On July 11 Maryam Ayoobi was stoned to death by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ayoobi, a mother in her late twenties, was imprisoned a year ago and sentenced to death for committing adultery.
The International Committee Against Stoning had organised
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2001 began with allegations that full fee-paying students' marks were being adjusted upwards, bending the rules to encourage more income from fee-paying students. While the allegations have not been fully resolved, it left egg on the
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Prison isn't virtual Supporters of freedom of speech in cyberspace have been demonstrating in the flesh across the United States for the last fortnight. In San Jose, capital of the US high technology Silicon Valley, the New York Times reports that
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The pen pushed to your lips mute whore, silent gigolo... It was after the rocks fell and fire replaced the sky that the sun slipped, invisible, into the story around it: War looks beautiful here. Too violent for
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Just because it's been acting unilaterally doesn't mean Washington has been acting alone: Canberra has been right there beside it all the way. Kyoto Protocol: Australia has worked in tandem with the United States to torpedo the Kyoto Protocol on
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CANBERRA — The Community and Public Sector Union branch conference here on July 26 voted to support centralised bargaining for wages and "core conditions" in the federal public service. It accepted the need for "some flexibility"
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While hunting for the 46 escapees from Villawood detention centre, immigration officials raided a factory in a western suburb of Sydney, arresting 21 immigrants they claim were working illegally. The group was taken to Villawood on
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The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is stuck in the middle of a very nasty global trend: with publicly-funded media increasingly under financial and editorial threat from hostile governments, important alternatives to the
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The debate between Joyce Wu (GLW #457: "Labor left in bed with the sex industry") and Lev Lafayette and Anthony Leong (GLW #458: "The sex industry: Socialism or censorship?") has raised an important question: is the sex industry
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Osama Saddig Yousif is one of thousands of activists in the north African country of Sudan who have been arrested, jailed and tortured many times by the Islamic fundamentalist government that took power in a military coup on June
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The law has been used as an injustice of injustice against a Sri Lankan man and his family, Federal Court Justice Ron Merkel found on July 23. Priyankarage Upel De Silva was issued with a bridging visa while his case for refugee
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BY JIM GREEN & SEAN HEALY In just six months as "globocop", United States President George W. Bush has pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, sabotaged the Biological Weapons Convention, sped ahead missile "defence" plans
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HOBART — The state conference of the Australian Labor Party will be held at the prestigious Wrest Point Casino on the weekend of August 11-12. As is typical at these conferences, it will be an opportunity for Labor leaders like
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Aston I Make up your mind Green Left. Your editorial on July 25 is headed "Why nobody won in Aston", and then it goes on to say that the Greens' preference policy handed the Liberals a propaganda victory. Shouldn't your headline then have been:
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The Knowledge Nation report has exposed many Australians to the word "cadastre", which, as described by the report, is "an inventory of knowledge resources". Australia needs a cadastre, it is argued, because while already being an information
News
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SYDNEY — Undeterred by a strong Zionist presence on the campus, 40 activists and human rights supporters gathered for a forum at the University of New South Wales on August 2 to discuss "What solutions for Palestine?".
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SYDNEY — The contrast was obvious and deliberate. Inside, in the warmth of the luxury ANA Hotel, was World Bank president James Wolfensohn lecturing a $150-a-plate dinner on the joys of "globalisation"; outside, in the cold and
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HOBART — On July 27 Tasmanian health minister Judy Jackson announced that the state's Labor government had backed off from its May 11 decision to close the Caroline House women's refuge. Up to now, Caroline House has been
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NT nurses strike DARWIN — On July 26 NT nurses decided to reject a 4% pay offer, and take industrial action for the first time in twenty years. With an annual rate of inflation of 6%, the government's offer represents a drop in real wages. The
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WOLLONGONG — Illawarra TAFE library unionists and their supporters staged two spirited demonstrations against job cuts and work casualisation on August 2. The NSW Labor minister for education, John Aquilina, was in the
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Ranting I "Globalisation describes what is happening. And ranting against globalisation is like ranting against the telephone. You can use the telephone for good or for ill. So too the wider process (of which the telephone is part) can be a force
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MELBOURNE — Anti-Nike protesters have held the most colourful and energetic demonstration this city has seen since the S11 blockade of the World Economic Forum. Swelling to 250 people, the August 3 protest was the 19th weekly
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HOBART — The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) has called for a 5% pay rise for Incat workers, following the July 24 announcement that Incat has won a contract with the US military. The contract involves chartering
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More than 200 organisations and individuals worldwide have signed a statement of solidarity with the struggle by students and workers in Papua New Guinea against an International Monetary Fund and World Bank-mandated economic
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SYDNEY — Hundreds of supporters of Cuba have gathered here twice in the past two weeks to celebrate the 48th anniversary of the July 26, 1953, storming of the Moncada barracks, the spark which set off the Cuban Revolution six
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SYDNEY — In the week that marked the 50th anniversary of the UN refugee convention, human rights activists in Sydney and Melbourne mobilised to oppose the government's policy of forcible detention for all onshore asylum
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The number of casual staff in Australian universities has more than doubled since 1990, a report by the Australian Vice-Chancellors, Committee has revealed. The report, released on July 20, showed that the proportion of casual
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SYDNEY — "Australasian Correctional Management gets paid $139 a day for each refugee in the detention centres that it runs. And what do the refugees get? Appalling conditions, not enough food or toilets, sedatives, surveillance,
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SYDNEY — "From the Sierra Maestra mountains to the Blue Mountains" was the theme of the inaugural Green Left Weekly solidarity dinner in the Blue Mountains, held at the Mid-Mountains Community Centre on July 28. Ricardo Andino
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The federal government has been forced to order an overhaul of the Job Network after allegations of "phantom jobs" scams. Guidelines governing the $3 billion labour market program will be tightened and the Productivity Commission will
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NEWCASTLE — The 150 activists who gathered for it will certainly long remember this year's annual Queer Collaborations conference, held here from July 9-13. The formal agenda prepared by the QC organising collective included
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DARWIN — A boisterous 120-strong crowd met outside Parliament House at lunchtime on August 3 to protest against the recently passed Northern Territory Public Order and Anti-Social Conduct Act. The act will empower police to
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Security at Sydney's Villawood immigration detention centre will be tightened in response to recommendations made in a report by Knowledge Enterprises' Keith Hamburger, former director of Queensland's prisons department.
