BY BONNY CAMPBELL
SYDNEY — On May 7, about 80 protesters converged outside the Immigration and Population Conference at the Australian Technology Park in Redfern where immigration minister Philip Ruddock was due to speak.
Fortunately for
Issue 492
News
Palestine solidarity protest planned
WOLLONGONG — At a May 11 meeting, Palestinian solidarity activists decided to call a protest on May 25 to help free Palestine. The rally will begin at 10.30 am outside Fred Moore House in Lowden Square and
BY NIKKI ULASOWSKI
Plans for large protests on June 22-23 to "welcome refugees and end mandatory detention" are well underway in cities across Australia. Rallies and marches are already being planned for the weekend, which falls within World
BY LISA MACDONALD
ARMIDALE — A May 8 public meeting discussed how to galvanise public support for ending the federal government's brutal asylum-seeker policy. The 50-strong meeting was titled "Refugees: what is to be done".
Organised by the
BY HELEN SLANEY
MELBOURNE — Melbourne University Student Union staff are on indefinite strike and students are occupying MUSU's education office, in protest at student officials' attacks on campus activists and staff.
On May 2, students using
BY PAUL OBOOHOV
CANBERRA — The May Day meeting of the ACT Trades and Labour Council/Unions ACT (ACT TLC) debated motions on Palestine, in the presence of Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) national secretary Sharan Burrow.
ACT TLC
BY CHRISTINA SACCO
WOLLONGONG On May 3, the Land and Environment Court gave Stocklands
Construction permission to restart its development of Sandon Point. The
development, which had been halted by a court injunction, now looks set
to go
BY CHRIS SLEE
MELBOURNE — On May 6, Anne Duggan, the Victorian training officer of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), was ordered by Commissioner Terence Cole to give the royal commission into the building industry the
BY KERRYN WILLIAMS
CANBERRA — "Protection overboard" was the theme of a May 9 Refugee Action Committee forum, attended by 140 people.
Former diplomat Tony Kevin, once the Australian ambassador to Cambodia, outlined evidence submitted to the
BY PIP HINMAN
SYDNEY — "We have no relationship with Indonesia anymore. We have to find our own way", was how Erwanto, a visiting Acehnese democracy leader summed up his people's determination to win their independence.
Speaking at a meeting
BY SIBYLLE KACZOREK
DARWIN The fourth solidarity brigade to East Timor organised by
Action in Solidarity with East Timor/Action in Solidarity with Asia and
the Pacific will leave for Dili on May 13.
We will be helping build a well in
BY TERRICA STRUDWICK
ROCKHAMPTON — Consolidated Meat Group employees voted to return to work on April 27 after a five-month dispute over a new enterprise agreement. However, CMG has broken its promise to reinstate all employees who were working
Manufacturing Workers Union, firefighters, maritime unions, Graham Matthews, Communist Party of Australia, the Socialist Alliance, Treasury Gardens, Nikki Ulasowski, Unions WA, Fremantle, peace and justice, Wollongong's May Day march, Jim Tannoch,
BY KYLIE MOON
MELBOURNE — On May 11 300 Palestinian supporters commemorated Al Nakba — otherwise known as "the catastrophe" — the destruction by Israel, between 1947 and 1950, of 415 Palestinian villages, creating a million refugees.
The
World
BY TARIQ ALI
LAHORE It has been a stunningly beautiful spring in Pakistan. But
the surface calm is deceptive. When the war in Afghanistan began, I suggested
that the Taliban would be rapidly defeated and that the jihadi organisations
and
BY EVA CHENG
Hard on the heels of the US House of Representatives' May 2 approval of a bill containing a mammoth US$249 billion, six-year package of farm subsidies, the US Senate endorsed the legislation on May 8. US President George Bush has given
MALAYSIA: May Day gathering terrorised by
police
KUALA LUMPUR What was to be a peaceful gathering of progressive
workers and social justice activists on May 1 at Kuala Lumpur City Centre
(KLCC Twin Towers) turned into mayhem when
Kautsar, chairperson of the Acehnese Peoples Democratic Resistance Front (FPDRA), attended the second Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference in April to build support for the Acehnese people's struggle for self-determination. Kautsar spoke
BY SARAH STEPHEN
The New Zealand government announced on May 6 that it would accept 140 refugees — 71 Afghans and 69 Iraqis— to ease pressure on United Nations refugee camps in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Nauru.
