Afghan refugee pleads: Don't send us back!
NOORIA WAZIFADOST is a 16-year-old Afghan refugee now living in Sydney.
She arrived in Darwin with her family in 2000, and spent 40 days in the
Curtin detention centre before being released on
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Nauru despair documentedIn early June, BBC reporter Sarah Macdonald and Australian refugee supporter Kate Durham secretly filmed the conditions under which of asylum seekers are being held on Nauru. The footage will be
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For the first time in many years Queensland nurses are taking industrial action to demand conditions in the public hospitals change once and for all. A nurse employed at the Royal Brisbane Hospital (RBH), who wished
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BY PIP HINMAN& SARAH STEPHEN On June 23, the same day that 13,000 people took to the streets across Australia to oppose the mandatory detention of asylum seekers, detainees at the Woomera detention centre began a hunger strike. By June 24, 180-190
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SYDNEY The last person you would expect to launch a book on East Timor would be Gough Whitlam, who was, in 1975, the Australian prime minister who allowed Indonesia's occupation of that country. So I was surprised to find
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RAMALLAH — The remarkable ease with which the mainstream media obscures the reality of life for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip has been starkly demonstrated by its coverage of US President George
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Big Sister? Australia's Big Brother television show is unfortunately not unique. In the last three years, 36 different versions of the show have been aired around the world but while 50% of the contestants are always women,
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BRISBANE — The current dispute between the Queensland Nurses Union (QNU) and Premier Peter Beattie's Labor government (see article on page 2) is the latest in a series of industrial challenges facing the government since its
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PERTH — Unions in Western Australia have welcomed a package of industrial law reforms introduced by the Labor state government. Unions WA secretary Stephanie Mayman described Labor's bill as an important step forward but it "does
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[The following remarks by Booker Prize winning author THOMAS KENEALLY were read out to the June 23 World Refugee Week rally in Sydney.] I am disappointed I cannot be there today to add my voice to yours. Like you, I consider the compulsory
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Write On letters to the editor Refugees Jim Faggotter (Write On GLW #491) says that if Australia's detention centres were closed we would get millions of refugees. Undoubtedly, if refugees were treated more humanely the number
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Abortion still an issue in TasmaniaLAUNCESTON Despite the emergency sitting of the Tasmanian parliament last December, ostensibly to pass legislation to solve the abortion access crisis, women still don't have full
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The Game I must tell you of my felony. It is, that at every moment, I was falling away from beauty. In a woman's face I was the eternal coldness, in her hands the unmaturing child growing heavier, disturbing her spine year
News
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BY ALISON DELLIT On June 27, the Senate passed five of the six anti-terror bills, in effect introducing a new terrorism offence into Australian law, broadening treason offences to include any support for any group engaged in armed
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Socialist Alliance makes refugees an issue in Tassie pollHOBART The day after Premier Jim Bacon's June 21 calling of the Tasmanian election, there was a 500-strong refugees' rights rally in Hobart the largest
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Student conference to welcome refugeesPERTH The collective organising the July 7-13 Students and Sustainability (S&S) conference, to be held at Murdoch University, has declared that it will give sanctuary to
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Loose Cannons Find those Binladenburgers! Larry Ponemon, the CEO of Privacy Council, says that since September 11 he's been hired by at least one major supermarket chain to oversee the handing over to law enforcement agencies of the
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Spanners in Beattie's dirty worksBRISBANE Workers at QBuild, the state government agency responsible for building all Queensland government buildings, schools and offices, are fighting for justice after being
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Earthquake risk at Lucas HeightsWork is continuing at the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, despite calls for the government to reconsider the project after an earthquake fault line was discovered there. The fault was
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News Briefs 'Youth for Refugees' hunger strike CANBERRA Pro-refugee high school and campus students and young workers took part in a 24-hour solidarity hunger strike on June 28. The hunger strike, organised by Resistance, was in
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BY LISA MACDONALD More than 13,000 people joined refugees' rights protests around Australia on the June 22-23 weekend. In many cities, these were the largest protests for refugees yet. According to refugees' rights supporters, this is
