Issue 510

News

BY GRANT COLEMAN WOLLONGONG — At a student general meeting on September 17, Wollongong University students and staff voted overwhelmingly to declare their campus a refugee safe haven and to donate money to escaped refugees. Despite
BY DARREN JIGGINS HOBART — Three hundred people participated in a rally demanding “No war on Iraq” on September 21. The rally was organised by Peace Coalition, which met for the first time on September 15. Speakers at the rally included
BY CHRIS SLEE Australian Taxation Office (ATO) workers around Australia, members of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), went on strike for two hours on the morning of September 18. The strike followed the breakdown of
BY CHRIS WILLIAMS WOLLONGONG — Illawarra Greens candidate Michael Organ won an historic 15% of the vote in the Wollongong lord mayoral by-election on September 14. The humiliating defeat inflicted on ALP candidate Bob Proudfoot, who won
BY STUART MARTIN MELBOURNE — As the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union's Victorian branch approaches a round of organiser elections, the court case on democracy in the union has continued another week without a decision being made as to who
BY PETER ROBSON NEWCASTLE — After a week of determined campaigning by students, academics and staff, the refugee sanctuary referendum on Newcastle University finished at 3pm on September 20. More than 700 students voted in the week-long
BY MERYAN TOZER MELBOURNE — "The terrible history of the last century tells us that fascist movements have to be fought when they emerge — if they are allowed to grow it is too late", anti-Blackshirt campaigner Riki Lane told 200 people at
BY STEVE CILIA MELBOURNE — The September 16 meeting of the Socialist Alliance's Melbourne branch preselected long-term anti-racist campaigner Arun Pradhan as its candidate for the seat of Melbourne in the next state election. Pradhan
BY LISA MACDONALD SYDNEY — At the first such day-long forum in Sydney for years, 50 activists spent September 15 analysing and debating the many facets of the backlash against feminism that has been gathering momentum in Australia, and
BY STUART MUNCKTON CANBERRA — In a low-key Australian National University Students Association (ANUSA) elections, held September 9-12, the Evolve ticket won all executive positions, National Union of Students (NUS) delegate positions and
BY IGGY KIM SYDNEY — A campaign has begun to pressure the Indonesian government to release detained British-born Australian academic Lesley McCulloch and US nurse Joy-Lee Sadler. The women's interpreter, Fitra bin Amin, has already been
MELBOURNE — Fifty people crammed into Hendersons Cafe to launch the West Welcomes Refugees postcard campaign on September 21. The postcards, designed by Viv Mehes and featuring students from Footscray City College, allow Western suburbs
BY ALEX MILNE MELBOURNE — The Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry hosted a conference on construction industry safety on September 19 and 20. The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), the
SYDNEY — More than 100 protesters rallied in the western Sydney suburb of Auburn on September 20, opposing any war on Iraq. The protest was organised by the Socialist Alliance, which decided on September 17 to run local activist Roberto
No war on Iraq! LAUNCESTON — Thirty-five people attended a "No war on Iraq!" public forum at the Royal Oak Hotel on September 15, organised by Launceston Socialist Alliance. Vicki Walker of the Socialist Alliance and Debbie Butler of the
BY KERRY VERNON BRISBANE — University of Queensland (UQ) academics, members of the National Tertiary Education Industry Union, will take industrial action from September 25 over the university's decision not to renew the employment contract of
BY SUE BULL MELBOURNE — Readers of the September 14 Age newspaper may have thought they were about to get a real inside story when they saw the front-page teaser: "Craig Johnston: The Making of a Middle Class Revolutionary". But they would
ADELAIDE: Picket against war on Iraq. Saturday October 28, noon. Outside foreign minister Alexander Downer's office, 100 King William Street, city. To get involved in the campaign against war on Iraq, phone NOWAR on (08) 8332 4861. BRISBANE: Rally
BY AMIE HAMILTON PERTH — On September 17, the University of Western Australia Student Guild decided at a special council meeting to hold a referendum on October 22 on whether or not UWA should be declared a refugee safe-haven. The Student
BY TIM STEWART BRISBANE — When the Cross-Campus Women's Collective heard that the “male” magazine FHM was putting on a “Miss University” competition at the Tivoli Theatre in Fortitude Valley on September 17, it called for a protest of the
BY PIP HINMAN SYDNEY — Against the backdrop of a looming US-led war on Iraq, some 300 activists participated in the first Sydney Social Forum on September 20-21. The SSF hosted 65 workshops and six feature panels. Topics discussed included
BY LEIGH HUGHES Refugee activists, trade union militants, free education campaigners and socialists by the trainload are to gather at Trades Hall this weekend to discuss and further their respective struggles. They will be attending the 31st

World

BY JOCHEN STAY BERLIN — Looking back now at the promises made by the German Green Party and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) during the 1998 election campaign, it is clear that the record of the SPD-Green coalition government on nuclear power
BY JAMES BALOWSKI Three weeks after the fatal shooting of two Americans and an Indonesian from the Freeport gold and copper mine in Indonesia's eastern-most province of West Papua, the identity of the perpetrators is still unclear. Indonesian
BY MAX LANE MANILA — More than 450 delegates representing more than 100,000 workers gathered in Baguio City on September 14-15 to plan out their campaign of resistance to the neo-liberal globalisation offensive hitting Filipino workers.
BY IGGY KIM Of the 10,149,542 Brazilians who participated in a week-long unofficial referendum on the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), 9,979,964 (98.33%) voted against Brazil joining the US-dominated economic bloc. The
BY DALE McKINLEY JOHANNESBURG — In a show of people's power, 6000 residents of KwaMasiza Hostel in Sebokeng reoccupied their homes on September 12 after being forcibly evicted a day earlier by thugs employed by a company partly owned by African
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said on September 18 that they are seeking “substantial autonomy and self-government in the Tamil homeland and expressed optimism that a solution to Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict could be worked out by
BY CHRIS BAMBERY& ALEX CALLINICOS LONDON — It is with deep regret that we must inform you of the death on September 17 of Duncan Hallas. Duncan was one of the founders of the International Socialist Tendency (IST). He supported Tony Cliff
Victory for Samsonite workers On September 13, the last 29 workers illegally sacked by a Thai subcontractor of US luggage giant Samsonite were reinstated. The company gave assurances that it will not "interfere with trade union activities" or
BY JOHN PILGER LONDON — The anniversary of September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US were remembered with highly charged images, especially those of the grieving families of the victims. The respect and sympathy owed to these suffering
BY GABRIEL MOLINA HAVANA — A dispatch from the EFE news agency in July confirmed that a new method of producing the UN report on human development has resulted in Cuba being placed "among the world's least democratic countries, comparable with

Culture

BY SIMON TAYLER SYDNEY — Every Sunday night, Channel 31's Actively Radical TV (ARTV) program includes The Palestine Report, a segment on the conflict in Palestine. The report presents viewers with a point of view that the mainstream media
The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover's Secret War Against the World's Most Famous ScientistBy Fred JeromeSt. Martin's Press, 2002358 pages, $40 (hb) REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON When "communism" was the official flavour-of-the-month threat in the US,
Palestine is Still the IssueDocumentary by John PilgerThursday, October 8, 8.30pmSBS REVIEW BY ROHAN PEARCE John Pilger's documentary, Palestine is Still the Issue, is a moving and powerful indictment of Israel's illegal occupation of the West