BY LIAM MITCHELL
SYDNEY — If unions hope to really represent working people, they have to break into, regulate and organise the labour hire sector, militant union leader Craig Johnston told a gathering on November 13.
Fresh from marching in an
Issue 472
News
BY EMA CORRO
MELBOURNE - Young Arab women have hit out at the stereotypes of Islam and the racism they're subjected to.
"As an Arab I feel that my race is feared, not trusted and not liked and this is growing. But if the myths being promoted
BY PETER BOYLE
While the Howard Coalition government was returned with a comfortable majority of seats in the November 10 federal election, there was a significant shift of votes to the left of the traditional parties.
This shift was driven by
'Die-in' highlights war casualties
BRISBANE — Around 50 people gathered in the Queens Street Mall on November 16 for a "die-in" to show solidarity with the Afghan people killed by US bombs. Chalk lines were drawn around their bodies to
BY ARUN PRADHAN
MELBOURNE — "I got involved before the Tampa crisis", says singer Ross McLennan of Melbourne band Snout. "Turning refugees away was terrible — but locking them up, telling lies about them and inciting racism was enough for me to
BY MELANIE SJOBERG
SYDNEY — A truly international flavour permeated the November 13 union-organised protest against corporate globalisation. Initiated by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) to coincide with the World Trade
BY LIAM MITCHELL
SYDNEY — Following the success of its ground-breaking campaign in the federal election, the Socialist Alliance in NSW is setting its sights on the March 2003 state election and has launched a campaign to get electoral
BY PIP HINMAN
SYDNEY — The November 10 assassination in Jayapura of West Papuan leader Theys Eluay drew condemnation from a wide range of public figures at a press conference in the NSW Parliament House here on November 15.
Otto Ondawame, a
BY PAUL OBOOHOV
CANBERRA — Left-wing public service unionists in the national capital have been stymied in their attempts to prevent a union restructure which would dissolve the ACT branch of the Community and Public Sector Union.
The ACT
BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE
HOBART — A Hobart City Council committee decided on November 15 to recommend a motion to the full council that would "continue to refuse requests to sell and distribute newspapers and other goods [in the Elizabeth Street mall]
BY MATT EGAN
GRAFTON — In the first action against the US war in Afghanistan held in the Clarence Valley region of northern NSW, 100 people joined a high school walkout and rallied in Grafton on November 9.
The organisers included local
BY ANGELA LUVERA
SYDNEY — Citing racist attacks on women perpetrated since September 11, feminists have called a rally and march to oppose war and racism on International Women's Day 2002.
"With no real evidence the United States declared many
BY ALISON DELLIT
The large swing to the Australian Greens on November 10 was the bright spot in the gloom of the Coalition victory. It reflected the growing number of people who are disgusted with the Coalition and Labor parties' inhumane and
World
BY OUPA LEHULERE
JOHANNESBURG — South African "civil society" organisations took their first major step towards organising for the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. During three days of intense debates, held September 26-28, the Civil
BY JIM GREEN
Delegations from more than 160 countries have finalised rules on the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions at a conference from October 29 to November 9 in Marrakech, Morocco. The treaty commits 38 industrialised countries to
BY FAROOQ TARIQ
LAHORE, November 13 — The Northern Alliance has taken over with little or no resistance by the Taliban forces. The much-threatened jihad of the Taliban was nowhere to be seen when the Northern Alliance forces arrived.
The myth
BY SEAN HEALY
In the game of "chicken", two drivers test their nerves by driving towards each other at catastrophic speed. The first one to swerve to avoid collision loses. In a high-stakes game of "chicken" at the World Trade Organisation summit
BY KERRYN WILLIAMS
He's wanted for terrorist acts that caused death and injury. Believed to be hiding in the mountains, his exact whereabouts are unknown. He kills in the name of God, and he's on the FBI's most wanted list. Sound familiar?
His
BY YACOV BEN EFRAT
Until recently, the name "Afghanistan" had an exotic ring to many, but not to US policy-makers. For a decade (1979-1989) they backed the Afghan war against the Soviet Union, contributing to the latter's collapse. The new world
BY SEAN HEALY
The world's largest mining company, BHP Billiton, might be about to discover the limits of its power, after a global union representing 23 million metalworkers launched a worldwide campaign against its labour and environmental
BY CANDACE COHN
CHICAGO — After September 11, people in the US have widespread and understandable fears about hijacked airplanes turned into flying bombs and anthrax sent through the mail. But few understand the scale of the danger unleashed last
BY PATRICK BOND
JOHANNESBURG — Everyone seems worried about Africa's health and welfare these days. If you have an open mind and regularly read the London Financial Times — or its South African subsidiary Business Day — you would have seen
BY DANNY FAIRFAX & SEAN HEALY
The World Trade Organisation's choice of the Persian emirate of Qatar as the venue for its fourth ministerial meeting was supposed to avoid massive protests. In the end, it only spread them to every corner of the
BY RALPH NADER
US corporations aren't even subtle about it. Waving a flag and carrying a big shovel, corporate interests are scooping up government benefits and taxpayer money in an unprecedented fashion while the public is preoccupied with the
BY EVA CHENG
The Northern Alliance on November 12 created a huge problem for the United States by seizing Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, before a post-Taliban government could be cobbled together. US and British diplomats are hard at work to create
BY MAX LANE
On November 11, a panel of three judges in Banda Aceh handed down their findings after two weeks of hearings in the case brought by the Indonesian National Police against Kautsar, a central leader of the Acehnese freedom movement.
@box text intr = Dita Sari, chairperson of the Indonesian National Front or Labour Struggles (FNPBI) was released from police custody on the evening of November 9. She had been arrested, along with 30 workers, earlier in the day when police violently
BY FELIPE PEREZ
[The following is a slightly abridged version of the speech made by revolutionary Cuba's foreign minister to the UN General Assembly on November 13.]
The war in Afghanistan must be stopped. The government of the United States must
BY ROBERT PARRY
Al Gore was the choice of Florida's voters — whether one counts hanging chads or dimpled chads. That was the core finding of the eight news organisations that conducted a review of disputed Florida ballots.
Gore won even if one
Culture
REVIEW BY TROY SAXBY
Marxism, Socialism & ReligionWritings by Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, VI Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Leon TrotskyResistance Books, Sydney 2001158 pages, $14.95Available at Resistance Bookshops (see page 2) or visit
Editorial
No other country in the world has gone to such lengths to close its borders to those fleeing repression and terror than Australia has. No other country turns back leaky fishing boats packed with hundreds of asylum seekers and refuses to take