Grant Morgan, Auckland
Any worker in New Zealand, if she or he heard Australian PM John Howard's comment about people loving "labour market reform", would respond: "What a load of rubbish!"
New Zealand's Employment Contracts Act, passed by the
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No issue in this country is more pressing than the Coalition's onslaught on the very existence of trade unions. The Howard government's intent goes far beyond routine union-bashing. The goal now is, effectively, to abolish them. Howard's "final
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Julian Coppens On July 17, 1500 people rallied in London in solidarity with the victims of the July 7 London bombings and in opposition to the rising racism and Islamophobia that has resulted. Since the bombings, the Muslim community has been
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Peter Boyle So what's the fuss? Many of us carry in our wallet a Medicare card, a driver's licence with photo, a bank card and a couple of maxed-out credit cards. So what's one more little piece of plastic? The danger lies not in a card but in the
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PM John Howard's proposed industrial relations "reforms" include changing the way minimum wages are set to keep them low. The government wants to replace the Australian Industrial Relation Commission's role in setting the minimum wage with a new
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Bronwyn Jennings, Melbourne One hundred delegates and council members attended the Australian Education Union's Victorian state conference on July 16. Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Brian Boyd condemned Howard's planned industrial
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Peter Boyle In the first week of our emergency appeal we have received $10,845! A very special thank you to Jim Mc, Maree R, Kylie M, Jane B and Simon B who joined the "$1000 Club" — supporters who make donations of $1000 or more. Jane sent
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July 28 1941: Several unions hold 24-hour strike protesting the banning of the Communist Party of Australia. July 30 1936: General strike in Bangladesh protests the killing of demonstrators. 1921: The Communist Party of South Africa is
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Rohan Pearce At a joint press conference with US President George Bush, the leader of the West's fabled "free world", in Washington DC on July 19, Australian PM John Howard emphatically stated: "I'm not going to try and put a time limit on our
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Garry Preston The Australian trade union movement and workers' rights are under attack in a way unseen in this country before. But one only needs to look across the Tasman to see what can happen to workers' rights and conditions under a right-wing
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On July 2, the Workers Charter movement was founded in Auckland, New Zealand, by a group of left, union and social justice activists. The following is a draft charter for discussion and feedback. Every worker has the right to dignity, which our
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London bombings I I logged on to the Green Left Weekly website today for the first time. It was my husband who suggested I look at it. I live in Adelaide but am English. I lived for 10 years in London before leaving in May 2003 to move here, as
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I wrote recently in this column about the seemingly strange fact that many of the wealthiest Australians report being dissatisfied with their lives in general and even with the state of their finances in particular. For example, a greater
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Liam Mitchell, Sydney Individual contracts, Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs), non-union agreements — call them what you will, they are a major part of the federal Coalition government's workplace "reforms". Their main purpose is to break
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Lisa Macdonald, Sydney The ugly face of white supremacism was bared on national television on July 18 when Channel Nine's Current Affair host Ray Martin interviewed Macquarie University associate professor of law Drew Fraser. The interview
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At a joint press conference with British PM Tony Blair in London on July 21, Australian PM John Howard was asked by an Australian reporter working for the pro-war Murdoch press: "Yesterday an Australian bomb victim of July 7 linked the bombings to
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James Crafti, Canberra Indigenous activists converged on Canberra on July 20 for the anniversary of the federal government's attempt in 1972 to destroy the Aboriginal Tent Embassy outside Old Parliament House. The tent embassy was erected on
News
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Sue Bull, Geelong As the campaign against PM John Howard's industrial relations legislation hots up, 88 women unionists in Geelong met over dinner to discuss the fight ahead. The July 21 dinner brought together women from all sections of the
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Marlene Obeid, Sydney The US government claims that investigations by the US Navy's Criminal Investigative Service have found no evidence that two Australian citizens, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habid, were abused while held at the US military prison
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Fiona Alcock, Sydney On July 20, two children — 12-year-old Ian Hwang and his six-year-old sister Janey — were released with their mother, Young Lee, from the Villawood immigration detention centre after the immigration department (DIMIA)
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Bernie Wunsch, Lismore On July 19, Australian Council of Trade Unions president Sharan Burrow made a whirlwind one-day protest tour of the regional NSW town of Lismore. As part of the campaign to oppose the federal Coalition government's changes to
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Just got his CV up to scratch "Philip Cooney resigned as chief of staff of the White House council [on environmental quality] last Friday, two days after the New York Times reported that he edited some descriptions of climate research in a way that
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BRISBANE — Around 400 residents and supporters of the campaign against the controversial Woolworths supermarket development in the small Sunshine Coast hinterland town of Maleny marched on July 16. The project threatens dozens of platypus burrows.
