BY ALLEN JENNINGS
Sixty people rallied at the Melbourne GPO on January 18 in solidarity with protests in Argentina against cuts to public spending and corporate globalisation.
Protesters and city workers passing-by heard speakers from the
Issue 477
News
BY MICHELLE BREAR
SYDNEY — The suicide of Lee Hanh in Villawood detention centre on January 8 brings to seven the number of deaths in Australian detention centres in the past three years. Four of those occured at Villawood.
Hanh was taken to
BY GARY MEYERHOFF
DARWIN — The Northern Territory's illicit drug users are in for a stormy year. The methadone reduction program remains closed, the Public Order and Anti-Social Conduct Act remains in place and the Labor government is to
BY SAM WAINWRIGHT
SYDNEY — Before being forced to leave Australia, a group of six Korean building workers have won back-pay totalling nearly $100,000 owed to them by a sub-contractor installing paving for Burwood Council in Sydney's
BY JIM GREEN
About 62,000 litres of radioactive liquid burst from a pipe at the Beverley uranium mine in northern South Australia on January 11. In the following days, it was revealed that 24 spills have taken place at the mine in the past two
BY GILLIAN DAVY& NORMAN BREWER
The Papua New Guinea Solidarity Action group (PNGSA), formed after at least four PNG student activists were killed by riot police on June 26, started the new year with a successful tour of PNG activist Graeme Kunjil.
BY LISA MACDONALD
SYDNEY — On January 10, the NSW Socialist Alliance submitted an application for registration as a party with the State Electoral Office which, if successful, will enable the alliance's name to be printed on ballot papers in the
On January 10, acting defence minister Daryl Williams announced that an Australian officer had assumed tactical command of the maritime Multinational Interception Force (MIF) in the Persian Gulf.
The MIF was set up at the end of the Gulf War in
BY TRISHA REIMERS
GEELONG — A picket line has been running since December 13 on the site a gas-fired power station is to be built just outside Geelong, in the Golden Plains shire. The picket was set up following the decision of the Victorian
BY ALISON STEWART
BRISBANE — In an exciting new development for the Queensland anti-globalisation movement, activists are preparing for the launch of the Brisbane Social Forum, planned for March 16-17.
The social forum will discuss peace,
BY SUSAN AUSTIN
BRISBANE — In a blatant attack on campus feminism, the first 2002 National Union of Students Queensland Women's Committee meeting was called and chaired by NUSQ president Duncan Pegg, a right-wing Labor student. The meeting, held
Dozens of refugee rights supporters are travelling around Australia in a brightly painted 51-seater bus, visiting refugee detention centres and speaking at public events in numerous towns.
The tour aims to show solidarity with detainees through
BY JOHN McGILL
ADELAIDE — The Socialist Alliance will be contesting the seat of Adelaide in the February 9 South Australian election, providing a anti-privatisation, anti-nuclear and pro-refugee alternative to the Liberal and Labor parties.
The
Bloody Sunday commemoration
MELBOURNE — On January 30, SKATV will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday shootings in Ireland.
On Sunday 30th January 1972, British soldiers shot dead 13 unarmed civilians as they participated
World
BY LUISA ARA
In the early morning of December 21, 30 police wearing gas masks and wielding clubs stormed the section of the Santa Monica de Chorrillos high security women's prison where political prisoners Lori Berenson, Nancy Gilvonio Conde and
BY JON LAND
As East Timor's Constituent Assembly draws closer to finalising the nation's constitution there is increasing debate over whether fresh elections should be held for the proposed Legislative Assembly. Chief Minister Mari Alkatiri is
BY LUISA ARA
The intense mobilisations in Argentina in December have placed Latin America in the spotlight. Despite rigorous application of neo-liberal economic policies and tax adjustments demanded by the International Monetary Fund, no Latin
BY ZANNY BEGG
As of January 20, the death toll of the hunger strike in Turkey's prisons reached 45 with two more prisoners dying in the first weeks of the New Year. More then 300 prisoners — mainly jailed for political offences — and their
BY NICK SOUDAKOFF
On January 15, the first contingent of 650 US troops began arriving in Zamboanga City in western Mindanao to take part in "training exercises" with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Mindanao is now the latest front in the
BY NORM DIXON
Under the cloak of the "war on terrorism", the United States is rapidly moving to establish a permanent military presence across the strategic Central Asian region which, until the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, was off-limits to
BY EDWARD SAID
Since it began 15 months ago the Palestinian intifada [uprising] has had little to show for itself politically, despite the remarkable fortitude of a militarily occupied, unarmed, poorly led, and still dispossessed people who has
BY ROHAN PEARCE
@box text intr = The secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Ahmed Sa'adat, was arrested on January 15 in Ramallah by Palestinian Authority (PA) police.
