BY JIM MCILROY
BRISBANE — The Community and Public Sector Union has announced it will join an independent inquiry, launched by a range of community organisations, into the federal government's "breaching" policy, which has led to Centrelink
Issue 462
News
BY CHRIS SLEE
MELBOURNE — One thousand shop stewards and health and safety representatives came together on August 23 for a meeting called by the Victorian Trades Hall Council in support of the state Labor government's planned industrial
BY KAREN FREDERICKS
BRISBANE — The traditional owners of Brisbane and surrounding areas will throw their backing behind planned protest plans against the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in October, deciding at a mass meeting at Musgrave
BY SARAH CLEARY
HOBART — With campaigning for student union elections gearing up at the University of Tasmania, activists from the Socialist Alliance are calling for a referendum to establish the position of international solidarity officer.
BY JULIAN COPPENS
MELBOURNE — The Victorian branch of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union decided at its August 22 state council meeting to demonstrate outside Prime Minister John Howard's October 3 "Inaugural Ceremony and Dinner Address"
BY STUART MARTIN
WOLLONGONG — At an August 20 hearing of the NSW Industrial Relations Commission, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the Australian Workers Union succeeded in again delaying BHP's attempt to sign outsourcing contracts
BY TIM STEWART
In case you were wondering what to bring along to the protests outside the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Brisbane on October 6, the Queensland goverment has issued a list of prohibited items under special police powers
BY SIMON BUTLER
BRISBANE — By the afternoon of August 22 the University of Queensland was covered with posters against the October 6 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. The mass paste-up was part of a coordinated action in opposition to the
BY LISA LINES
ADELAIDE — While students at the University of Adelaide will note the usual suspects — Labor left, Labor right, "Independents", Liberals — running for office in elections to the students' association and union, the first
BY STUART MUNCKTON
CANBERRA — The socialist youth group Resistance will be contesting the Australian National University Student Association (SA) elections during the first week of September. Resistance is running for the positions of president,
Protesters target ALP 'scab'
DAPTO — A small but spirited group held a picket outside NSW Labor parliamentarian Marianne Saliba's office on August 20, in protest at her "scabbing" on the picket line at NSW Parliament House in June.
The
BY GARY MEYERHOFF
DARWIN — With counting completed in the August 18 Northern Territory elections, the Socialist Alliance's Peter Johnston, a veteran anti-racism campaigner, led the charge with 4.5% of the vote in Fannie Bay, an excellent result,
BY GRANT COLEMAN
PERTH — After months of media hysteria and political point-scoring, a community drug summit has come out in support of health-based solutions for the treatment of heroin use.
Despite a fairly narrow agenda, the 100 delegates,
BY ALEX MILNE & JO BROWN
MELBOURNE — More then 60 participants are confirmed for the "Free the refugees" solidarity bus trip organised by the Melbourne Refugee Action Collective (RAC). The trip will leave Melbourne on September 21 to arrive at
BY PAUL OBOOHOV
CANBERRA — Protesters gathered outside the Belconnen office of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) on August 20 to call for the freeing of the refugees. Many participants had been shocked by the August
BY STUART MARTIN
WOLLONGONG — Labor Premier Bob Carr has studiously avoided Wollongong since June 27, when a mass meeting of Illawarra workers declared that they would demonstrate outside his next appearance in protest against his government's
BY REBECCA MECKELBURG
ADELAIDE — The September student elections at Flinders University will be contested by an Activist Left ticket. The ticket brings together activists from the M1 Action Group, the Environment Action Group, the Resistance
BY ARUN PRADHAN
MELBOURNE — Jorge Jorquera, the Socialist Alliance's candidate for the western suburbs seat of Gellibrand, has said he will go on a three-day hunger strike outside the Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre to protest the
BY KATHY NEWNAM
ADELAIDE — In a dramatic legal turn-around which has enraged the developers of Hindmarsh Island but sparked celebration among Aboriginal people in South Australia, Justice John von Doussa has backed the long-held claims of
World
The news long awaited by Colombia's U'wa tribe and its thousands of supporters around the world has finally arrived: the Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) has announced that it has failed to find oil at the Gibraltar 1 well site on the
BY STEPHANIE BRENNAN
SMARA REFUGEE CAMP, Algeria — As our battered four-wheel drive makes its way through the desert into the outskirts of the Wilaya, dozens of small dusty children run out to meet us looking for sweets — caramello, caramello?
BY EVA CHENG
The United States has scored another victory in its long campaign to ensure China pays dearly to enter the World Trade Organisation, forcing the country to agree to limits on agricultural subsidies tougher than those on other Third
BY CARMELO RUIZ-MARRERO
SAN JUAN — The Puerto Rico Aqueducts and Sewers Authority (PRASA) is on the verge of collapse. In the last few years, the citizenry has been showered with a seemingly endless string of press reports about the agency's
BY SEAN HEALY
A top official of one of the world's most powerful financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund, has admitted what many people long suspected: that the IMF feels it has no responsibility to comply with human rights treaties
LONDON — Efforts to save the world's last, critically important forests should initially focus on just a handful of countries, a new report has found. A unique satellite-based survey of the planet's remaining unbroken forests, which include virgin,
BY NORM DIXON
The South African Landless People's Movement (LPM) on August 16 launched a "Landlessness = Racism" campaign to highlight the issue of land hunger during United Nations World Conference Against Racism, and the preceding Non-Government
BY NORM DIXON
Thousands of South Africans protested in support of the Palestinian people in Durban on August 19. The rally packed the City Hall. Organised by the Palestine Support Committee and the Durban Social Forum, it called on the African
BY JON LAND
The August 30 election for East Timor's Constituent Assembly signifies an important step towards the conclusion of the United Nations transitional administration. As the UN starts to gradually wind back operations and hand over more
BY NORM DIXON
On the eve of the August 27-September 7 United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, the South African government has announced plans to penalise "instigators" of so-called "land invasions".
On August 13, housing
BY CAT LAZAROFF
Belgian scientists have found DNA from an unknown source in Roundup Ready soya beans, a genetically engineered crop produced by US-based biotechnology giant Monsanto. The announcement comes as the Bush administration places
Culture
BY JULIA PERKINS
In the hands of a people's movement, culture can be a fine weapon. That was certainly proven the case on August 17 when the Indonesian military repressed a people's carnival organised by the national cultural network, JAKER, in
BY SEAN WALSH & SARAH PEART
MELBOURNE — Would politicians survive Big Brother? This was the contentious and very important question posed at a Green Left Weekly fundraising evening held in the Brunswick Town Hall on August 23 and attended by 100
Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl HarborBy Robert StinnettTouchstone Books, 2001416 pages, US$12.80 (pb)Available from <http://Amazon.com>
REVIEW BY ASHLEY SMITH
You should never get your history lessons from Disney
Editorial
@box text intr = The United States government's threat to boycott the UN-organised World Conference Against Racism, being held in South Africa from August 31, raises the question why the self-proclaimed "land of the free" would want to avoid a