seekers as "queue jumpers" continues. How hypocritical is it that this epithet comes from people who have never queued. Most Australians either had the good fortune to simply be born here, or had access to
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The Australian Workers Union went before the Industrial Relations Commission on July 16 to seek guarantees of a safe working environment for a group of its members. Nothing new in that - except that the members in this case were 90
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Student activists at Melbourne University are determined to defend fellow students who face disciplinary action, even expulsion, over their part in an April 5 protest against university privatisation - and have appealed for
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"Woman hurt in sex attack — Don't walk in city alone at night", "Intruder sat on naked woman", "Woman jogger brutally bashed" — just a few examples of the lurid accounts of violence against women featured almost every day in the only widely and
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There's an election brewing in the Northern Territory: the ruling Country Liberal Party has passed an act to extend police powers, the Anti-Social Conduct and Public Order Act, and suddenly illicit drug use has become a hot
News
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BRISBANE — The announcement on July 8 by Queensland federal MP Bob Katter that he was resigning from the federal National Party has sent shock waves through the Coalition parties. Katter denied he was deserting a "sinking ship",
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ASTON — More than 150 people attended a July 8 forum to discuss environmental issues in the July 14 Aston by-election. The forum was organised by The Wilderness Society (TWS) and the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF).
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Founding conference approaches Socialist Alliance will hold a founding national conference in Melbourne on August 4-5. The conference will adopt a platform and constitution for the alliance, and discuss the coming federal elections. Vigorous
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Activists protest global warming MELBOUURNE — The Melbourne and Geelong offices of ExxonMobil were the targets of an international day of protest against global warming and climate change on July 11. More than 30 people, many dressed as
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Beaming personality "Get that smirk off your face. I can hear it over the radio." — A caller on Neil Mitchell's 3AW talk-back radio program to Treasurer Peter Costello. Charisma "Arrogant nitwit", "smug, arrogant arsehole" — Some of the
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Have you wondered why the supermarket shelves are looking a little thin in the yoghurt section lately? Food multinational Nestle, which supplies the bulk of yoghurt products to supermarkets, locked 100 workers out of its Echuca
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Amcor workers win MELBOURNE — Workers at the three Melbourne plants of Amcor Packaging returned to work on July 6 after a successful 15-day strike against unsafe working conditions, compulsory redundancies and management arrogance. The strike
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The campaign by the National Tertiary Education Union to defend sacked University of Wollongong academic Ted Steele went to the Federal Court on July 5. The union claims the dismissal breaches the university's enterprise agreement;
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WOLLONGONG - Unions have launched a campaign to improve pay and conditions for call centre workers, protesting outside the Stellar call centre on July 12. The campaign is in part a response to the continuing victimisation of
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SYDNEY — Oleg and Nicolae Cujba, two cousins from Moldova, arrived in Australia on October 13 for what they hoped would be a pleasant holiday. Instead, after being questioned at the airport by officials from the Department of
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NEWCASTLE — Friday July 13 was an unlucky day for federal defence minister Peter Reith. Newcastle business leaders were not the only people he met at the Forgacs Dockyard in Carrington. More than 100 Forgacs workers, members of
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SYDNEY — "When the boss wanted orders to stop us picketing, it took less than a day. But we are now into our seventh week without pay, after being unfairly sacked, and still there is no decision." Seventy-two sacked Metroshelf
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BRISBANE — Plans are well underway for a mass people's march and convergence on the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in October after more than 30 anti-corporate, environmental, indigenous and social justice activists
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"At the beginning of the Aston by-election campaign, Socialist Alliance had one member in the electorate of Aston," the alliance's Aston campaign coordinator David Glanz told a post-election Socialist Alliance celebration on July
Analysis
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Unlike the corporate-owned press, Green Left Weekly has never been supportive of Pauline Hanson or her racist politics. Quite the opposite — we have actively built opposition to the kind of racist scapegoating that Hanson peddles. This newspaper
World
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BY PATRICK BOND& KAREN BAKKER VANCOUVER — The July 5-8 Blue Planet conference opened with a call by Maude Barlow to promote "a global water revolution". Barlow, chairperson of the Council of Canadians — a 100,000-member citizens' group, added:
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Anti-corporate protesters are planning huge protests when heads of government of the Group of Eight (G8) leading industrial powers come to the Italian port city of Genoa on July 20. The peaceful civil disobedience actions,
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Malaysia's prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, in power for 20 years, has turned increasingly to a notorious repressive law, in a desperate attempt to crush rising internal dissent. Enacted in 1960, the Internal Security Act allows for
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SAN FRANCISCO - In a small victory for legal immigrants, the US Supreme Court weakened a series of laws adopted by Congress in 1996 that limited the rights of foreign-born legal residents. The decisions by a narrow 5 to 4 margin means the immigration
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Three activists from the Acehnese Democratic Peoples Resistance Front were detained by police in Banda Aceh on July 11 during a protest against the United States-based company ExxonMobil. The three activists — Kautsar, chairperson
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While their press secretaries will no doubt come up with a headline-grabbing figure to spin it otherwise, the leaders of the world's eight largest industrialised economies are preparing to ignore worldwide calls to "drop the debt" at
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JOHANNESBURG — A political publicity stunt by the Pan Africanist Congress has snowballed into a major confrontation between homeless and land hungry people and the African National Congress government. The failure of the ANC to
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LONDON — The recently concluded triangular one-day cricket competition between England, Pakistan and Australia was noticeable for two things. First, as expected, Australia thrashed both the other sides. Second, the British press,
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@box text intr = Dear friends, we are writing this letter to you in response to the request from the Socialist Party of Timor (PST) for financial assistance in the upcoming elections for the constituent assembly in East Timor. The elections
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The left-wing Labour Party of Pakistan has polled well in the latest round of local elections, winning 21 councillors' positions in Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi, the country's largest cities, and garnering 29,000 votes across the country. While
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The military regime which has ruled Burma for nearly 40 years may be about to not only release opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest but form a power-sharing government with her party, the National League for
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In a case of breathtaking hypocrisy, a court controlled by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has put on trial for war crimes the former leader of a country against which NATO itself committed war crimes. No US or other
Culture
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Fallout: Hedley Marston and the British Bomb Tests in AustraliaBy Roger CrossWakefield Press, 2001187 pages, $24.95 (pb) REVIEW BY JIM GREEN Fallout recounts the story of the cabal of British and Australian politicians, bureaucrats and scientists
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How To Take An Exam... And Remake The WorldBy Bertell OllmanBlack Rose Books, 2001191 pp, US$19.99 (pb) REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON How's this for the dream exam! There is one paper consisting of just 10 true/false questions. You know the correct