Message Stick: Child Artists of Carrolup — Indigenous children discover and excel at art at the Carrolup School of Western Australia in 1945. ABC, Friday, December 3, 6pm.
Family Story: Wyrria, Small Boy — Explores the daily realities of a
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Chris Latham The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's sixth annual Container Stevedoring Monitoring Report, which was made public on November 15, claims that the cost reduction gains made by the stevedore bosses as a result of the 1998
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NT Police Photo of Douglas Scott (#5). The position of the sheet conflicts with the injury depicted in photo #19. This also shows what appears to be cotton wool in the left ear, denied by Dr Kevin Lee.From Green Left Weekly, December 1, 2004.
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Despite the US Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that it is a violation of a woman's constitutional right to privacy for any US public authority to ban abortion, the US government bans the performance of abortions at all US military medical
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Karen Fletcher In September 1851, a year after the colony of Victoria was formed, 75-year-old John Dunlop found gold under the wattle trees at Ballarat. By then the Australian colonies were already alight with gold fever. Earlier that year an
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Eva Cheng World crude oil prices have shot up by 70% in the last year, with little sign of them coming down substantially soon. In Australia, petrol prices seem to have settled above $1 per litre, a level hard to believe even just a year ago. If
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Sue Bull The Eureka Stockade at Ballarat on December 3, 1854, has become the most celebrated rebellion in Australian history. Anyone who considers themselves as progressive sees it as a decisive event in the development of democracy within this
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NT police photo of Douglas Scott (#19) shows an injury that could not have been inflicted by the soft sheet during hanging as depicted in other police photos. The existence of the injury was not reported and is still denied by Dr Kevin Lee. From
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Dave Holmes, Melbourne Waiting for the tram at the busy Melbourne Central stop on Swanston Street, I look across at the State Library. It's a lovely building and very easy on the eye. A classic Victorian construction (it was built in the 1850s),
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Sarah Fuller & Rachel Evans, Sydney In late July, Mission Australia was granted permission from the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board to ban all transgender women who are not "recognised transgender persons" from its publicly funded homeless women's
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Sarah Stephen In June 2002, the Australian immigration department claimed to have proof that Afghan refugee Ali Bakhtiyari was actually a plumber from Pakistan called Ashgar Ali. In December 2002, Ali's temporary visa was cancelled and he was
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Bill Mason, Brisbane On November 22, more than 200 Aboriginal community members held a meeting and marched on the police station on Palm Island, off the north-Queensland coast. They were protesting the death in custody of local man Cameron
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Palestine Members of Socialist Alliance have every reason to be proud of Kim Bullimore and Rihab Charida who have left the safety of Sydney to enter the most dangerous regions of the Middle East to report to the Australian public about the
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Just a couple of weeks ago, on November 11, anti-nuclear whistleblower Mordecai Vanunu was re-arrested in Jerusalem by Israeli police. The Socialist Alliance has joined the call for his immediate release, and the removal of all restrictions on his
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James Petras I am reading William Shirer's Berlin Diary, a journalist's account of Nazi political propaganda during the 1930s, as I watch the US "news" reports of the violent assault on Fallujah. The US mass media "reports", the style, content
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Kathy Newnam, Darwin In an unprecedented move, Letty Scott has brought private criminal charges against three NT prison officers — Barry Medley, Michael Lawson and Harold Robertson — for the assault and murder of her husband Douglas Scott on
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Sam Wainwright Imagine working for 19 hours without a single break, finishing at 3am and then returning to work at 7.45am that same morning for another shift. Conditions such as these have been the norm for workers at Oceanic Cruises, a company
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Dean Mighell I've been attending the Eureka celebrations in Ballarat for many years. Historians and academics — and even left-wing activists, some of them in the trade union movement — often argue about the aims and motives of the miners who
News
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Sarah Stephen, Sydney Ismail, a Sri Lankan man, was deported from Sydney's Villawood detention centre on November 23. A previous attempt to deport him on October 19 failed after he panicked and harmed himself. Ismail was diagnosed by Professor
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SYDNEY — On November 23, Zanny Begg was stopped by police while installing a work, Checkpoint, for the Blacktown Art Gallery's "Out of Gallery" project. Begg explained that she was "creating 10 'checkpoints' for 'weapons of mass distraction' in
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Bill Mason, Brisbane "Resistance is a just response to occupation; it takes various forms, including armed struggle", Louay Alzaher, representing the Iraq Solidarity Committee, told a public forum on the theme "Iraq in crisis" on November 22.
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Jim McIlroy The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) has slammed the decision by federal welfare agency Centrelink to cut 175 jobs from its staff in Victoria. On November 23 the union described as "utter nonsense" claims by Centrelink
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Pip Hinman, Sydney The Leichhardt Town Hall was filling up fast on November 22 when federal Labor leader Mark Latham arrived. Five minutes later people were still pouring in, curious about Labor's plans for the next three years. Latham's
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Selena Black, Sydney The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union said on November 22 that a 9% decline in James Hardie profits showed that the community boycott campaign against the company is having an impact. According to CFMEU NSW
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Tony Iltis, Melbourne On November 24, peace activist Reta Kaur was acquitted in the Melbourne Magistrates Court of criminal damage after she wrote "The killing has started" in red paint and placed red hand prints on two statues outside the US
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Chris Slee, Melbourne Daryl Croke, who works as a swimming teacher, coach and lifeguard at a leisure centre in the Moreland area, told a November 24 meeting in Brunswick that understaffing endangers the lives of swimmers at many Melbourne pools.
