Tom Flanagan, Lismore
Thirty people gathered in the departures area of Lismore airport on July 15 and chanted "shame ACON, shame" at representatives of the AIDS Council of NSW (ACON) as they waited to board their return plane to Sydney.
The
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Abortion Tony Abbott apparently wants "late-term" abortions banned. Why? He probably believes it is a terrible wrong to (intentionally) kill any (innocent) human being and really wants an end to (virtually) all abortions. However, if it is
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Josephine Cox is a 28-year-old post-graduate student in history at La Trobe University, who has been involved in refugee and anti-war campaigns. In 2001 she contested the Aston by-election. Cox's two major concerns are the Free Trade Agreement with
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On August 8, a British documentary titled My Foetus, depicting the abortion of a four-week-old foetus, will screen on the ABC. In the July 10 Daily Telegraph, NSW lead Senate candidate for the Socialist Alliance, Kylie Moon, was asked to comment on
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Peter Mares [This article, which first appeared on Australian Policy Online <http://www.apo.org.au>, was written before the July 13 announcement by immigration minister Amanda Vanstone to allow some 9500 refugees on temporary visas to
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Sarah Stephen The US administration suffered a significant defeat on June 28 when the US Supreme Court ruled that prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had the right to challenge their detention in the US courts. The Australian government was
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[The following text is from a leaflet calling for an "End the lies" rally in Sydney on the Sunday before the federal election.] Three years after the truth was thrown overboard at the last federal election, now is the time to say "No more lies!"
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Our Common Cause: Poverty: a disease that can be cured Australia is one of the richest countries in the world. So it's a disgrace that as many as 23% of its people are living below the poverty line, or that after 12 years of 4% GDP growth, the
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Raul Bassi, the Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Blaxland in Sydney's west, warns federal Labor leader Mark Latham not to retreat on his promise to bring the troops home from Iraq. Pressure from Washington has pushed the ALP to swear
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The planned airing of film-maker Julia Black's documentary, My Foetus on ABC Television's August 8 Compass religious program has sparked a media storm. Should a documentary showing a suction abortion and foetal remains be shown on the ABC? Should
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Tim Anderson In the corporate-media-dominated two-party system that passes for democracy in Australia, there is recurrent confusion over what the Australian Labor Party actually represents. Is Labor a force for social democracy, an "imperfect"
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Cate Faehrmann, Sydney Greens NSW upper-house MP Lee Rhiannon has described the state Labor government's forced closure of a factory outlet in the south-west Sydney suburb of Liverpool, which will benefit a nearby Westfield shopping complex, as a
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Andrew Hall & Sarah Stephen PM John Howard is under major pressure from the broad and growing refugee-rights movement — and some of his own Coalition backbenchers — to change his government's discriminatory refugee policy before the federal
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Susan Price According to Business Review Weekly, it's never a bad year to be rich. In fact, 2004 was a great year for the rich in Australia — they got even richer! Not only that, but the growth in wealth of Australia's top 200 richest Australians
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Peter Boyle If you were listening to the Australia Talks Back program on ABC Radio National on July 7, you would have heard Tessa Court, from the web monitoring company Hitwise, say: "If you look at the top websites that Australians visited just
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Lynda Hansen, Brisbane On July 15, 150 members and supporters of the Queensland AIDS Council (QuAC) rallied outside Parliament House to protest massive government funding cuts to the organisation, announced a week earlier. After 20 years of a
News
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Kamala Emanuel, Hobart More than 700 people rallied in Hobart on July 15 to save Ralphs Bay in the Derwent estuary from a huge canal and housing development. If Walker Corporation's plans are allowed to go ahead, the Ralphs Bay Conservation Area
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CANBERRA — "Ideas to change the world" was the theme of the inaugural socialist ideas conference, held at the Australian National University on July 10. The conference brought together 60 socialists and activists to discuss imperialism,
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Vannessa Hearman, Melbourne A meeting of 500 people packed the Coburg Town Hall on July 11 to discuss the plight of David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, two Australians detained in the US base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The meeting was organised by the
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Jim Green, Adelaide The federal government has been forced to abandon its six-year push to build a national nuclear waste dump near Woomera in South Australia. Polling had shown that the issue could swing marginal seats in South Australia against
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Ruth Ratcliffe, Sydney One hundred and fifty Sydney residents have signed on to a "community pledge" to offer sanctuary in their homes to people detained in Villawood detention centre. Rupen Savoulian, one of the campaign organisers, told Green
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Kay Moore, Lismore Three-hundred women attended the 16th Network of Women Students Australia (NOWSA) conference on July 12-16. The conference discussed the impact of sexism, racism, homophobia and war on women. Guest speakers at the conference
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GEELONG — On July 16, the Socialist Alliance launched its campaign to contest both Geelong lower-house seats in the federal election. Candidates Tim Goodenand Chris Johnson discussed the alliance's commitment to defend workers' rights and the
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Alex Milne, Melbourne The 2004 Students of Sustainability conference was held at La Trobe University on July 11-14. Around 500 environmentalists and other activists, from interstate and overseas, attended. As always, there was an impressive
