BY GARY MEYERHOFF
DARWIN The NT Labor government's zero tolerance policies towards
illicit drug users look set to be harsher than those of the former Country
Liberal Party (CLP) government.
On February 21, the government announced its
Issue 483
News
BY AARON BENEDEK
SYDNEY — Police arrested four student activists on February 28 during the University of Sydney's orientation week. The four arrested had joined around a dozen others in an anti-Liberal sing-along next to the Liberal student club
BY SUSAN PRICE
SYDNEY — "Wow!" was the first word that journalist John Pilger said as he stood before the 2100 people who had filled Sydney Town Hall on March 1 to hear him speak. Titled "Breaking the silence: war, propaganda and the new empire",
BY TERRICA STRUDWICK
ROCKHAMPTON On February 27, 500 anxious workers gathered to discuss
the campaign to save their jobs, with pay and conditions intact, at Consolidated
Meat Groups Rockhampton plant. More than 1300 workers are yet to
BY NICK FREDMAN
COOLUM — "Wouldn't it be fantastic if the police went over to the Hyatt and arrested the people who are the real criminals — who are responsible for injustice around the world?", human rights activist Ross Daniels asked the
BY SARAH STEPHEN
The Australia-Indonesia sponsored Ministerial Conference on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime held in Bali, February 27-28, failed to provide any real answers to the problems it was ostensibly
BY SEAN HEALY
SYDNEY - The owners' plan for the Grand Midnight Star would have been nothing like it. Rather than becoming just another block of flats, the enormous Heritage-listed art deco theatre on Parramatta Road in Homebush has become a "social
BY SARAH STEPHEN
In the week before the March 2 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, refugees; rights groups released a statement from refugees' rights groups, aimed at CHOGM delegates, titled "Time to end inhuman refugee policies".
The
GLW #481 incorrectly credited a photo of the Tasmanian Weld picket to Neil Cremasco. The photographer was Steve Lucas.
From Green Left Weekly, March 6, 2002.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.
BY RUSSELL PICKERING
PERTH — Four hundred people marched through Perth city centre on March 2 demanding the closure of all refugee detention centres. Organised by a broad organising committee initiated by the Refugee Rights Action Network, the
Pilger film screened
DARWIN — Thirty people attended a screening of John Pilger's documentary film New Rulers of the World, which deals with the impact of the international financial institutions on the Third World.
The screening was organised
BY JIM McILROY & NICK EVERETT
Three hundred people greeted the arrival of the refugee "Freedom Bus" in Brisbane on February 17, while 100 people packed into Sydney Trades Hall on February 25 to hear participants on the Freedom Bus describe their
BY KERRYN WILLIAMS
CANBERRA — Feminist organisations and individuals in the ACT have gathered under the banner "Options for Women" to campaign for women's right to choose abortion. This challenges the renewed offensive by the anti-choice Right to
BY OWAIN LEWIS-JONES& RUTH RATCLIFFE
DARWIN — At a public meeting on February 5, addressed by activists from the Refugee Freedom Bus, a range of groups and individuals decided to form a Refugee Action Network (RAN).
The first meeting was
World
BY EVA CHENG
Towards the end of Bill Clinton's presidency in 2000, the moaning and groaning of US "defence" contractors reached new heights — their profits were drying up as US military budgets shrank to a post-Cold War low. Following the
BY JOHN PILGER
LONDON — The conditions in which prisoners are being held, brutally and illegally, in an American concentration camp on Cuba go to the heart of the "war on terrorism", and mark the Blair government for its betrayal of the basic
BY MAX LANE
On February 26, Australian defence minister Robert Hill told reporters at the Asian Aerospace 2002 conference in Singapore that Canberra wanted to encourage the Indonesian authorities to "combat terrorist groupings within Indonesia more
BY NORM DIXON
The ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) has intensified its violent campaign against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in a desperate attempt to save President Robert Mugabe's hold on
BY SHARON SMITH
CHICAGO — If the congressional committees investigating Enron really want to get to the bottom of the scandal, they could begin by hauling in George Bush to testify.
The entire Bush dynasty has been up to its eyeballs in Enron
[On February 19, Mauritius' interim president, Supreme Court Chief Justice Arianga Pillay, signed into law anti-terrorism legislation over which his two predecessors had resigned. Twice passed by parliament, the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, deemed
BY NORM DIXON
On February 25, the presidential candidate for Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai, was formally charged with "high treason", a crime that can carry a death sentence.
Tsvangirai was allowed to
BY LEE SUSTAR
CHICAGO — Enron isn't the half of it. Revelations of more colossal financial scams in corporate America swept into the news last week amid the bankruptcy of telecommunications company Global Crossing.
As in Enron's case, company
BY SARAH STEPHEN
On February 28 the International Federation of Iranian Refugees (IFIR) and the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees began a joint international campaign against the lack of rights for asylum seekers in Turkey.
Currently,
In 1972, US President Richard Nixon suggested that Washington drop nuclear bombs on North Vietnam, just-released tapes of conversations between Nixon and then US secretary of state Henry Kissinger have revealed.
Nixon's suggestion was found in 500
BY TERRICA STRUDWICK
It is feared that five women and an unknown number of children may have died in the fire which broke out on February 14 at England's Yarl's Wood detention centre. As of February 27, 25 detainees were still unaccounted for.
BY BRENDAN SEXTON
[The following is a slightly abridged version of a speech given at an anti-war forum at Columbia University in New York by Brendan Sexton III, one of the actors in the movie Black Hawk Down.]
When I first read the script to
Culture
Moving Mountains: Communities confront mining and globalisation
Edited by Geoff Evans, James Goodman and Nina Lansbury
The Mineral Policy Institute and Contemporary Otford Series
Sydney, 2001
301 pages $34
REVIEW BY SEAN HEALY
REVIEW BY ANGELA LUVERA
Made in Indonesia: Indonesian workers since SuhartoBy Dan La BotzSouth End Press, 2001395 pages, US$18Order at <http://www.southendpress.org>
Radical US writer Dan La Botz creates scenes of Indonesia in Made in
REVIEW BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE
In Sleepy Scotland
Alistair Hulett
The Cold Grey Light of Dawn
Alistair Hulett and Dave Swarbrick
Saturday Johnny and Jimmy the Rat
Alistair Hulett and Dave Swarbrick
Order at
Editorial
The solution to airline crisis
The February 27 collapse of the Tesna bid from millionaires Lindsay Fox
and Solomon Lew for Ansett will almost certainly mark the final end of
that airline. As a result, Australians can look forward to