BY JOSHUA COFFIN
HOBART — Two students will be contesting the Tasmanian University Union elections under the banner of the Socialist Alliance. Shua Garfield and Sarah Cleary, both members of the socialist youth organisation Resistance, will be
Issue 461
News
BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE
HOBART — Contracted potato growers have accepted an offer by McCain to pay an extra $22 per tonne this year and another $9 per tonne next year for potatoes. This is an important win even though farmers had originally been
BY LISA MACDONALD
SYDNEY — How can the growing revolt against greed, exploitation and eco-vandalism transform itself into a mass people's movement that can rid the world of capitalism?
That question was addressed at a seminar here on August 11
BY TROY SAXBY
NEWCASTLE — Two independent candidates have been elected as President and Women's Officer of the Newcastle University Students Association (NUSA) under electoral regulations designed to discriminate against political parties.
BY JAMES CRAFTY
MELBOURNE — Tensions flared outside a private meeting addressed by former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in St Kilda on August 12, when 150 supporters of Palestinian self-determination were confronted by Zionists on the
BY LESLIE RICHMOND
ADELAIDE — Readying for a state election, the South Australian Liberal Party has launched a populist new "tough on drugs" campaign, which law reform advocates warn will turn back the clock on legal attitudes to drug use.
BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE
HOBART — Thousands of people amassed outside the ALP state conference on August 11, calling for an end to logging in old-growth forests. Tasmania currently accounts for more than two-thirds of Australia's total woodchip
BY CHRISTOPHER PERKINS
WOLLONGONG — TAFE teachers and students have joined library staff in a battle to overturn cuts to library services at TAFE Illawarra — and the extra muscle is forcing management to concede some ground in a dispute which
BY LEIGH HUGHES
CANBERRA — Hunger strikers chained themselves to the fence of the Indonesian embassy on August 16 to highlight the fact that Indonesia currently has more political prisoners than when the dictator Suharto fell in 1998. An effigy
BY JIM MCILROY
The country's peak welfare group, the Australian Council of Social Services, has called for an immediate suspension of Centrelink's harshest penalties on recipients of unemployment benefits, pending an independent inquiry into the
BY JIM MCILROY
BRISBANE — Sisters Inside, the organisation representing women in Queensland prisons, has launched a campaign against large-scale strip searching in the state's jails, according to SI co-ordinator Debbie Kilroy, addressing an
BY SIMON BUTLER
BRISBANE — Activists building for the expected mass protests against corporate globalisation at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting on October 6 are fast learning that the Queensland police are prepared to use arrests,
Activists in northern NSW are gearing up to participate in October protests in Brisbane during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting — and on August 11 50 of them gathered to discuss the issues, and debate the
BY RUTH RATCLIFFE
DARWIN — After 26 years in government, the Country Liberal Party was rocked by a 9% swing against it in the August 18 Northern Territory elections.
The final result will not be known for several days, but it is likely that
BY LISA MACDONALD
SYDNEY — An August 18 meeting of more than 90 members of the Socialist Alliance from Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle pre-selected a ticket of two to contest Senate seat in the next federal election — Asia Pacific solidarity
BY FEDERICO FUENTES
MELBOURNE — Indigenous, trade union and religious leaders from around Australia and the region will gather here in September to sign a memorandum of understanding in support of West Papua's independence struggle.
The
BY LISA MACDONALD
SYDNEY — Over the past few weeks, the Daily Telegraph and right-wing radio "shock jocks" have been working overtime, hand-in-hand with state government politicians, to whip up a racist frenzy linking migrant and non-Christian
BY NIKKI ULASOWSKI
Just days before the October demonstrations against corporate tyranny, socialist youth from across the country will be gathering in the Victorian town of Anglesea for the 30th Resistance national conference. The conference will
World
BY NORM DIXON
The Congress of South African Trade Unions has confirmed that its 1.8 million members will strike on August 29 and 30 to protest against the African National Congress government's privatisation program.
Not only has COSATU slammed
BY SARAH STEPHEN
The Personal Status Court in North Cairo has dismissed a lawsuit brought against Egyptian feminist and writer Nawal el-Saadawi.
Nabih Al Wahsh, an Islamic lawyer, attempted to have 70-year-old Saadawi forcibly divorced from her
BY MARK BROWN
The city of Glasgow has been shocked by the racist murder of Kurdish asylum seeker Firsat Yildiz in the Sighthill area on August 4.
A refugee from the vicious repression of the Turkish state, 22-year-old Firsat was walking home with
BY BORIS KAGARLITSKY
MOSCOW — The battle in Genoa was not only the key event in the summer of 2001, but also marked a watershed for the anti-corporate movement.
From the outset, the G8 summit in Genoa was doomed to become nothing more than a
BY SEAN HEALY
Twenty activists, including members of an Austrian theatre group PublixTheatre, held since the enormous protests against the G8 summit of world leaders in Genoa, Italy, on July 20-21, have been released from prison. But as many as 30
BY NICHOLAS WOOMER
CHICAGO — Only hours into the United Students Against Sweatshops August 2-5 national conference in Chicago — before half of the participants had even arrived — students were walking the picket line in solidarity with
BY SEAN HEALY
Ecuadorian President Gustavo Noboa has backed down on a June presidential decree to impose a 2% sales tax, after a two-day general strike on August 8-9 brought the South American country's economy to a standstill and tens of thousands
BY SEAN HEALY
Tens of thousands of Argentinians have risen up against their government's austerity plan, staging strikes and demonstrations and blockading highways throughout the country.
The three-day wave of protests, from August 13-15, is the
BY SEAN HEALY
The capital of the world's only superpower will again be hit by the wave of anti-globalisation protests when as many as 50,000 people are expected to converge on Washington in late September, during the annual meetings of the
BY NOY THRUPKAEW
I recently travelled to Cuba as part of a US women's delegation, sponsored by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Sojourner, a feminist newspaper, and Hermanas, an organisation dedicated to building solidarity
Culture
A Time for Drunken HorsesWritten and directed by Bahman GhobadiShowing at Dendy and Palace cinemas, Sydney and Melbourne.
REVIEW BY ANDREA MYLES& OWEN RICHARDS
A Time for Drunken Horses tells the story of life in modern Kurdistan, a territory in
Not in my GardenVideo '48Documentary video, in Arabic/Hebrew (with English subtitles)US$55 individuals, US$100 institutions and groupsSend cheques to PO Box 41199, Jaffa 61411, IsraelEmail <oda@netvision.net.il>
REVIEWED BY MALIK MIAH
SYDNEY — Former Communist Party of Australia member and ex-councillor on Liverpool council Don Symes declares: "I've been fighting for the Georges River since the 1940s!". He recalls when the Georges River surrounds were designated as "greenspace",
The BankWith David Wenham and Anthony LaPagliaWritten and directed by Robert ConnollyIn major cinemas from September 6.
REVIEWED BY SEAN HEALY
"Taut psychological thrillers" are two bob a dozen. So are ones with a nasty rich businessperson as
DAVID CROMWELL talked to London-based Australian journalist John Pilger about his latest television documentary, The New Rulers of the World, which examines the real meaning of the "global economy", including the virtually unknown and bloody history
Editorial
The August 15 agreement between the Australian Catholic University (ACU) and its non-academic staff that provides one year of paid maternity leave, and three weeks of paid paternity leave, is a step forward for women.
There are only two developed