Federal treasurer Peter Costello's superannuation plan is just what you would expect from a government that does nothing for workers, unless it first means a profit for the bosses.
Costello wants a flood of cut-price pensioners who "choose" to
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Kim Bullimore Two weeks before the April 15 announcement by federal cabinet that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) was to be scrapped on July 1, an editorial in Rupert Murdoch's Australian proclaimed that ATSIC had lost
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Chris White, Adelaide On any one night, some 7500 South Australians are homeless. One obvious reason for this crisis is a lack of housing, caused by the federal Coalition government's 60% capital grants cut to the South Australian Housing Trust.
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Rohan Pearce Wondering what's been happening in Iraq? Here's US President George Bush's account: "Coalition forces have encountered serious violence in some areas of Iraq. Our military commanders report that this violence is being instigated by
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Jon Lamb The recently formed Movement Against the Occupation of the Timor Sea (MKOT) staged a series of peaceful demonstrations in Dili on April 14-16, demanding an end to the theft of East Timor's oil and gas resources. Some 500 protesters
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Rohan Pearce In the early days of the battle for Fallujah and the Shiite militia rebellion, almost every journalist in the corporate media would begin their reports with dire warnings about a country sliding towards civil war. In fact, the
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Andrew Watson After years of retreat under conservative leaderships, sections of the trade union movement are today experiencing a revival of militancy and rank-and-file workplace organising. Socialists are playing a leading role in rebuilding
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Last month, the Australian government released new offshore areas for companies to bid for petroleum exploration permits. This includes territory that is much closer to East Timor's coast than to Australia, which East Timor's government claims as
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Iraq war I There can be no doubt that planet Earth would be a much safer place without the likes of George W. Bush. Here we are a year into the chaos of Iraq with thousands of Iraqis either dead or maimed; 600 dead US soldiers; a country bordering
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Since the passage of the Sex Discrimination Act in 1984, more women than ever before have entered the military. Women constitute 15.5% of the Australian Defence Force (higher than the US military, which has 14.3% women, and the British military
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The Socialist Alliance joined the hundreds of thousands of Australians who rallied against the war on Iraq last year. Now we are building demonstrations against the US occupation as events in Iraq of the past two weeks have shown the world the brutal
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Jenny Long, Sydney After weeks of softening up for a promised horrific cut in public spending in NSW, the minibudget announced by Treasurer Michael Egan on April 6 was promoted by him as a "tough but fair" response to the Labor state government's
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Rohan Pearce Outside of Moqtada al Sadr, most clerics in the higher reaches of the Shiite hierarchy — such as Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq — have had ambivalent attitudes towards the
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Kylie Moon& Margaret Gleeson, Sydney Despite the big increase in the Greens votes in the Sydney inner-west municipalities of Marrickville, Leichhardt or Ashfield at the March 27 NSW local government elections, no Greens councillors were elected as
News
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CANBERRA — A statue of Prime Minister John Howard titled 'If the boots don't fit', helped set the scene for one of the most radical national folk festivals in years, over the Easter weekend. The statue, by Melbourne sculptor Greg Taylor, was
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Socialist Alliance members took to the streets in the northern working-class suburbs of Hobart on April 17 to promote Socialist Alliance legislative council candidate for the seat of Elwick, Kamala Emanuel. Eight cars displaying Socialist
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Sarah Stephen Mahmod Salem Yussef, an Iraqi refugee now living in Brisbane on a temporary protection visa, told the Brisbane Magistrates Court on April 6 that he saw armed Indonesian police on the beach at Cipanas in Indonesia and in small boats
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Sarah Stephen SYDNEY — On April 10, 250 people rallied in support of refugees in Bradfield Park, Kirribilli. Organised by the Refugee Action Coalition, the protest marked the third year that refugee-rights supporters have converged over the
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SYDNEY - On March 16, 250 people attended an emergency rally initiated by the Stop the War Coalition (STWC) in response to the aerial bombardment and killings in Falluja, Iraq. Protesters marched to the US consulate, demanding "Iraq for the
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Vannessa Hearman MELBOURNE — On April 14, 50 members of the Timor Sea Justice Campaign met outside the High Court to launch the group. Comedian Rod Quantock was joined by protesters disguised as Prime Minister John Howard and foreign minister
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SYDNEY — Canadian academic Leo Panitch discussed the making of global capitalism at a meeting of 25 people on April 14, organised by the Socialist Alliance. Panitch is co-editor of Socialist Register, a professor of political science at York
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2 ACT Labor government bans appeals CANBERRA - On April 16, the ACT ALP government responded to the Save the Ridge group's March 31 court victory by announcing not only an appeal, but also a change to land planning regulations so that objections
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1 Channel 31 forced off air SYDNEY — In the Federal Court on April 16, Justice Ronald Sackville upheld the Australian Broadcasting Authority's decision to award TV Sydney with the broadcasting licence previously held by Community TV Sydney
