BY VIV MILEY
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
Issue 459
News
BY BILL MASON
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
BY CHRISTOPHER PERKINS
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
BY SARAH STEPHEN
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.
BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE
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
BY DIANA RANKIN
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
BY ERIN KILLION
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
BY NIKKI ULASOWSKI
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
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
BY ANNE PITSTOCK
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
BY SUSAN BARLEY
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
BY SEAN HEALY
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
BY MARINA CARMAN
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,
BY RICK MOLON
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
BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE
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
BY RUTH RATCLIFFE
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
BY SEAN WALSH
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
BY KATHERINE BRADSTREET
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?".
BY KIM BULLIMORE
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
BY KERRY RIDGEWAY
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
World
BY PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER
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
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
Castro Zapata, Julio Alberto Otero, ADIDA, United Steel Workers of America, Dan Kovalik, Leo Gerard, USWA, DAVID BACON">
COLOMBIA: US fuels dirty war against unions
BY DAVID BACON
The Bush administration's call to step up US reliance on fossil
BY SEAN HEALY
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
BY SEAN HEALY
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.
BY PIP HINMAN
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
BY MAX LANE
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
BY NORM DIXON
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
BY MARGARET ALLUM
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
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
BY FEDERICO FUENTES
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
BY EVA CHENG
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
BY JON LAND
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
Culture
BY DEANNA SWIFT
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.
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
Editorial
@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