SYDNEY — The February 12 refugee rights convergence on Canberra has been given a boost by decisions taken in Sydney, Wollongong and Melbourne to organise buses for activists to the protest.
The socialist youth group Resistance
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MELBOURNE — It is the day before Australia Day. Matt Rich, Tim Doughney, Rachel Evans, Kim Halpin, James Crafti and myself — all members of the socialist youth group Resistance — are standing on the doorstep of the Maribyrnong
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One of my first assignments as a young reporter in Sydney was to go to the airport and ask famous people arriving from overseas what they thought of Australia. There was a checklist; our beer and beaches were near the top, followed
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MELBOURNE — "There is no need for the creation of a new federal offence of terrorism because current criminal law is sufficient to catch all the activities perpetrated by terrorists", Chris Maxwell, from Liberty Victoria, told a
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SYDNEY Refugee rights campaigners across the world have protested against the Australian governments refugee policy. In Auckland, New Zealand on January 26, activists picketed the Australian consulate. A similar picket is
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NEWCASTLE — On January 31, a meeting at the Joy Cummins centre decided to set up Newcastle Action for Refugee Rights (NARR). Attended by 20 people, the meeting was called to organise a Newcastle contingent to the February 12
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SYDNEY People gathered on January 31 outside Israel's consulate to protest against the brutal occupation of Palestine. Since the beginning of the current intifada, 192 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli troops and
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Lie SBS TV has just shown a documentary on General Douglas MacArthur which referred to the atom bomb as ending World War II. That statement is perhaps the worst lie inflicted on humanity (because it's so widely believed): that we had to burn 64,602
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Alison Dellit's article "Labor flounders rightward" (GLW #474) cheers on those voices who are in favour of decreased union influence in the ALP. She wrote: "It would be no loss for workers if trade unions' votes within the ALP
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CANBERRA — On January 26-27, hundreds of people from Aboriginal and other communities across Australia came together outside Old Parliament House to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. The gathering
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As international outrage and Australian protests grow, the federal Coalition government is increasingly defensive about the horrific impact of it's refugee policy. The more people who join protests now, the greater the possibility
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MARYSVILLE, Victoria — On January 23, a forest blockade near Marysville was broken up by police. David Marsden, a spokesperson for the blockade organising group, Actively Conserving Marysville Environs (ACME), described the
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and ain't I a woman: Abortion access for all women Many believe the myth that abortion is easily accessible to all women in Australia. It is not. For women living in rural areas, abortion is extremely expensive and disruptive. In Queensland,
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The United States and other First World governments are using the "war on terrorism" as a pretext to launch an offensive against the peoples of the Third World. All around the world, governments are attacking working people's living
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Museworthy: The Wept "the last edge of the knife" — Pablo Nerudathe persuasiveness of the shade in Summerthe judgement of the treesthe blue extraordinarythe purple cord joining me to my motherthe all-motheredthe future-lossthe hidden under the
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ADELAIDE — It says something about the nature of the South Australian election campaign that a highlight so far has been the Liberals' misspelling of Premier Rob Kerin's name (as "Ron") on the front cover of their primary
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On January 31, US and Philippines military officials launched the Balikatan 2002 exercises, which bring together US troops and the soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). While the exercises are supposedly
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DARWIN — Late last year a "temporary processing centre" for asylum seekers was constructed on the Coonawarra Naval Base, located in outer Darwin. Despite costing $3 million to build, it remains empty as the federal Coalition
News
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Firmly inhuman "The approach I have taken in relation to these matters requires a degree of firmness, which sometimes people think demonstrates a lack of humanity. But I think your humanity has a greater potential to be evil than if you remain
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LISMORE — Twenty activists from the new Refugee Action Collective (Lismore) occupied a roundabout on February 1 and set up a symbolic detention centre. Many passers-by responded positively. In the previous week, the Refugee Action Collective (Byron
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Refugee rights protests HOBART — Hundreds of people signed petitions and tooted their car horns in support of refugees' rights at a series of lunchtime vigils, organised by Resistance, outside immigration department offices between January 27
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MELBOURNE In the largest demonstration for refugees' rights held here so far, 4000 people rallied on February 2 in City Square to demand that immigration detention centres be closed and that the refugees be freed. The
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BY RICK MOLON & CHRIS ATKINSON DARWIN — "Refugees YES! Racism NO! Detention centres have got to GO!" echoed around the foyer of the luxury Novotel Atrium hotel on February 1. More than 80 refugee solidarity activists protested federal immigration
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BRISBANE — The fight for refugees' rights was given a boost on January 31 when 50 people picketed a meeting attended by immigration minister Philip Ruddock at Brisbane's main immigration department offices. Organised in 24
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PERTH — "The way we treat our most vulnerable and powerless will mark our society for years to come", Carmen Lawrence, ALP MP for Fremantle and the shadow minister for indigenous affairs, told 600 refugee-rights protesters on
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BY NADEEM ANSARI & KERRYN WILLIAMS CANBERRA — At a January 31 public meeting, Lionel Bopage from Friends for Peace in Sri Lanka appealed to the new Sri Lankan government to begin peace negotiations with the Tamil population. Bopage recently