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ADELAIDE — Thirty people, mostly high school students, marched despite a torrential downpour on July 1. The protesters condemned Australia's hypocrisy in creating refugees through military aggression and exploitation of the Third World, then
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Kerry Smith The Nauru consulate-gGeneral informed Greens senator Kerry Nettle on July 20 that she would not be granted a visa to visit the remaining 32 asylum seekers in the Australian detention centre on the Pacific Island. The
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James Vassilopoulos, Melbourne A forklift driver in Footscray ran out of petrol on his way to work. When he turned up, the boss told him that he was sacked, mistakenly believing that the new industrial relations laws had already been introduced, so
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Sue Bull, Ballarat A long campaign by three unions at the University of Ballarat for an enterprise bargaining agreement is coming to a head. After 19 months of negotiations, a no-holds-barred fight is on for a union-based agreement; management is
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Lynda Hansen & Jim McIlroy, Brisbane "We need unity of all the elements of the campaign against Howard's anti-union laws: publicity, community alliances and industrial action", Sue Bolton, the Socialist Alliance's national trade union work
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CANBERRA — Unions ACT will hold a protest rally against the federal Coalition government's proposed industrial laws at the opening of the new Senate at 10am on August 9. Australian Council of Trade Unions president Sharan Burrow will address the
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GREAT BARRIER REEF — This is a recent photograph of live bombing at Raymond Island in the mouth of Shoalwater Bay, inside the Great Barrier Reef marine national park. Raymond Island has been a regular target for ship-to-shore bombardments and
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Kerry Smith Environmentalists and other activists are celebrating following the Victorian Supreme Court's initial rejection of woodchipping giant Gunns Ltd's lawsuit against forest protection campaigners in Tasmania. Last December, Gunns sued 20
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Kathy Newnam, Darwin The campaign against the federal government's planned nuclear dump in the Northern Territory is gathering pace. Anti-nuclear campaigners in Darwin have begun to organise a coalition against the dump and are planning a public
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Liam Mitchell, Sydney A recent case of workers being forced to sign AWAs has ended with a victory after a two-and-a-half week campaign by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU). When workers at Masterton Homes were told they
Analysis
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Women workers on average still earn lower wages than male workers, and will be even worse off under the federal Coalition government's new industrial relations "reforms". According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics' Australian Social Trends
World
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Nick Griffen, the leader of the far-right racist British National Party, pled not guilty on July 21 to four charges of stirring up racial hatred as a result of the July 15 BBC screening of a documentary Secret Agent, which documented an investigation
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Stuart Munckton "Zamora took Caracas" on July 11, according to a July 13 Venezuela Analysis report. More than 6000 peasants and agrarian workers marched to demand an end to the persecution of those who were fighting, as peasant hero Ezequiel Zamaro
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The Moroccan government continues to clamp down on dissent in Western Sahara, the country it occupies, following a pro-independence upsurge in protest in May-June. On July 21, five Saharawi human rights workers were arrested. All of the men have been
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Israeli security forces threatened to put "a bullet in the head" of peaceful Palestinian, Israeli and international peace protesters in Asira village in the Occupied West Bank on July 23. According to a statement issued by the International
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John Miller, Washington DC While media baron Rupert Murdoch toasted Australian PM John Howard at an exclusive business executives' dinner in the US capital on July 18, protesters outside decried his bullying of East Timor over maritime petroleum
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On July 20, around 200 textile workers began marching from Kashan to Tehran to demand payment of their wages. By the evening their numbers had swelled to 600. More than 2500 textile workers in Kashan are on strike because they have not been paid for
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Doug Lorimer The day after his landslide victory in the Kyrgyzstan's July 17 presidential election, Kurmanbek Bakiyev told a press conference the presence of a US military base in the Central Asian republic should be reconsidered. Bakiyev was the
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James Balowski, Jakarta A historic peace agreement has been reached between the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) following a fifth round of negotiations in Helsinki, Finland, which ended on July 17. But strong opposition to