Fourteen of the refugees
BY NEW YORK TRANSFER
NEWS COLLECTIVE
NEW YORK The administration of US President George Bush lumped
Cuba into its war on terrorism on May 6 placing the country on a second-tier
axis of evil list with Syria and Libya.
The US
BY SARAH STEPHEN
Last September, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark announced that the Labour-Alliance coalition government she leads would be willing to take a small number of the 430 refugees aboard the MV Tampa, which was then stranded in
BY JON LAND
On the eve of East Timor's independence on May 20, the crucial issue of the Timor Gap has still to be fully resolved. East Timor may lose billions of dollars in oil and gas royalties if the Australian government and the large
BY EVA CHENG
Four of Pakistan's oppressed national groups — the Sindhi, Pashtuns, Baluchi and Seraiki — are joining forces to oppose their domination by the Punjabi ruling class.
In Sydney to attend the second Asia Pacific Solidarity
The Indonesian National Front for Labour Struggles (FNPBI), the militant
trade union federation, organised mass actions across the country on May
1. Pro-democracy groups joined the workers' rallies.
The workers' demands included legalising
The commemoration of the forced integration of West Papua (formerly known as Irian Jaya, now Papua) with Indonesia on May 1 was marked by peaceful protests by pro-independence supporters across West Papua's major towns.
The demonstrations condemned
A federal judge in Houston in April ruled that, under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, it is legal for an executive from a US company to bribe a foreign official to reduce the company's tax burden or customs duties in another country.
The case
Dita Sari is a former Indonesian political prisoner and is chairperson of the militant Indonesian National Front for Labour Struggle (FNPBI) union federation. She is also a leading member of the left-wing Peoples Democratic Party (PRD). Green Left
BY ERIC RUDER
CHICAGO — A pro-Palestinian student group at the University of California-Berkeley has won its free speech fight against the administration's attempts to silence it.
After an outpouring of support — both on campus and around the
BY ROSA ZULU
HARARE — More 6000 workers gathered for the May 1 rally in the Gwanzura stadium here enthusiastically supported socialist MP Munyaradzi Gwisai's criticism of the participation of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in
Representatives from nine Third World countries, led by Cuba, proposed during a February World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiation session that future agricultural trade rules should be geared towards meeting the Third World's development needs.
Culture
The rise and fall of the Pankhursts
The Pankhursts
By Martin Pugh
Allen Lane, Penguin Press, 2001
537 pages, $49.95 (hb)
REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON
What foul crimes did this family commit? Emmeline and her daughters
Christabel,
BY BUSTER SOUTHERLY
ABC TV's Media Watch on May 6 revealed that the Melbourne Age refused to publish a cartoon drawn by Michael Leunig that was critical of Israel's war against the Palestinians.
The first panel of the cartoon shows a Jewish
Hey you, stop beating meyou can't scare me to be silentyou may blame the refugeesyou, you can't see the realenemy, behind the wallwhere the refugees sing,singing softlyjerking tearsblame them, beat the silencetheir sown up lipstheir ripped up
Embrace the ChaosOzomatliInterscope Records
REVIEWED BY MARGARET ALLUM& CHUCK STEMKE
Ozomatli's new album, Embrace the Chaos, has a different feel to the Los Angeles-based band's self-titled debut album. But it is still full of the joy of life
The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
Verso, 2001
354 pages, US$20
Order at <http://www.versobooks.com/>
REVIEW BY ERIC RUDER
Most stories about Israel's war on the occupied territories refer
to