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Unreasonable lies "One fact is now clear: before the war, the United States intelligence community told the president, as well as the Congress and the public, that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and if left
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Pip Hinman Plans to hold national "End the lies" rallies the Sunday before the federal elections are well underway. Groups in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Hobart have adopted the additional demands, "Troops out! Howard out!" Andrew Hall told
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Dave Riley, Brisbane With the backing of Queensland Labor premier Peter Beattie and the keen endorsement of the federal ALP, Shoalwater Bay will house a military training camp for US forces. In announcing the decision on July 15, defence minister
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Kathy Newnam, Darwin On July 26, the Northern Territory Supreme Court will hear a case against Margot Laughton, who has been charged under the NT's repressive "drug house" laws. Under the laws, introduced by the NT's Labor government in 2002, a
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Paul Benedek, Sydney One-hundred people packed the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre on July to launch the Socialist Alliance's federal election campaign across Sydney. Compered by Raul Bassi, the Socialist Alliance's Blaxland candidate, the launch
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Aaron Benedek& Susan Mullan, Sydney At very short notice, 20 refugee supporters, including Merlin Luck from Channel Ten's Big Brother program, rallied on July 14 to protest the forced transfers of asylum seekers from Sydney's Villawood detention
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Katie Cherrington, Newcastle New South Wales' public school cleaners are fighting to save their jobs. Commerce minister in the NSW Labor government John Della Bosca has announced that new multi-year contracts to clean schools and other public
Analysis
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Following public criticism from leading figures in US President George Bush's administration of his promise to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq "by Christmas", on July 12, federal ALP leader Mark Latham made a partial accommodation. He announced
World
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Roberto Jorquera On July 9, Diego Bautista Urbaneja, a leader of the Coordinadora Democratica (CD, Democratic Coordination) coalition outlined the political program that the opposition plans to implement if it succeeds in ousting the radical
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Eric Ruder With the meltdown of the US occupation of Iraq grabbing the headlines, the Bush administration has been reduced to trumpeting Afghanistan as a model for Iraq. But if Afghanistan represents a victory to the Bush administration, that only
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Kevin Shay, Washington I recently saw Michael Moore's film, Fahrenheit 9/11, which even reviewers for conservative media outlets like Fox News have praised. I knew I would like the documentary, based on reviews I read. But still, I can't remember
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Tanya Reinhart ARIEL, West Bank — Along the route of the "separation barrier", in the West Bank, a new culture is springing up: on one side, soldiers and bulldozers; on the other, Israelis and Palestinians embracing the land. In June, Israel's
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Roberto Jorquera July 26 marks the 51st anniversary of the attack on the Moncada Barracks. The attack, led by Fidel Castro, is regarded in Cuba as the event that initiated the six-year struggle to oust the US-backed capitalist regime of Fulgencio
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PERU: 300,000 strike Hundreds of thousands of people rallied across Peru on July 14 in protest against President Alejandro Toledo's neoliberal economic policies. The 24-hour strike was called by Peru's biggest trade union federation to demand
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Doug Lorimer In several key areas such as electricity supply, employment and health care, Iraqis are now worse off than before the US-led invasion last year. "According to the Pentagon, in early June the population of seven of Iraq's 18
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Elizabeth Schulte, Chicago More than 1 million women have died around the world in the last decade because wealthy nations didn't keep their promises. Ten years ago, at the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in
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Doug Lorimer "Iraqi authorities will take determined steps against illegal bodies of local self-government in Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra", US-appointed Iraqi interior minister Falah al Naqib claimed in an interview with the Russian Novosti news
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Sun Jung Hwang On June 22, Iraqi militants beheaded Kim Sun-il, a Korean employee of a Baghdad-based food supplier for the US army, after Seoul refused to withdraw its troops from Iraq. The South Korean government plans to send 3000 more in
Culture
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REVIEW BY VANNESSA HEARMAN Ita Nian Rasik (Our Own): Songs of East Timor — past, present, futureTeodozio Batista Ximenes$25, including postageEmail orders to <annefor@netconnect.net.au> or phone (03) 5331 1983 Like many who have
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REVIEW BY ROHAN PEARCE Full Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American CenturyBy Stan GoffSoft Skull Press, New York 2004243 pages, US$13.95 pbOrder from <http://www.softskull.com> "For a brief time in 1994 I acted as the
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The attack on Iraq puts the devil on our back —It was illegal; that implies Even if it's successful We all should be regretful, No good is based on lies. And now Bush seeks to tell us for whom we should vote, Tho' himself unelected he's rocking our
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REVIEW BY OWEN RICHARDS Cutting Edge: The World According to BushScreening on SBS, 8.30pm, July 20 & 27 If you're not yet having nightmares about the world being in the hands of a circle of crazed zealots, this should do it. The World According
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Water, The Drop Of Life — Explores regions which have accelerated their water conservation efforts and communities using new technologies to make better use of the available water. SBS, Friday, July 23, 1pm. Message Stick: That Ole Mac Blagic —