July 6
1971: Demonstrators disrupt a Springbok rugby match in Australia with smoke bombs.
July 9
1999: Police storm a Tehran University hostel in Iran, sparking days of student protests.
July 10
1917: Emma Goldman is jailed for two years
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Karen Fletcher & Sue Bolton, Melbourne Up to 150,000 working people defied current industrial laws to march on Melbourne's city streets on June 30, in protest at the federal Coalition government's next wave of attacks on workers' rights. The
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Sarah Stephen Between June 22 and June 26, Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers, acting on warrants issued by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), raided 10 homes in Sydney and Melbourne, allegedly to disrupt the activities
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The federal Coalition government is attacking single-parent families from several directions at once. Welfare "reforms" will force single mothers to find paid work, despite their child-raising responsibilities. The proposed changes to family law will
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Better babies? Speaking at the National Press Club recently, prominent bioethicist Julian Savulescu argued for embryonic research aimed at making genetic enhancements to humans. He made some worthwhile points. There is a moral continuum running
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The ALP's continued rightward shift opens up spaces for left alternatives. Labor's refusal to act as a real alternative to the Coalition during the last federal election contributed to their electoral routing and deepened the disillusionment of a
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Chris Latham Despite heavy showers, 20,000 people joined the Unions WA-organised rally in Perth on June 30 against PM John Howard's proposed industrial relations laws. Union contingents converged on the Perth Cultural Centre with chants of "What do
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Allen Myers, Phnom Penh Adrian Skerritt ("Write on", GLW #629) is upset that I reported that buildings in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC)are freshly painted and that millions of ordinary people there have motorbikes. He similarly objects to my description
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Sue Bolton Union leaders around Australia were overwhelmed by the size of the mobilisations against the federal Coalition government's anti-union laws. Up to 300,000 people joined the protests during the Australian Council of Trade Unions' week of
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Estimates of attendance at protest rallies and meetings against the Coalition government's anti-union laws include: June 30 Adelaide — 7000 Brisbane — 20,000-25,000 Cairns — 2000 Canberra (June 26) — 500 Darwin — 2000
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Pip Hinman According to Marcus Clayton, an industrial lawyer and labour activist, the government's new workplace relations bills are designed to "provide the legal framework for bosses to slash wages and conditions, smash collective organisation,
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Kerry Smith, Sydney On August 30, at a cocktail party in the Sydney Opera House, Prime Minister John Howard will open the fifth Forbes Global CEO Conference — a corporate scumbag festival of the highest proportions. More than 300 CEOs — war
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Norm Dixon The mass media hype about "a new deal between rich and poor", in response to the powerful Group of Eight industrialised countries' plan to cancel multilateral debts owed by 18 mainly African countries, has led many people to believe that
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Susan Price, Sydney Billed as Australia's biggest meeting of workers, the July 1 Unions NSW Sky Channel-linked protest meetings against PM John Howard's attacks on unions and workers — held simultaneously at 219 venues across NSW — outstripped
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Matthew Davis, Perth In response to the federal Coalition government's unfair changes to the disability support pension, peak body Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO) has initiated Campaign Enable. The campaign will target 16
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John Pilger LONDON — The front page of the June 12 Observer announced, "$55bn Africa debt deal 'a victory for millions'". The "victory for millions" is a quotation of Bob Geldof, who said, "Tomorrow 280 million Africans will wake up for the first
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Susan Price & Jim McIlroy A Sydney coalition of union activists, combining the Defend Workers Rights and Unions Coalition and the newly-formed Union Activists Network, distributed thousands of leaflets at meetings across NSW on July 1, calling on
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During the 20th century, the Earth's average temperature increased by 0.6 degrees Celcius. The warmest year of that century was 1998, and the warmest decade was the 1990s. During the 20th century, the sea level rose by 10-20cm, and the Earth's snow
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Ema C, Hobart Working as a prostitute is not illegal in Tasmania, but it is illegal to "live off the earnings of a prostitute". The Tasmanian Sex Industry Regulation Bill, introduced into Tasmanian parliament on June 7, would have allowed for legal
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Sue Bull, Geelong Ten-thousand workers jammed the streets of Geelong in the pouring rain on June 30 to protest PM John Howard's proposed anti-union legislation. Not only was every union represented, but pensioners, young children, disabled
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Sarah Stephen Amnesty International released a highly critical report on June 30 titled "Australia: The impact of indefinite detention — the case to change Australia's mandatory detention regime". The report explores the appalling human cost of
News
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Jim McIlroy, Brisbane "Now's the time — we're in the trenches", Platypus Action Group spokesperson John Woodlands told protesters on June 24. "Enough is enough. It's now or never.... We're not moving until we save this place." Woodlands was
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MELBOURNE — Sixty people gathered at Comrades Bar on July 1 to farewell participants in a soldiarity brigade to Venezuela. The even was jointly organised by Green Left Weekly, the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) and the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity
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SYDNEY — A new analysis by the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) of the impact of the federal government's changes to welfare, announced in the May budget, reveals that many people who find part-time work or undertake study after July
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What it's really all about "An early withdrawal would have serious negative consequences. Iraq would be in danger of exploding into civil war; jihadists would claim they had beaten the American infidels; many Iraqis would feel abandoned by the
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SYDNEY — A forum on the politics of war was held at the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre on June 26, organised by the Newtown and Marrickville peace groups. Donna Mulhearn, journalist, aid worker and "human shield" during the Iraq war, and state
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Paul Oboohov, Canberra On June 29, 200 people attended a public forum organised by Unions ACT at Old Parliament House to hear a range of speakers on Prime Minister John Howard's planned new anti-union laws. Paul Munro, the retired vice-president
