BY TIM COLLINS
It has been nearly 60 years since the world was horrified by the destructive force of the nuclear bombs that were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And it is 50 years since Indigenous communities in South
Issue 560
News
BY BEN COURTICE
MELBOURNE — US left journalist David Barsamian explained, denounced and ridiculed the US President George Bush's "war on terror" to a full house at RMIT's Horti Hall on October 30.
Barsamian, a veteran activist and radio
BY MAURICE FARRELL
SYDNEY — On October 27, a Hornsby Local Court magistrate agreed with protest organisers that the police acted illegally on July 19 in blocking off access to the front of the home of the then immigration minister, Philip
BY MARCELLE HOFF
SYDNEY — On October 30, 600 people attended a rally and march from Union Square on Harris Street to Pyrmont Point to demand that the state government save the former water police site at Pyrmont from developers. Under a Sydney
BY KERRYN WILLIAMS
CANBERRA — Parliament House was beset by protesters again on October 27. The 100 Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) members chanted "What do we want? Aussie jobs!" while marching up the hill to join a 250-strong
BY AARON BENEDEK
SYDNEY — Against considerable opposition from right-wing members of the local Turkish-Australian community in the western suburb of Auburn, the Youth and Solidarity Group held a local protest rally against the war in Iraq on
BY ROBYN MARSHALL
BRISBANE — "As socialists, we ignore our own history at our peril", Jim McIlroy, author of a new pamphlet by Resistance Books, Australia's First Socialists, told a book launch sponsored by Green Left Weekly on October 29.
BY PAUL BENEDEK
SYDNEY — Former nuclear physicist and social justice campaigner Dr Vandana Shiva was the guest presenter for a forum at Sydney University on October 20, entitled "Beyond Corporate Globalisation, towards Earth Democracy".
Shiva,
BY PAULA ABOOD & ALISSAR GAZAL
"I've always maintained that [we women] have a more fair approach to the truth and to the integrity of other human beings, because we serve life and peace" — Hanan Ashrawi on ABC Radio, October 22, 2003.
"Ashrawi
BY ALISON THORNE
Members First, a grouping within the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) that is working for a fighting union, has launched a campaign to win the right to use email for union organising, free from management interference or
BY ALISON DELLIT
SYDNEY — Around 350 people attended the Sydney Social Forum, held at the city campus of the University of Technology Sydney, on October 24-26.
The forum was launched with a plenary, titled "Is the American empire unstoppable?",
BY KARL MILLER
MELBOURNE — Philippines sugar workers leader Ariel Guides has been warmly welcomed by the trade union movement and rank-and-file workers during his October 28-31 visit here. Guides is a leader of the Solidarity of Philippines
BY AUSTIN WHITTEN
SYDNEY — Anthony Billingsley, a former foreign affairs officer and Office of National Assessments analyst, abruptly cancelled a lecture at Macquarie University on October 23, the day before it was to be delivered.
The ONA, his
BY MARGARITA WINDISCH
MELBOURNE — On October 27, 10,000 construction industry workers marched through the city centre to protest against the first prosecution of a unionist by the Howard government's building industry task force.
In a powerful
BY RUTH RATCLIFFE
DARWIN — On October 31, members of the Darwin Homebirth Group rallied to demand the provision of homebirth midwife services as part of the Northern Territory public hospital system.
In July, NT health minister Jane Aagaard
BY ROBYN MARSHALL
BRISBANE — Twenty-five years after Australians first marched against sexual violence, women and children again took to the streets on October 31 to Reclaim the Night, which is an international event held on the last Friday in
BY PAUL BENEDEK
SYDNEY — More than 10,000 unionists, mostly members of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), marched from the Sydney Town Hall to NSW parliament on October 27 to demand tough industrial manslaughter laws to
BY JAMES VASSILOPOULOS
CANBERRA — US President George Bush's one-day visit to Canberra and the protests against him received widespread coverage in the international news media.
The October 23 protest in Canberra was covered by the three main
World
BY HERBERT DOCENA
MADRID — The US-convened donors' conference on Iraq opened on October 23 amid questions about US$4 billion in Iraqi oil revenues which the US Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) could not account for. As the US began pleading
BY GARRY LEECH
Colombia's right-wing, pro-US president Alvaro Uribe suffered a double setback at the polls on October 25-26. On October 25, voters rejected most components of a 15-point referendum that Uribe said would give him the necessary tools
BY ADELE OLIVERI
ROME — On October 24, more than 10 million workers stopped work and more than 1 million took to the streets across Italy in a four-hour general strike. Called by the country's three main union federations, the strike was in
BY DOUG LORIMER
Chants of "Hell no, we won't go, we won't fight for Texaco!" and "Hey Bush, we know you, your daddy was a liar, too!" echoed through the streets of downtown Washington on October 25 as around 100,000 people marched in the largest US
BY EVA CHENG
Democratic expectations in Taiwan have surged with President Chen Shui-bian's promotion of plebiscites to ascertain the views of the island's 23 million people on "major social issues".
Chen became Taiwan's second popularly elected
BY NORM DIXON
Noam Chomsky, the distinguished US political scientist and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, has attended the 25th Assembly of the Latin American Social Science Council. Addressing the conference on October 29, also
Ariel Guides is a leader of the Freedom From Hunger Coalition, which organises 22,000 sugar workers, as well as small farmers, on the island of Negros in the Philippines. He is also a leader of the socialist trade union centre Solidarity of
BY ALAN MAASS
CHICAGO — "The thing that was really heartening was that under the most difficult conditions that you can imagine, workers were not waiting one minute before they started organising themselves", reported labour journalist David
BY NORM DIXON
Major contributors to US President George Bush's election war chest have been awarded around US$8 billion in contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Washington-based US Center for Public Integrity (CPI) reported on October 30.
BY ALAN MAASS
CHICAGO — The October 25 demonstrations marked the first national US mobilisation of the anti-war movement since the US-led invasion of Iraq. The demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco came after the systematic lies of US
BY MARCUS GREVILLE
LONDON — On October 29, at a crammed public meeting called by the Stop the War Coalition, the call was made for the creation of a new united party to challenge the British Labour Party in the 2004 London Assembly and European
Glasgow MP George Galloway, an outspoken opponent of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to back the US-led invasion of Iraq, was expelled from the Labour Party on October 23. Galloway was found guilty by a Labour Party disciplinary
Culture
Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the WorldBy Mark CurtisVintage, 2003512 pages, $24.95 (pb)
REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON
"We must at all costs maintain control of this oil", Britain's foreign secretary wrote to the US secretary of state in 1956.
SYDNEY — Treasures of Palestine showcases a wide selection of traditional material ranging from costumes, jewellery and ceramics to mother-of-pearl inlay work, posters, photography and olive-wood sculptures. Through these objects, visitors to the
Australia's First SocialistsBy Jim McIlroyResistance Books 2003, $5.95Available at Resistance bookshops (addresses page 2) or order at <http://www.resistancebooks.com>
REVIEW BY JOHN NEBAUER
Radical politics in Australia did not begin
Editorial
The federal Coalition government's $1 billion plan to "save" Medicare has been widely exposed as a wolf in sheep's clothing — a set of changes that would radically change Medicare from providing universal health care to little more than a safety
General
In GLW #559, the photograph of the Hobart protest against US President George Bush on page five was incorrectly credited to Alex Bainbridge. The picture was taken by Duncan Meerding.From Green Left Weekly, November 5, 2003.
Visit the Green Left