Issue 457

News

BY NICK FREDMAN LISMORE — Activists from the North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) and the Rainforest Information Centre held a vigil outside the offices of State Forests at Casino on July 20. They were protesting against the unsustainable practices
BY GRANT COLEMAN PERTH — "In smashing a peaceful blockade, the police are not only denying us the right to protest, they are helping to deny hundreds of Nike workers the right to a decent wage", Roberto Jorquera told the 40-strong crowd outside
BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE HOBART — After months of union and community pressure, tin mining company Renison Bell, located on Tasmania's west coast, finally agreed on July 12 to conduct an assessment of the risks associated with its 56-hour weekly work
BY CHRISTOPHER PERKINS WOLLONGONG — Staff in the Illawarra's 13 TAFE libraries, incensed at threatened job cuts and casualisation, have launched an industrial and community campaign to save the public education service they proudly deliver. The
SYDNEY — In a big boost to the Socialist Alliance's NSW Senate campaign fundraising, a dinner attended by more than 100 people in Marrickville on July 14 raised more than $1250. It was the first major fundraiser organised by the seven Socialist
BY EWAN SAUNDERS BRISBANE — The Queensland Council of Unions has backed a proposal for a march the day before the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting begins here on October 6, but has refused to back a planned "people's unity march" on the
BY RACHEL EVANS MELBOURNE — Following the July 16 fatal shooting of Steven Rogers, a security guard at the Fertility Control Clinic, pro-choice activists around the country mobilised to defend the right of women to safe, accessible abortion.
BY BRONWEN BEECHEY ADELAIDE — Under the banner of "Save our state!" more than 5000 people marched through the city on July 14, demanding that Adelaide's live music venues be protected from inner-city residential development. The rally demanded
BY ARUN PRADHAN MELBOURNE — Maribyrnong City Councillor Sara Coward has added her support to a planned community rally which will call for the closure of the Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre. The rally, scheduled for Footscray on July
BY SARAH STEPHEN SYDNEY — In the early hours of July 19, 23 men lifted the floorboards of a demountable building used as a mosque in the grounds of the Villawood immigration detention centre, and crawled through the drainage system to freedom.
BY LARA PULLIN CANBERRA — On July 14, the conflict between police and protesters at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy site turned violent. A police car ran into indigenous custodian Daryl Bloomfield, knocking him onto its bonnet in full view of TV
Due to a sub-editing mistake, an error appeared in Joyce Wu's article, "Labor left in bed with the sex industry" (GLW #456). The sentence, "In response, Lafayette ... argued that he did not see how the political and economic rights of women are
BY SARAH STEPHEN The campaign for safe abortion access has begun again after Steve Rogers, a security guard, was shot dead at the Fertility Control Clinic in Melbourne on July 16. Anti-choice groups such as Right to Life have attempted to
BY STUART MARTIN WOLLONGONG — "If the Socialist Alliance is going to gain the confidence of working people, we have to make a firm commitment to our policies. It's not enough to have a great platform, we have to be supporting these campaigns."
BY JODY BETZEIN MELBOURNE — An undercover police officer has arrested a prominent community journalist at the blockade of Nike's city superstore here on July 20, in the latest of many police provocations at such protests. Numbers swelled for
BY NOREEN NAVIN SYDNEY — Some 400 people attended the Now We The People conference over the July 14-15 weekend to discuss the negative impact of economic rationalism and corporate globalisation on ordinary people's lives. Sponsored by a wide
Anti-Howard protest SYDNEY — One hundred protesters converged on Prime Minister John Howard's electoral office at Gladesville on July 19 to protest his government's attacks on workers, students, pensioners and the unemployed. Organised by

World

BY MAX LANE There are now more political prisoners in Indonesia than there were during the last 12 months of General Suharto's 32-year rule. There are at least seven leaders of the West Papua independence movement in jail, some now on trial for
BY EVA CHENG The delicate balance between the nuclear powers is up for a potentially dangerous shake-up after Russia and China on July 16 struck a formal alliance aimed at countering US President George W. Bush's "Son of Star Wars" anti-missile
BY EVA CHENG A February 7 pay deal, signed by plantation owners and the yellow union, the National Union of Plantation Workers, has proven to be a farce and a sell-out, the Plantation Workers Support Committee declared on July 19. The deal was
BY SEAN HEALY Fearful of the country's deepening economic crisis, Wall Street bond traders have demanded, and received, dire austerity measures from Argentinian President Fernando de la Rua in a bid to ensure that the debts owed them will be paid
BY SEAN HEALY Fearful that their hopes for a new round of global "free trade" talks will turn to dust, rich country governments have scheduled an emergency summit for the end of August to discuss the future of the World Trade Organisation. The
BY JON LAND The start of the formal election campaign period for East Timor's new Constituent Assembly began on July 15. Some 16 political parties and a number of independent candidates are contesting 88 seats in the election set for August 30,
BY DALE MCKINLEY HARARE — Zimbabwe's worsening political and economic crisis is doing more than any Marxist text could ever do to turn ordinary Zimbabweans into potential revolutionaries. A majority of politicians and "experts" (both in
BY ALISON DELLIT "Why must anyone endure hunger, unemployment, early death from preventable diseases, ignorance, the lack of culture and all sorts of human and social afflictions for exclusively commercial reasons and profits?" — Fidel Castro.
BY STUART ROSS The Ulster Defense Association (UDA) — also known as the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) — has announced that it will be withdrawing its support for the Good Friday Agreement. "We can no longer remain silent in our criticism of

The British Midlands are being engulfed by race riots, pitting the children of whites who lost jobs in the country's devastating deindustrialisation against sons and daughters of those who came to fill service jobs in the

Culture

Democracy and RevolutionV.I. LeninResistance Books, 2001222 pages, $18.95 REVIEW BY JONATHAN STRAUSS Resistance Books' Democracy and Revolution represents a new effort by this publisher. Previous additions to its Resistance Marxist Library
BY JODY BETZIEN MELBOURNE — Having arrived at his St Kilda press conference more than an hour late, Michael Franti was quick to break with the convention and respectability of the expensive surrounds of the Astor Hotel. Sitting on the back of
An Evergreen IslandFrontyard FilmsMade by Mandy King and Fabio CavadiniScreening on SBS, 7.30pm Saturday, July 28 REVIEW BY MARK ABBERTON In 1989, the people of Bougainville closed down one of the world's largest copper mines, which was reaping

Editorial

@box text intr = The results of the July 14 Aston federal by-election said a lot about what the existing parliamentary parties will be offering voters in the federal election later this year. And what a sorry performance it was. Despite Peter