Deirdre Griswold
Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 has become a huge box office hit, even though the Disney Corporation did everything it could to torpedo the documentary. This alone makes it important to evaluate the film and try to understand why
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Tony Kevin We find it easier to deal with whistleblowing disclosures out of government on small stories than on big ones. Often , the really big ones don't even need whistleblowers — they are all there already on the public record. Yet, they do
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The postal division of the Victorian communications union has been under left-wing leadership since a sweeping victory for the members Reform ticket in July 2003. The division's secretary, Joan Doyle, discussed the state of her union's struggle at a
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Compassionate On August 18, I received a letter from [immigration minister] Amanda Vanstone. She says: "We should not allow the debate about failed asylum seekers who arrived unauthorised by boats to detract from Australia's generous and
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Lee Sustar, Caracas Venezuela's poor met the news of Hugo Chavez's referendum victory with joy. Thousands of people from the nearby barrio of Catia jammed the streets around Miraflores, the presidential palace, just as they did in April 2002 to
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Sarah Stephen The Justice Project was launched in early July in front of a crowd of 4000 in the Melbourne Town Hall. Its members include barrister and refugee campaigner Julian Burnside, academic Robert Manne, former Liberal prime minister Malcolm
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Roberto Jorquera Thousands of Venezuelans gathered outside the Miraflores presidential palace on August 16 to hear radical left-wing President Hugo Chavez claim victory soon after the National Electoral College (CNE) released the results of a
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Tariq Ali Hugo Chavez's victory will have repercussions beyond the borders of Venezuela. It is a triumph of the poor against the rich and it is a lesson that Lula in Brazil and Kirchner in Argentina should study closely. Chavez defeated his
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Chris Slee, Melbourne East Timorese foreign minister Jose Ramos Horta, addressing a meeting of 500 people in Hawthorn Town Hall on August 13, explained his proposed solution to the disagreement with Australia over the Timor Gap. He outlined the
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Kirsty Sword-Gusmao, chairperson of the Alola Foundation and wife of East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao, addressed a public meeting attended by 100 people at the Australia Institute for International Affairs in Canberra on August 2. This is an
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Rachel Evans On August 13, the federal government and the Labor opposition voted in the Senate to ban same-sex marriage by passing the Marriage Amendment Act, which defines marriage as being exclusively between a man and a woman. The legislation
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Sarah Stephen On August 16, we finally got confirmation that PM John Howard deliberately lied when he claimed, days before the 2001 federal election, that there was proof that asylum seekers on the Olong threw their children overboard. The welcome
News
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Jim McIlroy, Brisbane The Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela is an "unprecedented revolution in participatory democracy", Leonel Vivas, Venezuelan ambassador to Australia, told an audience of around 70 people on August 7. When Hugo Chavez was
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Alex Milne, Melbourne On August 16, a public forum held in the Melbourne Town Hall heard speakers address a variety of nuclear-related issues, including the new nuclear reactor being constructed at Lucas Heights in suburban Sydney and the
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SYDNEY — Anne Gardiner, an opposition candidate for general secretary of the Public Service Association (PSA), the union covering state public servants in NSW and general staff on NSW universities, has described NSW Liberal Party leader John
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MELBOURNE — On August 17, a range of speakers addressed a public forum organised by the Darebin Ethnic Communities Council on the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the Darfur region of Sudan. Malcolm Witton, Victorian manager of World Vision,
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Socialist Alliance member Alex Bainbridge and environmental activist Jimi Cocking outside the Launceston Magistrate's Court on August 17, after police dropped charges against them. The two activists had been arrested protesting against PM John
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As the Green Left Weekly website continues to be the number 1 political website in Australia, we're discovering its prominence on the search engine Google. A friend of one of our Canberra GLW distributors wanted to catch up with the latest gossip
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Chris Latham, Perth On August 17, 40 police broke up the six-week-old Forest Rescuers' protest camp in the Ludlow Forest near Busselton in south-west Western Australia, evicting 70 protesters. The move against the camp followed the granting of
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Jenny Long, Sydney Following two weeks of rolling 24-hour stoppages, cleaners from 100 public schools and TAFE colleges across inner-city Sydney mounted community information pickets at their schools before rallying at the office of NSW education
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An August 21 dinner organised to raise funds for Green Left Weekly and the Socialist Alliance turned into a celebration of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution, after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez easily defeated a recall referendum on August 15.
