BY DANNY FAIRFAX
CANBERRA Braving near-zero temperatures, 100 people assembled outside the entrance of the National Convention Centre from 8am on June 24 to protest against the 2003 Defence and Industry conference.
The conference is staged
Issue 544
News
Protest against new secret police powers
ADELAIDE A "journalist", a "minor" and a "neighbour" symbolically detained in a cage on the steps of Parliament House on June 25 were among 70 people protesting the new anti-terrorism law, under which
BY GRAHAM MATTHEWS
MELBOURNE "It's crucial that we start to get out of our little boxes", said John Cummins, Victorian president of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), addressing the Victorian Socialist Alliance state
BY KAMALA EMANUEL
LAUNCESTON The Sarwari family Mohib, Fatima and their four children will be able to stay in Australia for now. After a long struggle, the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) reinstated their temporary protection visa
BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE HOBART A cost blow-out of more than $250 million for the Basslink underwater electricity cable across Bass Strait has been a focus of attention since Greens MPs began questioning Premier Jim Bacon's Labor government about
The Socialist Alliance has condemned the Australian government's decision to send warships and troops to police the Solomon Islands. Alliance members at the June 28 Victorian SA conference argued that Canberra would use the intervention to further
BY MELANIE SJOBERG SYDNEY A last minute reprieve arrived for the NSW Working Women's Centre, whose current federal funding arrangement expires on June 30. At 4pm on June 27, the federal government announced a new arrangement. Fifty people
Forty workers at Morris McMahon will return to work on July 1 after almost 16 weeks on strike. They have won union recognition and a registered agreement, a 5% pay rise each year for three years and a 19-day work month. Photo by Celine Brun.
BY VANNESSA HEARMAN
MELBOURNE Speaking through an interpreter at a press conference on June 27, Aleida Guevara, the eldest daughter of legendary Latin American revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, said the US government would dearly like to
BY RUSSELL PICKERING PERTH On June 9-10, the Western Australian government of Labor Premier Geoff Gallop rammed through a draconian law evicting the Swan Valley Nyungah Community (SVNC) from their traditional land. The Reserves (Reserve 43131)
World
BY AHMAD NIMER
RAMALLAH Following the conclusion of the three-way summit between the US, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Aqaba on June 4, Palestinian activists and political factions have reacted with a mixture of anger and
BY MURRAY SMITH
PARIS As the danger of a general strike against his planned reform of the pension system receded, French social affairs minister Francois Fillon knew who to thank. He paid tribute to the "responsible attitude" of Bernard
BY JIM MCILROY
GLASGOW Six weeks after the Scottish Socialist Party increased its representation in the Scottish Parliament from one to six MSPs, the SSP's network for young people Scottish Socialist Youth (SSY) held its second
BY AUGUSTO ZAMORA R.
In 2002, 1060 people were executed in China. In the United States around 400 have been executed since 1990, an average of 35 a year or three a month. Hundreds more executions have taken place in other countries, and that's
BY NATASHA IZATT
LONDON — A conference of the Stop the War Coalition, held on June 21, has called for a national demonstration on September 27 to demand the end of the occupation of Iraq.
The conference, attended by 700 people, heard a range of
BY DOUG LORIMER
Student leaders held sit-ins on June 22 in front of the Iranian parliament (Majlis) and inside Tehran University to protest the detention of classmates following violent attacks on student protests the previous week by pro-clerical
BY DOUG LORIMER
"The safety conditions in Afghanistan have deteriorated badly in the course of 2003 and one can't say that they have changed in a decisive, long-term or effective fashion. It is therefore hard to think of promoting repatriation [of
BY IGGY KIM
On June 24, US journalist William Nessen gave himself up to the Indonesian military in the northern Acehnese village of Paya Dua.
Nessen had been accompanying Free Aceh Movement (GAM) fighters since early May, before the outbreak of
BY NORM DIXON
Australian military intervention into the Solomon Islands, announced by Prime Minister John Howard on June 25, will not solve problems that are the legacy of more than a century of imperialist economic and political domination and the
BY JIM MCILROY & ROBYN MARSHALL
LIMA The entire cabinet of Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo resigned on June 25, amid rising social tensions which threaten to bring down Toledo himself. This follows the refusal of his party, the Peru
BY DOUG LORIMER
A survey by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has found that Afghanistan has supplanted Burma as the world's largest source of illegal heroin. There are now 741 square kilometres of land being used to cultivate opium poppies in
[The following statement was issued by 90 signatories on June 23, 2003. To view the signatories and sign on, visit <www.asia-pacific-action.org>.]
We are organisations and groups concerned about human rights in Indonesia and about the
BY JAMES VASSILOPOULOS
Up to 100,000 people protested over four days against the European Union summit at the resort of Porto Carras, near Thessaloniki. The protesters were saying "no" to neoliberalism, war, racism and Fortress Europe.
Culture
the painin Baghdad is thereand everywhereand real
asall day and nightthe news reportersreport it:
on the faces of tired civiliansand soldiers fed up with Basra,trying hard to find new reasonsfor being where they now are.
bush walks across the
BY DAVE RILEY
The World Health Organisation today issued a new warning against non-essential travel to the entire Western hemisphere following renewed concerns about the spread of Severe Loss of Perspective Syndrome (SLOPS).
Officials are warning
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 (02) 9564 1277. Visit
8 Mile DVDDirected by Curtis HansonWritten by Scott SilverStarring Eminem, Kim Basinger, Brittany Murphy, Mekhi Phifer, Eugene Byrd BY BENJAMEN STANDING "All this terror, America demands actionNext thing you know, you've got Uncle Sam's ass
Links No 23128pp, $8Available at Resistance centres or on-line at <http://www.dsp.org.au/links>.
REVIEW BY BEN COURTICE
The latest issue of Links magazine presents a very focused collection of articles discussing "challenges in uniting
Editorial
On June 25, Prime Minister John Howard announced that the cabinet's National Security Committee had decided to send 1200 troops 200 of them combat soldiers and 300 Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers to the Solomon Islands for at