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Graham Matthews, Melbourne Six-hundred-and-fifty people packed the Capitol Theatre to capacity on November 26 to hear journalist and film-maker John Pilger speak on the power of the corporate media. The public forum was organised by Green Left
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Jon Lamb, Darwin Environmentalists, traditional owners and local residents are increasingly concerned over toxic waste and poisonous mine tailings leaching from the abandoned Mt Todd gold mine near Katherine. Residents on the Edith River,
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Sarah Stephen Tensions began to boil over inside the Baxter immigration detention centre at the end of November, with a series of attempted suicides and hospitalisations. Previously, nurses saw patients in the nurses station inside the compound.
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Solidarity and union spirit were on display on November 25, as 6000 unionists gathered outside the State Library to protest the jailing of former Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) Victorian secretary Craig Johnston and the increasing criminalisation of trade union struggle.
The rally called for Johnston's immediate release and the start of a fight-back campaign against PM John Howard's reactionary agenda.
World
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UNITED STATES: Further attacks on abortion On November 21, the US Congress passed a bill that will block funding to any federal, state or local agencies that act against health-care providers and insurers because they do not provide abortions or
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James Balowski, Jakarta For the second time since the murder of renowned Indonesian human rights activist Munir, his family has been threatened — this time with a clear warning not to blame the Indonesian military (TNI) for his death. On
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James Brittain Since its formal inception in 1964, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) has maintained a unique presence within Colombia and Latin America in general. Unlike many revolutionary movements created
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Stuart Munckton In April 2002, shortly after the military coup that temporarily overthrew Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, author William Blum asked on the counterpunch website: "How do we know that the [Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)] was
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INDIA: Left sweeps university election The left-wing All-India Students' Federation won the president's position of the student union at Jawaharlal Nehru University in late October. It is the first time the AISF has won the position in 30 years.
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Kim Bullimore, West Bank According to the US-Israeli script, the death of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat on November 11 was suppose to spark a violent power struggle within the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and in its leading
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Doug Lorimer The 35-member board of governors of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) began meeting in Vienna on November 25 to review Iran's compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). The board will consider a
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Jorge Jorquera A national civic strike demanding land redistribution has come to an end in Paraguay, with hundreds of campesinos (rural workers) still imprisoned and none of the demands of the strike met, not withstanding continuing promises by
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Rohan Pearce According to a November 24 Boston Globe report, the Fallujah resistance has been led by "an electrician and a mosque preacher, both natives of the community". Yet the wave of violence and terror unleashed by the US-led occupation
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Reihana Mohideen, Manila What should have been a straightforward collective bargaining agreement for a wage increase resulted in the killing of 14 people (including two children) and the arrest of 115 workers on November 16, at Hacienda Luisita, a
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On November 23, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, visiting Madrid, attended a mass meeting of workers. This account of the astonishing event was written by El Militante member Emilia Lucena. It first appeared at
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BRITAIN: Students strike against racism On November 25, the day after racist chanting marred an England-Spain soccer international, French teacher Sebastian Gnahore somewhat apprehensively went to work at his school in Leicester. Gnahore had
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David Bacon, San Francisco Sometimes the fate of a single battle foretells the outcome of a war, long before it's over. The end of the San Francisco hotel lockout promises to be this kind of watershed moment. On November 20, minutes before
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James Balowski, Jakarta The new government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has barely been in office one month but has already broken a key election promises — to seek a peaceful solution to the prolonged conflict in Indonesia's
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CHILE: Thousands protest APEC Tens of thousands of Chileans turned out over three days to protest the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Chile. The biggest march was on November 19, organised by the Chilean Social Forum and attended by
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An October 22 Associated Press report has sparked a discussion in Haiti about the spiralling numbers of sexual assaults. The report quoted human rights lawyer Renan Hedouville reporting that his civil rights organisation CARLI, had received more than
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UNITED STATES: Skipping the ads to be illegal The new Intellectual Property Protection Act currently before US Congress, has some strange provisions. Among them, is a provision to differentiate between the legal activity of fast-forwarding
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The Korean Federation of Trade Unions pulled off a one-day strike on November 26, in protest at a new bill that will attack the rights of temporary workers. The federation estimated that 600,000 workers participated in the strikem, which closed
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Stuart Munckton On November 18, two bombs ripped through a car in Caracas, killing 38-year-old state prosecutor Danilo Anderson. Anderson was leading the campaign to bring to justice those responsible for the April 2002 military coup that briefly
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UNITED STATES: Costa Ricans sue chemical companies Thousands of Costa Rican banana farmers have launched a lawsuit against Shell Chemical Co, Dow Chemical, Dole Food Company, Chiquita Brands International and Fresh Del Monte Produce. The farmers
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Doug Lorimer A week after US Marine General John Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, claimed on November 18 that the battle for Fallujah was over, US troops were still engaged in intense battles with Iraqi resistance fighters
Culture
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Real GoneTom WaitsAnti-records$29.95 RRP REVIEW BY STUART MUNCKTON "Writing songs about the war is like throwing peanuts at a gorilla", Tom Waits told the Los Angeles Times in August. "But then I think, look how important soul music was during
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The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and his Backyard Nuclear ReactorBy Ken SilversteinFourth Estate, 2004$29.95 (pb) David Hahn could have been taken for a typical US teenager in the 1990s. He loved driving
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"Butchered blond woman found with slit throat" cried the Sydney Morning Herald, in blond coloured tears. But the 100,000s of Iraqis who have died are called "insurgents" and it is left at that. I'll stand on a box and shout at the masses of
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Tommy Goes CaracasDirected and produced by Aimara RequesCo-produced by Cassandra McGowanFor upcoming screening, contact your local activist centre as listed on page 2, or visit <http://www.resistance.org.au>. REVIEW BY STUART MUNCKTON