BY ANNE OCASEY
MELBOURNE Arun Pradhan, the Socialist Alliance candidate for Melbourne
district in the November 30 Victorian elections, has called for mass civil
disobedience to stop the controversial Commonwealth Games village planned
Issue 518
News
BY DALE MILLS
SYDNEY Police will be able to stop and search people without warrants
after the NSW ALP cabinet approved new anti-terror laws in November.
The laws are now being rushed through state parliament.
Among other things, NSW
BY PAUL BENEDEK
SYDNEY — "We are a mass movement, we need to look like one" is the idea behind a broadly supported initiative to hold a National People's Refugee Summit in early 2003.
The proposed summit, tentatively scheduled for February 1-2
BY KAREN FLETCHER
MELBOURNE — Community lawyer Amanda George, well-known for years of work against private prisons in Australia, is standing as an independent candidate in the Victorian election. She is opposing the Labor minister for police and
BY PIP HINMAN
SYDNEY — A concerted campaign for several months by residents and Erskineville Housing Estate tenants forced the NSW state government on November 19 to reject a housing department redevelopment proposal which would have adversely
BY PAUL OBOOHOV
CANBERRA — The Members First rank and file group in the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) is challenging the ALP-aligned Progressive Caucus in elections for department-based section and local region positions in the ACT,
BY JON LAND
Pressure is mounting against the federal government's moves to deport
1600-1800 East Timorese asylum seekers, some of whom have been seeking
refugee status for up to 10 years. At least 84 may be forced to leave by
the end of
Regular readers of Green Left Weekly in Sydney's western suburbs can pick up the latest issue at the new Resistance Centre, 7/29 Macquarie Street, Parramatta.
From Green Left Weekly, November 27, 2002.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.
BY LUKE SMITH
ADELAIDE — Around 100 people gathered at the Queens Theatre on November 17 for a refugees' rights forum. The event, part of the Feast Festival 2002, focused on the plight of refugees fleeing persecution because of their sexuality.
Anti-war forum discusses movement building
HOBART — A Socialist Alliance-initiated meeting on November 20 provided a forum for people to discuss the best way to oppose war on Iraq. Participants were addressed by federal Labor MP Harry Quick,
MELBOURNE Speak-outs against
a possible war on Iraq were held in three Melbourne suburbs on November
23. The Footscray protest heard from Socialist Alliance candidate for Footscray
Justine Kamprad, Shirley Winton from the Western Suburbs
BY RUTH RATCLIFFE
DARWIN I'm here because I don't like injustice, and I don't like
being ashamed of my country, declared Jack, one of the 250 people who
attended a public meeting in support of the East Timorese asylum seekers
on
BY KIM BULLIMORE
SYDNEY Despite attempts by police to prevent it, an anti-war action
in Bankstown's Old Town Plaza on November 16 attracted 80 people. Initiated
by the Socialist Alliance and the Canterbury-Bankstown Anti-War Group,
the
BY SUE BULL
MELBOURNE — "Building rank-and-file unionism" was the topic of discussion at the first public meeting of the Trade Union Solidarity Committee, which was held on November 19 at Trades Hall. The committee was set up by the Socialist
Around 1500 Ku-ring-gai residents were drawn together on November 17 to stand against inappropriate over-development of their municipality, particularly the increasing density of housing. The rally, promoted by Friends of Lindfield, kicked off with folk songs before a variety of speakers took the podium.
Speakers highlighted the inadequate representation that they felt local council members are providing, and voiced their concerns about corruption in the council.
World
BY PATRICK BOND
JOHANNESBURG — On November 8, James Kilgore, the last fugitive member of the 1970s US terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), was arrested in Cape Town. He was known in South Africa as John Pape, the respected left
BY DOUG LORIMER
HONG KONG Seventy pro-democracy protesters staged a rally outside
in the Chater Garden Square next to the local Legislative Council building
on November 17, defying a police warning that the gathering was illegal
BY JIM GREEN
The largest shipment of high-level nuclear waste between France and Germany — 1300 tonnes of it — was trained and trucked from La Hague in France to Wendland in northern Germany. on November 11-14.
The waste was taken to a
BY MICHAEL KARADJIS
"Politics has never seen such a widespread liquidation operation", declared the Turkish daily Sabah following the crushing victory of the "Islamist" Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey's November 3 general election.
BY STEPHEN BENNETTS
FLORENCE Non ho mai visto Firenze cosi bella. Che bello vederla
cosi piena di gente; di solito ci sono solo le bancarelle d'oro e le cartoline.
E che palle! (I've never seen Florence looking so beautiful. How
BY JEREMY BRADLEY
The Middle East is in the grip of severe drought. Israel's farmers
are so highly dependant on irrigation that they require more than half
of the 1.55 billion cubic metres of water that is used annually within
Israel's
BY JOHN PILGER
"What passing bells for these who die as cattle?", asked the great WWI poet Wilfred Owen. His famous line might have been written for those who perish in today's secret wars and terrorist outrages.
Owen's generation never used the
BY JEFF SHANTZ
TORONTO Greenpeace door
canvassers are used to pounding the pavements. Every evening, they walk
kilometres to spread the Greenpeace message of environmental care. However,
the organisations' canvass workers never expected
Following weeks of massive demonstrations, El Salvador's National Assembly voted on November 14 to ratify a decree that prohibits the privatisation in any form of the national health care system (known as the Salvadoran Social Security Institute,
Culture
BY PIP HINMAN
SYDNEY — In the United States, actor Susan Sarandon and other high-profile artists and performers are speaking out against the planned US-led war on Iraq. In Australia too, members of the arts and cultural communities are supporting
Telling Lies About Hitler: the Holocaust, History and the David Irving TrialBy Richard EvansVerso, 2002326 pages, $37 (pb)
REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON
If a self-styled "geographic revisionist" should ever step up to a witness box to sue the Royal
REVIEW BY ELIZABETH SCHULTE
War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to KnowWilliam Rivers Pitt interviews Scott RitterAllen and Unwin, 200278 pages, $9.95.
A former marine and a member of the Republican Party who voted for George W Bush,
Actively Radical TV — Sydney community television's progressive current affairs producers tackle the hard issues from the activist's point of view. Includes the Green Left news. CTS Sydney (UHF 31), every Sunday, 9pm. Phone 9565 5522. Visit
Just Another Little Murder: A Brother's Pursuit of JusticeBy Phil ClearyAllen and Unwin, 2002$29.95
REVIEW BY ERIN CAMERON
The murder of Vicki Cleary in 1987 shook her family to the core, but what was to devastate them even more was the outcome
SYDNEY — On November 11, a book was launched in the outer Sydney suburb of Blacktown. It coincided with the 17th anniversary of the killing by police of 16-year-old Angelo Tsakos.
The book, A Mother's Story, details the agony of those 17 years
Episodes directed by Samira Makhmalbaf, Claude Lelouch, Ken Loach, Sean
Penn, Denis Tanovic, Mira Nair, Shohei Imamura, Amos Gitai, Youssef Chahine,
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Idrissa Ouedrago
Now showing at the Nova and Cinema Europa,
Editorial
NSW Premier Bob Carr's enthusiasm for vilifying protesters, police patrols with sniffer dogs and cooperating with Australia's secret police service is not an aberration for the ALP. Federal Labor is also bending over backwards to increase police