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MELBOURNE — On August 21, Irish Socialist Party parliamentarian Joe Higgins addressed a meeting of 70 people as part of week-long Australian speaking tour which included public meetings in Newcastle, Sydney and Perth. Higgins is a member of the
Analysis
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The revelation that PM John Howard knew asylum seekers were innocent of the charge of throwing their children overboard, even as he continued to tell voters that it was true, is hardly a shock to most of us. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, politicians
World
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Norman Brewer, Bremen The number of people taking part in the weekly Montagsdemonstrationen (Monday demonstrations) across Germany has been tripling from week to week. On August 16, more than 100,000 people marched in more than 100 cities,
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Malik Miah, San Francisco Throughout the second half of the 20th century, the trade unions in the United States were regarded by working people as the preeminent vehicles for the defence of labour's interests because they won the best wages, health
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For the last two weeks, there has been considerable discussion in Melbourne's Age comparing the success and role of independent and Catholic schools versus state schools. The discussion began on July 26, with the release of the "On Track" survey.
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Raul Bassi & Federico Fuentes On June 29, under the headline "US concerned by piqueteros advance", Argentina's main daily newspaper, Clarin, quoted an anonymous "high level source from the US state department" voicing "concern" over the
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Kylie Moon, Sydney Family and friends were angry and in tears on August 14 after hearing the NSW coroner's findings on the death of the 17-year-old son of Gail Hickey. Coroner John Abernathy described the February 14 fatality in Redfern as a "freak
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On August 7, New National Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk announced that he would be joining the African National Congress and encouraged other NNP members to do likewise. Although the NNP will still exist — the ANC allowing dual membership
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Omar Karmi, Ramallah "My daughter has only seen her father twice in her life", said one woman. "It's been two months since I last saw my husband." A young boy, in a faltering voice, then recited a poem he had written to his father, also a prisoner,
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BOLIVIA: Landless farmers protest On August 16, thousands of landless peasants began marching from several points of Bolivia to the capital, joining thousands of peasants already protesting in the country's south. The march is demanding Landless
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Every night of the year 100,000 Australians are homeless. Of these, 36,000 are homeless children. Domestic and family violence is the most common reason for people seeking emergency accommodation. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
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Barry Sheppard, San Francisco "The Democratic Party's campaign of dirty tricks to keep [independent left candidates] Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo off the presidential ballot constitutes the most serious threat to voting rights in the US since the
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Rohan Pearce "Few people doubt that US military forces have the ability to overwhelm Iraqi rebels. But as was the case in Fallujah earlier this year, the need to balance force with politics has stripped away many of their advantages", observed an
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Jeff Shantz, Toronto Working conditions at Toronto's elite Metropolitan Hotel have been so brutal for so long that many among its predominantly immigrant workforce refer to it as a "five star sweatshop". However, when Met workers turned to their
Culture
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Review by Paul Benedek The President Versus David HicksWritten and directed by Curtis Levy & Bentley DeanScreening nationally "When we took on this film project we were going to follow the legal proceedings around the arrest of David Hicks",
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Review by Sarah Stephen Vicious Streaks: Seven Stories for the New WorldWritten by Alex BrounDirected by George Ogilvie & Lee LewisDarlinghurst Theatre, Greenknowe Avenue, Potts Pointuntil September 4$27/$21 Bookings (02) 8356 9987 "It's about an
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Simon Butler It Can't Happen Here: A Political History of Student ActivismBy Graham HastingsEmpire Times Press, Adelaide, 2003$30 (pb) On September 27, 1971, five student draft resisters who had refused to fight in the Vietnam War announced to