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DARWIN — Socialist Alliance's campaign for Lord Mayor of Darwin was launched on February 1 at a protest in support of refugees. The alliance will be running Ruth Ratcliffe in the March 16 poll. "The campaign is an excellent
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BY LUKE FOMIATTI & MELANIE SJOBERG SYDNEY This meeting to discuss war and globalisation occurs against the backdrop of US President George Bush's 'state of the nation' speech, anti-war activist Tara Povey told 60 people at Trades
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ROCKHAMPTON — The Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union (AMIEU) has spent the last week in unsuccessful negotiations with Consolidated Meat Group management in an attempt to reopen the Lakes Creek meatworks. CMG
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SYDNEY — Around 2000 people mobilised in Town Hall Square on February 2 to demand the closure of the Australian government's appalling immigration detention centres, an end to mandatory detention of asylum seekers and their
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CANBERRA — More than 350 people packed into the Labor Club on January 29 to express their concern about the treatment of refugees in Australia's detention centres. The meeting was convened be the Refugee Action Committee
Analysis
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In his Australia Day address on January 26, Labor opposition leader Simon Crean argued that women and children asylum seekers should be released from refugee detention centres. He called for a "solution that is lasting, bi-partisan and firm, but
World
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The following appeal for May 1 to be an international day of action against the Unites States government's bogus "war on terrorism" and in opposition to the military intervention in Mindanao was issued by the Solidarity of Filipino Workers (BMP)
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In a statement released on January 16, the International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe — the country's only organised Marxist current — reminded Zimbabweans that "none but ourselves will liberate ourselves". The European Union is
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The movement against corporate globalisation in the United States faces an important test at the January 31-February 4 meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in New York: has the wave of "anti-terrorist" hysteria crippled it?
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The British Labour government's policy towards asylum seekers can be summed up in three words: detention, deportation and dispersal. There has been a major increase in the number of men, women and children incarcerated in
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A report in the January 26 British Medical Journal reveals that Argentina is running out of medical supplies and faces rising drug prices as the country sinks deeper into economic crisis. The report quotes Juan Carr, who heads Red Solidaria
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BY KEEANGA-YAHMATTA TAYLOR Jamil al Amin, the former 1960s Black Power leader known as H. Rap Brown, is on trial for his life in Atlanta. Al Amin is accused of shooting two Fulton County sheriff's deputies, killing one. Prosecutors claim that al
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Last November, US government spokespeople flatly denied reports that mysterious aircraft were taking off in the dead of night from the besieged northern Afghan city of Kunduz. They were lying. The White House secretly approved the
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A massive demonstration in solidarity with migrants and asylum seekers took place on January 19 in Rome. Between 100,000 and 150,000 people protested against immigration laws proposed by Italy's far-right coalition government. The three-hour march
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Act Now to End War and Racism — ANSWER held a rally on February 2 to demand "Declare war on unemployment, poverty and mass layoffs not on the people of Afghanistan" and "Money for jobs, education and health care not war in Afghanistan". Visit
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HARARE — Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, who led the national liberation fighters to win independence from the white Rhodesian colonists in 1980, is facing a presidential vote in March. His main opponent is the Movement for
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The United States National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) officially declared on November 26 that the US had lapsed into recession, and had been in that situation since March 2001. Soon after, the capitalist media and mainstream
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CHICAGO — Inevitably, the annual convention of the US International Socialist Organization, which took place in this freezing "windy city" between January 18 and 20, was dominated by two questions. How invulnerable is the US
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The following call for a national student mobilisation during the January 31-February 4 meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) was issued by Students for Global Justice. It has been slightly abridged. Every year, 1000 top business leaders come
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"If I rob a bank, they throw me in jail. But if they rob me, then they say that's OK", screamed a protester who had joined thousands of others outside the office of Argentina's President Eduardo Duhalde on January 11 to demand
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Despite being the biggest in the US energy business and seventh biggest among all US firms before its December 2 collapse, Enron had not paid income tax in four of the five years before 2000, according to Citizens for Tax Justice.
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RAMALLAH — Over the last week one topic has dominated conversation in the West Bank town of Ramallah: will tonight be the night? A general consensus holds that it is only a matter of time before Israeli tanks and troops take over
Culture
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There is a huge range of refugee solidarity web sites popping up every day, reflecting the broadening of support and sympathy for the plight of people trying to find a safe haven in Australia. Children out of Detention
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REVIEW BY TRISH CORCORAN The Boys From BallymoreBy Anthony BrownPenguin Books Australia, 2001355 pages, $23 Liam O'Brien returns to Ballymore after living in Australia, he remembers. Ballymore is a small town in Tipperary, Ireland. Liam finds the
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REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON A People's History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for IndependenceBy Ray RaphaelPart of the New Press People's History series, edited by Howard ZinnThe New Press, 2001386 pages, $55.90 (hb)
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Actively Radical TV — Sydney community television's progressive current affairs producers tackle the hard issues from the activist's point of view. CTS Sydney (UHF 31), every Sunday, 9pm. Ph 9565 5522. Visit <http://www.channel31.org> for