World
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On June 20, the body of Andres Arroyo Segura was found close to the site of the Baba Dam project. Segura had recently received death threats because he headed the bi-province committee of farmers' organisations opposing the dam. Before his overthrow
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On June 30, after five days without water and 11 without food, Iranian Seyed agreed to end his hunger strike because the local Social Services department agreed to give him emergency housing, money for food, and legal assistance to appeal the
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According to a June 29 Forsa poll, the new Left Party, formed by an alliance between the Party of Democratic Socialism and the Electoral Alternative for Jobs and Social Justice (WASG) could expect 11% of the vote in the September 18 parliamentary
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On June 29, Mehmet Tarhan, who has refused to serve his compulsory military service, was re-arrested on insubordination charges. Tarhan was asked to apply for a discharge on the grounds that he is an openly gay man, but refuses to endorse such
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Stuart Munckton On June 1, 20,686 people graduated from Mission Ribas, which gives poor Venezuelans their first chance to pass high school. One of the most obvious aspects of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution, led by President Hugo Chavez, the
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Eva Cheng The US government is stepping up its attempts to blame China for some of its own economic woes. In a May report to the US Congress, it threatened to officially designate China a "currency manipulating economy" if by October it hadn't
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Kim Bullimore On June 28, the Israeli courts found former soldier Wahid Taysir al Heib guilty of the manslaughter of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist, Tom Hurdnall. Hurdnall, a 22-year-old British student, was shot in the head by
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In a major blow to civil libertarians and technological development, on June 27, the US Supreme Court ruled that manufacturers of peer-to-peer (P2P) software can be held liable for the copyright infringements of those using their software. The case,
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Doug Lorimer In a result that has stunned most Western and Iranian political commentators, on June 24 Iranian voters decisively rejected business-backed candidate Ayallotah Hashemi Rafsanjani, an advocate of neoliberal "free-market" economic
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James Balowski, Jakarta After criticisms that intelligence agencies had failed to prevent a May 28 deadly bomb blast at a crowded market in central Sulawesi, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered regional governments to revive the Regional
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Alex Miller On June 27, Scottish Socialist Party activists, including parliamentarian Frances Curran, simultaneously occupied the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh and at a branch in central Glasgow. Both protests lasted 30
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James Balowski, Jakarta "Based on everything we have obtained, the [National Intelligence] Agency [BIN] is believed to have played a major role in a well-planned conspiracy to murder Munir", Asmara Nababan, the deputy chairperson of the Fact
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Bernie Stephens, Harare The slogan "Go back to the rural areas where you come from" sums up President Robert Mugabe and his government's hatred for the workers and urban poor in Zimbabwe. The government boasts that Operation Murambatsvina ("Drive
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Alison Dellit In the largest protest in Scotland's history, more than 200,000 people, most wearing white, joined the July 2 Make Poverty History march through Edinburgh, ahead of the July 6-9 G8 summit. "Life doesn't have to be this way",
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Israelis have reacted with shock and outrage to images broadcast on television on June 29 of a bunch of right-wing extremists trying to stone an unconscious Palestinian teenager to death in the Gaza Strip. The incident started when young men from an
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On June 29, a heavily armed gunmen on the Brazil-Paraguay border attacked a group of Guarani Indians, hours after the Guarani, part of the Sombrerito community, had moved back onto land they had been forcibly evicted from 30 years ago by a cattle
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Waving red hammer-and-sickle flags and banners of Lebanon's Communist Party (LCP), thousands of people marched through Beirut on June 24 behind the hearse carrying the body of assassinated LCP leader George Hawi. Hawi led the LCP during Lebanon's
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Rohan Pearce The final declaration of the World Tribunal on Iraq, released on June 27 in Istanbul, strongly defended the right of Iraqis to resist the occupation, including by taking up arms against the occupying forces. "There is widespread
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Rohan Pearce "In February 2003, weeks before war was declared on Iraq, millions of people protested in the streets of the world. That call went unheeded. No international institution had the courage or conscience to stand up to the aggression of
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Norm Dixon @into = Two million South African workers went on strike and hundreds of thousands marched in protest at continuing job losses and poverty in a national strike called by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) on June 27.
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On June 29, Canada's House of Commons passed a bill legalising same-sex marriages. The bill, which included a caveat allowing religious institutions to refuse to marry same-sex couples, passed by a comfortable margin, although one member of the
Culture
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For the fourth year running, Australia's only prison radio broadcasts will go to air. Indigenous prisoners in Victoria will be broadcasting live radio from July 4-8 on community radio 3CR during NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and
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Dare to be a Daniel: Then and NowBy Tony BennHutchinson, 2004278 pages REVIEW BY ALEX MILLER Tony Benn is rightfully one of the most well-respected figures in the history of the British Labour Party during the second half of the 20th century.
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What do youtell us tonight?That part of a ceiling ata wedding receptioncollapsed,leaving bride and groombruised.Meanwhile the worldwidemarch of peopledefied claims the war is over.Perhaps you ignored usbecause you echo those claims,like a friend of
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InfluenceWritten by David WilliamsonDirected by Bruce MylesStarring John Waters, Octavia Barron-Martin, Zoe Carides and Vanessa DowningMelbourne Theatre CompanyAt the Playbox, Melbourne, until August 30 REVIEW BY VANNESSA HEARMAN Influence is
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Fascism and Football — Mussolini, Hitler and Franco all understood the massive propaganda potential of football. SBS, Saturday, July 9, 9.30pm. Message Stick: NAIDOC Week Special — Inside the lives of Indigenous Australians, presented from
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Anyone who has participated in organising broad campaigns and protests will know that on many issues people split in two along very similar lines: on the one hand, people coming from the various social movements or young people