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SMITHTON — On August 1, in the largest farmer protest in Tasmania's history, 500 potato farmers and their supporters converged with tractors, trucks and other farm equipment on the McCain factory in Smithton. The blockade
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DARWIN — The Socialist Alliance has decided to run at least three candidates in the Northern Territory elections called for August 18, the alliance's first-ever foray in a state or territory election. Youth worker and
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MELBOURNE — This city's 19 consecutive weekly blockades of Nike superstore, and the coming Commonwealth Business Forum protest on October 3, prompted Resistance activists to get into training on July 28. Resistance activist
Analysis
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@box text intr = Joseph Goebbels, the notorious Nazi propagandist (a job which today would be called "spin doctor"), came up with a theory in the 1930s called the Big Lie: the bigger the lie you tell people, the theory went, and the more you repeat
World
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The ouster of President Abdurrahman Wahid and his replacement by Megawati Sukarnoputri has opened up a new, and likely volatile, era in Indonesia. Reprinted here, in abridged form, is an interview with Budiman Sudjatmiko, the prominent and
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With the vocal religious right as his fighting partners, George W Bush and his team have escalated the war on women's rights, most notably in the sphere of reproductive choice. While Bill Clinton did nothing to reverse the
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With elections to the country's first post-occupation Constituent Assembly due on August 30, East Timor's socialists are building up their support across the country and are confident of good results. The Socialist Party of Timor is
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With Megawati Sukarnoputri freshly installed as president, and the country's armed forces, the TNI, in the ascendancy, the US government is moving swiftly to strengthen military ties with Indonesia. US defence secretary Donald
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At least a dozen students at the University of Papua New Guinea in the capital, Port Moresby, have launched a hunger strike to demand the removal from the country of representatives of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
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An Italian police officer has confirmed eyewitness reports that the brutal July 21 raid on the headquarters of groups protesting the G8 summit of world leaders in Genoa was an act of vengeance ordered by higher authorities. Speaking
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One hundred and eighty prisoners are still on hunger strike in Turkey's jails, staying firm despite the deaths of more than 60 hunger strikes since the protest began on October 20. The health of many of the hunger strikers has
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Castro Zapata, Julio Alberto Otero, ADIDA, United Steel Workers of America, Dan Kovalik, Leo Gerard, USWA, DAVID BACON"> COLOMBIA: US fuels dirty war against unionsThe Bush administration's call to step up US reliance on fossil
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An intense struggle is underway within the Indonesian elite over how to divide up the spoils after the ousting of President Abdurrahman Wahid. On August 3, 12 days after Megawati Sukarnoputri was elected president by the People's
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JOHANNESBURG — An alliance that includes South Africa's emerging grassroots activist movements was formed on July 29 to organise mass protests at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia
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I don't blame President Sukarno for my arrest in the early 1960s. I blame the army. But being a political prisoner in the early 1960s was very different from being a captive of later regimes. Sukarno's political opponents
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Fifty-six years ago, on August 6, 1945, the US dropped a nuclear bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of people. On August 6, 1991, under the cover of the United Nations, the US did it again — it
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Urgent solidarity action is needed from supporters of democracy worldwide to secure the release of activists held by police for organising against the Indonesian regime. Particularly urgent is the case of the Bandung 19, who have imprisoned as
Culture
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REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON Small Comrades: Revolutionising Childhood in Soviet Russia 1917-1933By Lisa KirschenbaumRoutledgeFalmer, 2001232 pages, $45.10 (pb) "Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood", proclaimed the poster that hung in
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GENEVA, Switzerland — Ever since the disastrous "Battle of Seattle" in 1999, the World Trade Organisation has been trying to remake its image, trading in the persona of global tyrant for that of a "hip", "with it" agent of change.