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
Issue 498
News
Student conference to welcome refugees
BY FEDERICO FUENTES
PERTH 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
BY SARAH STEPHEN
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
WA Socialist Alliance seeks registration
BY JANE ARMANASCO
PERTH After successful state registration campaigns in NSW and
Tasmania, the Western Australia Socialist Alliance has begun the task of
acquiring state electoral
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
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
Nurses reject pay offer
BY MARIA VOUKELATOS
BRISBANE 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
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)
CMG workers return to work
BY TERRICA STRUDWICK
ROCKHAMPTON 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
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
Earthquake risk at Lucas Heights
BY ALEX MILNE
Work 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
Socialist Alliance makes refugees an issue
in Tassie poll
BY DARREN JIGGINS
HOBART 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
Spanners in Beattie's dirty works
BY ANDREW PHILLIPS
BRISBANE Workers at QBuild, the state government agency responsible
for building all Queensland government buildings, schools and offices,
are fighting for justice after being
World
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
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
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
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
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
BY JO WILLIAMS
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
BELGIUM: War criminal escapes prosecution
BY ROHAN PEARCE
The 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
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.
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
BY SARAH STEPHEN
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
Culture
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
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
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,
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
Editorial
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