Sa'adat's arrest was in connection
BY MAX LANE
There has been almost total support in Aceh for the three-day general strike called by the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) for January 16-18 to protest against the decision of the Indonesian government to re-establish an Aceh Military
BY MAX LANE
There have been student demonstrations, involving hundreds of students, in Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Makassar, Denpasar and Jogjakarta against the fuel price increases announced by the Indonesian government on January 16.
In the
BY BORIS KAGARLITSKY
MOSCOW — There is a saying that the way you see in the New Year is the way you're going to spend it. Whether this is true or not, the events occurring in Argentina ought to serve as a serious warning for ruling groups and
BY NORM DIXON The International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe has strongly condemned moves by President Robert Mugabe's government to introduce "draconian semi-fascist laws" and the violent campaign launched by the ruling Zimbabwe African
BY ROHAN PEARCE
Following the deaths of four Israeli soldiers on January 9 at the hands of members of the terrorist organisation Hamas, tanks and bulldozers of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) began to destroy Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip
BY EVA CHENG
"We followed him like lemmings into the sea", said Deborah De Fforge, one of the bankrupt Enron Corporation's 22,000 employees, as she recounted how the workers' trust in Enron CEO Kenneth Lay's sweet words had been bitterly betrayed.
BY ERIC RUDER
CHICAGO — If the US government's "war on terrorism" had anything to do with stopping terrorism, the White House would be next in line. On January 11, President George Bush named Otto Reich as his assistant secretary of state for
BY PRANAV JANI& LEE SUSTAR
CHICAGO — No sooner had the Ford Motor Company revealed its plans to slash 35,000 jobs worldwide than CEO William Clay Ford declared that more cuts were to come. "We already have a war room going and a plan B in place",
Individual
Sleep deprivation, often seated in painful positions.
Painful handcuffing.
Beating, including targeting of genitals.
Prolonged incommunicado detention (described by the UN special rapporteur on torture as "itself a practice
BY JOHN PILGER
Tony Blair's heroic peacemaking is not as it seems. Take the Middle East. When Blair welcomed Yasser Arafat to Downing Street following September 11, it was widely reported that Britain was backing justice for the Palestinians.
BY RICHARD PITHOUSE
DURBAN — On December 14, Justice Chris Botha of the Pretoria High Court found in favour of the Treatment Action Campaign's (TAC) action to force the South African government to make the anti-AIDS medicine nevirapine available
BY EVA CHENG
In a televised speech on January 12, Pakistani military ruler General Pervez Musharraf banned two Islamist groups active in Kashmir — Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. The bans have helped ease military tensions between India and
BY MATT NICHTER
CHICAGO — With layoffs mounting, the unfolding economic recession is threatening the livelihoods of millions of working people.
Those saddled with debt — mortgages, car payments, college loans or big credit card balances —
Culture
The ArgumentFugaziAvailable at <http://www.dischord.com/bands/fugazi.shtml>
REVIEW BY ALLY BLACK
Fugazi are pioneers of the US punk scene. Their origins lie in the political and "straight-edge" scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s,
When Worlds CollideRed EarthThird Mesa Music<http://www.tribalstew.com>
REVIEW BY BILL NEVINS
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — Peruvian Christian Orellana's well-amped peace pipe cuts through the rattle and gibber of a crowded south-western
This is the land of the fair goAh, were it soWe promise refugees a fair gobut only if they go some where elseNow you can't say fairer than that
BY JOHN TOMLINSON
From Green Left Weekly, January 23, 2002.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.
Against Global Apartheid: South Africa Meets the World Bank, IMF and International FinanceBy Patrick BondUniversity of Cape Town Press/Juta, 2001$35 (approx.)For ordering details, email <cserv@juta.co.za> or