MELBOURNE — Medical care is "a right not a privilege", declared Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Leigh Hubbard on May 14. Hubbard was launching a campaign to defend and extend Medicare.
Hubbard said people need to "get out
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"Nothing dramatises the criminally anti-social nature of the Howard-Costello government so much as the federal treasurer's latest budget", Socialist Alliance national co-convener Lisa Macdonald told Green Left Weekly. Macdonald
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Greed-based policy The federal budget announced plans to subject disability pensioners, as a group, to an additional 61,000 eligibility reviews per year and the government still wants to change eligibility rules to force many onto the lower-paying
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International Resources Group The US Agency for International Development awarded a US$7.1 million contract for "personnel support" to the International Resources Group on February 25. The contract was awarded without competitive tendering.
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Filled with confidence from its apparent "success" in waging war on Iraq, the Howard Coalition government has began another assault on public services. Higher education in particular is under attack, with the worst proposals from
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Federal Greens politicians have condemned the government's federal budget, Greens Senator Bob Brown describing it as "bereft of humanity and environmental responsibility". Brown said that the budget would deepen the divide
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The scramble for a quick buck by US corporations in the aftermath of Washington's invasion of Iraq came as no surprise to all but the most naive — US policy in the Middle East has always been guided by seizing and controlling the
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On June 3, the Sharia Court of Appeal of Katsina State in Nigeria will hear an appeal from Amina Lawal, who is fighting for her life after being convicted of adultery last August by an upper area court in Katsina because she gave birth to a child
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[In the March NSW election, the Greens almost tripled their vote, in an indication of significant national growth for that party. Local activist SYLVIA HALE joined Lee Rhiannon and Ian Cohen as an MLC. This Hale's first speech to the NSW parliament,
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Unions Most unions have criticised the budget for attacking public health and education. Some have also condemned the promotion of individual agreements on campuses and anti-union funding. Victorian Trades Hall secretary Leigh Hubbard blasted the
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Two questions dominated the May 10-11 second national conference of the Socialist Alliance: What space is there for an explicitly socialist party in Australian politics today and what program and focus should the alliance adopt to
News
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MELBOURNE — Australian and international delegates met at the "Keep space for peace" conference on May 17-18 to discuss greater cooperation of the international peace movement, especially to combat the increasing militarisation
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HOBART — Described by the Mercury as "a rare attack", on May 5 Unions Tasmania protested the state Labor government's privatisation plans. The government is planning to privatise the Civil Construction Corporation, the Stanley
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SYDNEY — Supporters of Green Left Weekly packed into the Fairfield Community Centre on May 17, to enjoy a night of music, good food and fabulous company while raising much needed funds for the paper. Activists from anti-war, feminist, refugees'
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SYDNEY — With the likelihood of all-out war erupting in Aceh, solidarity campaigners have launched an emergency campaign directed at getting the Australian government to end military ties with Indonesia and pressure Jakarta to get
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Expert opinion I "If you had hired actors you could not have gotten better coverage" — Kenneth Bacon, a former Pentagon spokesperson, commenting on the corporate media's coverage of the US invasion of Iraq. Expert opinion II "Everyone knows
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MELBOURNE — In a "private settlement", three Victorian unions have agreed to pay $300,000 in fines to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) for violating the secondary boycott provisions of the Trade
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MELBOURNE — "We see on a daily basis the incredible courage and perseverance of refugees who have lost everything. For them, every day spent in exile or flight is a day too long. That is why World Refugee Day should be, for all of
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SYDNEY — Treasurer Peter Costello's 2003 budget was giving a caning at a "People's reply to the budget" on May 16. At the meeting, organised by the Socialist Alliance, a range of speakers described the greater disadvantage and
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SYDNEY — Despite Washington's military victory in Iraq, residents of Sydney's south-western suburbs are determined to maintain the anti-war organisations established in the area earlier this year and build opposition to the US
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HOBART — On May 16, 350 people attended a forum organised by the Peace Coalition in the Stanley Burbury Theatre at Tasmania University on the topic "Casualties of War". Speakers on the forum's panel were left-wing writer Tim