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Nurses reject pay offerBRISBANE The Queensland Nurses Union (QNU) has been in a month-long battle over wages and conditions in the Queensland Health Service. Nurses are demanding a 12% pay rise over the next two
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BY JESS MELVIN & BEN COURTICE MELBOURNE Culminating a week of pro-refugee protest action, 100 high school students gathered outside Flinders Street Station on June 28, despite bucketing rain. People our age are the victims
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CMG workers return to workROCKHAMPTON Meatworkers at the Packer-family-owned Consolidated Meat Group's Lakes Creek abbatoir returned to work on June 20 after spending two weeks on strike and another week locked
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WA Socialist Alliance seeks registrationPERTH After successful state registration campaigns in NSW and Tasmania, the Western Australia Socialist Alliance has begun the task of acquiring state electoral
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BY NICK EVERETT & SAM WAINWRIGHT SYDNEY Since the Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry began sitting in Sydney in early June, lurid employer claims of Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU)
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The Howard government's Migration Legislation Amendment (Procedural Fairness) Bill 2002 passed through the House of Representatives with the support of the Labor Party on June 26 with very little publicity. The new act
Analysis
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Unwarranted Praise Greens Senator Bob Brown, in a June 14 press release, congratulated federal Labor leader Simon Crean for having taken a large step in moving Labor from the 'me-tooism' on asylum seekers it proffered during the [2001
World
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SOUTH AFRICA: Sacrificing AIDS victims for corporate profits BY PATRICK BOND JOHANNESBURG During the last few days of June, at the same time as the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and Congress of South African Trade Unions
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UNITED STATES Enron, WorldCom there's worse to come BY PETER BOYLE The timing was spectacular. On June 24, US President George Bush delivered a lecture to the Palestinian people about the corrupt and autocratic nature of the elected
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HAVANA — Critics continue to say that Cuba is undemocratic, closed off, repressive, and that critical ideas in general are suppressed. An investigation of the education system and the young people in Cuban schools paints a very
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INDONESIA The IMF: A globalising debate BY MAX LANE JAKARTA The debate between minister Kwik Kian Gie, who is in charge of the National Economic Planning Board, and the other ministers in President Megawati Sukarnoputri's cabinet
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BELGIUM: War criminal escapes prosecutionThe Brussels Court of Appeals ruled on June 26 that a case against Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for war crimes cannot be tried under Belgian law. The case was brought by
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AFGHANISTAN Sham assembly installs warlord coalition BY NORM DIXON The much-hyped loya jirga or grand assembly was supposed to be post-Taliban Afghanistan's first step towards the creation of a representative democratic
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PALESTINE: Operation 'Determined Path' to massacre BY ROHAN PEARCE The expression peace process has become increasingly meaningless. As Israel's murderous Operation Determined Path continues, and White House pronouncements lose any
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Activists welcomed the G8 summit, held in Kananaskis, Canada, June 26-28, with a string of anti-corporate protests. On June 26, some 4000 people took part in a three-hour snake march through Calgary, the closest city to Kananaskis. The march
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The European Union faces an ironic contradiction in coming decades. As birth rates continue to decline, many countries face negative population growth. The EU needs more immigration. Yet the European Council's June 21-22 meeting in
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SCOTLAND Socialists ready to shock the establishment BY FRANCIS CURRAN With less than one year until the Scottish Parliament elections, due in May 2003, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) faces its biggest challenge yet.
Culture
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Global Circus Roll up, roll up, to the head of the queue. Step up, step up, come take a pew. Gather round you clowns applaud the acrobats of global domination. Cheer on the jugglers Of world-wide manipulation. Come to the
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Definitely not bubblegum pop BY NICOLE HOYE BRISBANE With the empty lyrics of bubblegum pop music artists like Britney Spears and NSync hogging the mainstream music charts and airwaves, selling millions of albums worldwide,
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REVIEW BY SARAH STEPHEN Escape to Paradise Directed by Nino Jacusso With Duzgun Ayhan, Fidan Firat, Nurettin Yildiz and Walo Luond Distributed by First Hand Films Frontieres (Borders) Directed by Mostefa Djadjam With Lou
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Won't Pay!, 25 Monologues for a Woman"> Fo, Rame and theatre of intervention Dario Fo and Franca Rame: Harlequins of the RevolutionBy Joseph FarrellMethuen, 2001308 pp, $49.95 (hb) REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON Dario Fo and Franca Rame hit certain