Issue 558

News

BY KIM BULLIMORE SYDNEY — Palestinian legislator and human rights activist Hanan Ashrawi is scheduled to receive the Sydney Peace Prize from NSW Premier Bob Carr on November 6 at Parliament House. Ashrawi, a long-time campaigner for the rights of
BY JENNY LONG SYDNEY — Around 120 people gathered at the Metcalf Auditorium, in the NSW State Library, on October 17 for a memorial meeting for the highly influential Palestinian intellectual and activist Edward Said. Said died in the US on
BY PIP HINMAN Federal Labor leader Simon Crean has told Labor MPs that they should give US President George Bush a standing ovation when he finishes his address to the joint sitting of parliament on October 23. Tim Gooden, assistant secretary of
BY JOHN GAUCI SYDNEY — Members of the NSW branches of the Socialist Alliance will meet on November 8 for the alliance's NSW conference. Its theme is "Regime change begins at home: unite for socialism!". Socialist Alliance NSW committee member
BY NIKKI ULASOWSKI PERTH — Around 60 members and supporters of the Socialist Alliance attended the organisation's WA conference on October 12. A variety of workshops and plenary sessions were held, discussing topics such as fighting governments'
BY IAN JAMIESON FREMANTLE — The battle to save the popular South Beach is gathering pace, with a public rally being organised on the beach on October 26, at 11am, called by residents and beach users. The rally aims to stop powerful property
BY ARUN PRADHAN Libraries standing empty and university lectures being cancelled would normally alarm people concerned with quality education, but on October 16 — when up to 40,000 university staff went on strike across Australia — the sight
BY DUNCAN MEERDING& ALEX BAINBRIDGE HOBART — A growing protest movement is targeting the forest practices of the Tasmanian Labor government, including woodchipping, clearfelling and the use of 1080 poison. A "walk for change" attracted up to 2000
BY JAMES CRAFTI MELBOURNE — The Action ticket has won the October 6-10 La Trobe University Student Representative Council (SRC) election in a landslide victory. The ticket consisted of independent activists, members of the socialist youth
BY JANE BECKMAN NEWCASTLE — NSW Health and Research Employees Association (HREA) branches throughout the Hunter region have unanimously condemned the NSW Labor government's decision to privatise new facilities to be built at the Newcastle Mater

Analysis

Since the end of July, 24-year-old Palestinian asylum seeker Aladdin Sisalem has been the only prisoner in the Australian government's Lombrum detention centre on Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea. He has very little human contact,

World

BY MAX LANE JAKARTA — On October 13, the Indonesian armed forces (TNI) announced the cancellation of a November 6 visit to Australian Defence Force facilities in Perth by a TNI delegation. The decision was in response to the Australian
BY FORREST HYLTON LA PAZ, Oct. 13 — After the October 12 massacre in El Alto, an Aymara city of 800,000 on the upper edge of Bolivia's capital, La Paz, which left at least 25 dead and 100 injured, millions of Bolivians have concluded that
BY DOUG LORIMER After weeks of haggling, France, Germany and Russia on October 16 finally voted in the UN Security Council for a US-sponsored resolution mandating the creation of a "multinational" occupation force in Iraq under US command. While
AUSTIN — The US military is attempting to resurrect the influenza virus that killed up to 40 million people in 1918. Several genes of the extraordinarily lethal "Spanish flu" have been isolated and introduced into contemporary flu strains. The new
BY NORM DIXON In a humiliating backdown, Bolivia's president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada resigned as president on October 17 and fled to the United States. Lozada resigned as his last remaining supporters in cabinet deserted him in the face of huge
Tens of thousands of people across New Zealand marched on October 11 to oppose genetically modified crops. A moratorium on GE crops is due to lapse at the end of October. The biggest march was in Auckland, where up to 35,000 people took part in what
BY DOUG LORIMER At a White House press conference on October 10, US President George Bush announced new punitive measures against socialist Cuba, including new steps to enforce Washington's 41-year-old trade embargo against the island, stricter
BY EVA CHENG Since July, Washington has launched an unprecedented campaign to blame China's currency regime for declining US manufacturing jobs and pressuring Beijing to end its nine-year peg of the yuan (renminbi in Chinese) to the US dollar. US
BY NORM DIXON MANILA — At least 50,000 people mobilised across the Philippines on October 18 as US President George Bush, arrived for an eight-hour visit. At least 10,000 people jammed the main thoroughfare leading to the House of
BY LYNETTE DUMBLE The 12-month prison sentence imposed on human rights activist Irene Fernandez, handed down on October 16 by magistrate Juliana Mohamed, was a shameful day for the justice system in Malaysia. Charged with "maliciously publishing
BY TRISH REIMERS In January 2001, US President George Bush reinstated the "global gag" rule on international family planning assistance that the US administration of Ronald Reagan had announced at the UN-sponsored Second International Conference on
BY URKO AIARTZA BILBAO — The 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, and the media impact they made, created a climate in which governments around the world — by fanning and exploiting fears of "terrorism" — have been able to implement
BY MALIK MIAH SAN FRANCISCO — In a referendum that coincided with the election for California's governor, voters rejected Proposition 54 — the "Racial Privacy Initiative" — by an almost two-to-one margin. Drafted and aggressively promoted by
BY NICK RAWSON The 21st Australia-New Zealand Work/Study Brigade will travel to Cuba in December. Organised annually by the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society, the brigade provides an opportunity for people to express solidarity with Cuba's struggle
BY ROHAN PEARCE A little over two years ago, on October 7, 2001, US President George Bush announced that the Pentagon had begun air strikes against Afghanistan in preparation for a US invasion. The bombing campaign marked the official start of the

Culture

Vive La Revolution: A Stand-up History of the French RevolutionBy Mark SteelScribner, 2003299 pages, $29.95 (pb) REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON On June 20, 1789, Dr Guillotin made a significant entry into history. Locked out of their meeting place by
It's becoming clear, why you engineeredOur involvement in their war.For our "mutual aid", and for your "free trade"It was worth their dying for.But your quest for oil, and to carve the spoils,Of their reconstructed ruins,Cannot pay the price, for so
Syria: Neither Bread Nor FreedomBy Alan GeorgeZed Books, 2003 REVIEW BY CHRIS SLEE Israel's government on October 5 launched a missile attack on Syria, the first strike into Syrian territory in 30 years. US President George Bush immediately