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Chris Atkinson, Melbourne "We support the mounting campaign of the Iraqi people to rid their country of foreign military occupation", said Adelaide Resistance activist Amy McDonell in the opening report of Resistance's national conference on April
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3 Muslims protest Iraq war SYDNEY — Chanting "Down, down Washington!" in English and "America go to hell!" in Arabic, 400 Muslims marched down the main road of the western Sydney suburb of Auburn to the local park on April 11. Speakers at
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Alex Bainbridge, Hobart Doctors began strike action on April 15 and a community rally was held that same day as part of a campaign to restore services at the Mersey Hospital in northern Tasmania. The private operator of the hospital, Healthscope,
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Unoccupied I "This is [US President George] Bush's 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office, according to a tally by CBS News. Adding his 78 visits to Camp David
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Sarah Stephen Conceding the situation in the war-torn country was not "settling down", immigration minister Amanda Vanstone announced on April 10 that the government would lift the freeze on processing asylum applications from Iraqis on three-year
Analysis
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While government and opposition ministers ruminate ceaselessly about what kind of "exit strategy" is needed to get troops out of Iraq, the anti-war movement has been shouting its strategy: "Troops out now!" Prime Minister John Howard may have
World
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Alex Miller In March, Scottish Socialist Party MSP Frances Curran launched a campaign aimed at securing legislation in the Scottish Parliament that would provide a daily free, nutritious school meal for all children in Scottish schools. The SSP
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Max Lane Despite what some media may tell us, the 2004 Indonesian election results indicate that there is no nostalgic swing to the past, but instead a popular rejection of the elit politik. Not a single major political party has increased its
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Wolfgang Pomrehn, Berlin Despite the predictions of one of Germany's biggest trade union newspapers, Europe was not on the move on April 3, the first European action day against social cuts. But in Germany the turnout was overwhelming. More then
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Since March 1, 5000 Scottish nursery nurses (childcare workers) have been on strike for better pay. It is 15 years since the low-paid workers had a pay review. Currently paid £13,000 a year, the workers are demanding £18,000. While more
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Rupen Savoulien A series of bombings and shootings on March 29 left at least 19 people dead and dozens more wounded in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, according to official reports. There were also unconfirmed reports of numerous other
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Ali Abunimah The April 14 meeting between US President George Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Washington sent Palestinian leaders into a flying panic. But their response reeks of desperation and self-interest rather than any real
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Doug Lorimer BBC television journalist Tara Sutton reported on February 4 that one of the first signs people see as they enter the Iraqi city of Fallujah in March reads: "Welcome to Fallujah — burial ground of the Americans." The mass rebellion
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Susan Dwyer, Chicago After more than 20 years, someone with inside information has confirmed the stories told by dozens of African American men — that Chicago police under the command of Jon Burge tortured suspects at Areas 2 and 3 police
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Doug Lorimer For the first time, the regime in Washington has been forced to directly confront the comparison between its 1960s and 1970s Vietnam War and its current war in Iraq. In an April 7 congressional debate, Joseph Biden, a senior
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Sarah Stephen South Korea's April 15 general election has resulted in a shift to the left. Ten representatives to the 299-member parliament were elected from the labour movement-based Democratic Labor Party. The DLP, which previously had no
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Eva Cheng On April 11, more than 20,000 people marched to China's central government liaison office in Hong Kong. They were protesting Beijing's backtrack from a promise, made before the 1997 handover of Hong Kong's sovereignty to China, that the
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Robyn Marshall, Caracas Jorge Rodriguez, one of the five members of Venezuela's National Elections Council (CNE), announced on April 14 that the re-verification of signatures on the right-wing opposition's petition for a referendum to recall
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Alex Miller The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) will initiate a campaign to abolish the local council tax wuith a mass demonstration in Glasgow on April 24, and with the presentation of bill in the Scottish Parliament by SSP MSP Tommy Sheridan. In
Culture
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They sailed for survival, for peace and justice,They sailed for each other, they put their faith in us,But you hold them in your gulags, your island cells of shame,To teach them all a lesson, you hold them in our name. They sailed across the oceanA
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REVIEW BY LACHLAN MALLOCH The Barbarian InvasionsWritten and directed by Denys ArcandWith Remy Girard, Stephane Rousseau and Marie-Josee CrozeOpens nationally April 8. In the beginning, Australian audiences could be forgiven for thinking The
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REVIEW BY KIM BULLIMORE Marianas in Combat: Tet Puebla and the Mariana Grajales Women's Platoon in the Cuban revolutionary war, 1956-1958Edited by Mary-Alice WalkerPathfinder Press, 200397 pages, $22. "How can we give rifles to women when there
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REVIEW BY SARAH STEPHEN OsamaWriteen and directed by Siddiq BarmakDistributed by Sharmill FilmsWith Marina Golbahari, Arif Herati, Zubaida SaharShowing in Sydney from April 29 at the Chauvel, Hayden Orpheum Cremorne and Valhalla Cinemas Osama