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BALLARAT — On May 7, the University of Ballarat council passed a motion to phase out the Bachelor of Arts (Theatre Production), threatening the employment of three production lecturers. Only four such courses exist in higher
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MELBOURNE — While lawyers and visitors have been denied access to Iranian detainees at Australia's refugee concentration camps, Iranian government officials have been given access, Greens spokesperson on refugees Pamela Curr told 50
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PERTH — Seven-hundred people attended a meeting at Fremantle Town Hall on May 14, to hear long-time peace activist Reverend Neville Watson, who has just returned from a "peace mission" in Iraq. The 73-year-old Watson travelled to
Analysis
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When the Socialist Alliance was founded in February 2001, Green Left Weekly supported the new political organisation. The social problems created by the capitalist profit system — war, unemployment, poverty, racism, the oppression of women, etc —
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A surprise tax cut in this year's federal budget, released on May 13, saw the corporate media happily seize on one of the least significant elements of the Howard government's eighth budget. The question the media should have been
World
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On May 9, the United States presented a draft resolution to the UN Security Council calling for the lifting of 12-year-old economic sanctions on Iraq. It would give Washington control over the Iraq's oil revenues and proposes the
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JAKARTA — A report issued on May 9 by the conservative Brussels-based International Crisis Group, headed by former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, declared: "The Indonesian military is not using the phrase 'shock and awe',
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PARIS — On May 13, French workers held their biggest one-day general strike since 1995, as 2 million people took to the streets of a hundred towns and cities. In Paris, 250,000 marched in Paris, 200,000 in Marseilles, 100,000 in
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Despite their joining the US campaign claiming that Pyongyang is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, both the Japanese and South Korean governments continue to fund the construction of a nuclear power plant in North Korea.
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On May 9, the Israeli military raided the office of the International Solidarity Movement in Beit Sahour, Palestine. During the raid, two ISM volunteers and a visitor from the Human Rights Watch organisation were detained. ISM
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LONDON — The Socialist Alliance has its first local councillor in England following the May 1 British local government elections. Michael Lavalette won in Preston town centre ward, in Lancashire, with 546 votes (38%), trouncing
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On April 30, the US State Department branded Iran "the most active state sponsor of terrorism during 2002". A week later, the department accused Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons in violation of the nuclear
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In the poorer districts of Caracas, the Policia Metropolitana (Metropolitan Police — PM) were never looked upon with high regard. There is a local saying in the barrios that it is better to be left with the muggers than with
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With 57% of the Argentinian population in poverty and an official unemployment rate of 30%, workers have responded by seizing control of factories abandoned by their owners due to bankruptcy or lack of profits. Fifty years ago,
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In a new act of provocation aimed at creating a confrontation with Cuba, the US government on May 12 ordered seven diplomats at Cuba's United Nations mission to leave the US within 48 hours. The next day, the US State Department
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LAHORE — On May 11, one farmer was killed and three injured when a group of Rangers, a para-military unit under the direct control of the Pakistani military, fired on tenant farmers at the Okara farms in Punjab province. The
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For more than five decades, Washington has justified its strong military presence in north-east Asia in the name of countering "communism". Even though pro-capitalist governments now rule Russia and China, Washington has shown no
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[The following is part of the speech delivered by Cuba's President Fidel Castro Ruz to a rally of 1 million people in Havana's Jose Marti Revolution Square on May 1, 2003.] Our heroic people have struggled for 44 years from this
Culture
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ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — On May 1, poet, teacher, youth poetry coach and Green Left Weekly writer Bill Nevins received a terse notice from the Rio Rancho School District informing him that he has been fired from his Rio
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REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON Bioterror: Manufacturing Wars the American WayBy Ellen Ray and William H Schapp (eds)Ocean Press, 200380 pages, $14.95 (pb) With Iraq invaded and occupied, at last we can all go about our lives free from the fear of anthrax
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Peter Costello, Liberal leadership hopeful and feral federal treasurer, in his budget has perpetrated the most savage attacks on the living conditions, medical care and welfare of workers, unemployed, disabled, the sick and elderly
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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 (o2) 9564 1277. Visit