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A planned three-week "border patrol" by the racist Minutemen movement appears to have ended less than 24 hours after it began, after the anti-immigrant vigilantes were outnumbered by peaceful protesters. The racists were organised by the Border
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On July 18, around 30 doctors walked out of Yarmouk Hospital, which takes many of Baghdad's worst cases, to protest Iraqi soldiers' behaviour during a raid. More than 100 patients were left without doctors. The problem occurred on July 17, when
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On July 14, the British Home Office announced that it was suspending the deportation of Zimbabwean asylum seekers pending the outcome of an August 4 High Court test case. Earlier on July 14, in another test case, an asylum seeker applied to the High
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Norman Brewer, Bremen According to an Infratest-dimap poll published on July 20, the new Left Party is likely to get 20% in Saarland, the home state of Oskar Lafontaine, in the September 18 national elections. The ruling Social-Democratic Party,
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Eva Cheng The June 23 US$18.5 billion proposal by China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) to take over US oil firm UNOCAL, an attempt to outbid a US$16.4 billion offer from the US's second biggest oil company ChevronTexaco, triggered an
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On July 20, miners at Konkola Copper Mines, angered by reports that a strike at the mine had been abandoned, erupted. The miners are demanding a 100% salary increase, and were frustrated when the unions representing them agreed to a 30% increase.
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On July 15, half-a-million public sector workers joined a one-day strike to protest cuts to their pensions, a wages freeze and higher taxes. Organised by the Common Front of Civil Service Unions (FP), the strike involved garbage collectors, transport
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Alex Miller Following the expulsion of four of its parliamentarians from the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) has initiated legal action to challenge the ban. The four members of the Scottish parliament (MSPs) — Colin
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On July 11, Port Moresby-based workers at Telikom marched to the prime minister's office, where they told chief secretary Joshua Kalinoe that they were on "indefinite holiday", and would switch off the county's telecommunications. The workers are
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Max Lane "Most polls are showing at the moment that 80% of Filipinos want President Gloria Arroyo to go", Professor Francisco Nemenzo told Green Left Weekly by phone from Manila. Nemenzo was recently elected as chairperson of a new left-wing
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In a midnight raid on July 21, Zimbabwean police forcibly removed hundreds of homeless people from churches in Bulawayo, taking them to the Hellensvale transit camp, set up to house those made homeless by the government's crackdown on illegal
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Kim Bullimore While the rest of the world has been distracted by the chaos of the Gaza Disengagement, the Israeli government has quietly sped up the construction of the illegal apartheid wall in East Jerusalem. Under international law, East
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Federico Fuentes With the second overthrow of a president in less than two years, Bolivia's social movements have paved the way for a new round of presidential and national assembly elections, which will be held on December 4. In the July 4
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Stuart Munckton Broadcasting his weekly Hello President television show live from a newly worker-run cacao processing plant, on July 15 Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced plans to expropriate privately owned companies that have been closed
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In the first strike in the tiny country's history, its 3000 public servants walked off the job on July 21, demanding the government reconsider huge disparities in public sector salaries introduced in this year's budget. The government refused a
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Brett Prowse, Sana'a Violence erupted in Yemen on July 20, as the government's structural adjustment "reforms" — implemented at the demand of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund — resulted in the long-expected removal of subsidies
Culture
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The TakeBy Avi Lewis and Naomi KleinBarner Alpa Productions/National Film Board of Canada, 2004 REVIEW BY SEAN CAIN With the popularity of such documentaries as Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott's The Corporation and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit
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NailedWritten by Caleb LewisDirected by David BertholdStarring Ursula Yovich, Tim Draxl, Wayne Pygram and Annie ByronGriffin Theatre CompanyThe Stables Theatre, Kings Cross, SydneyUntil August 14 REVIEW BY PETER BOYLE Caleb Lewis predicted his
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Masterpiece on Saturday: Sheherazad & the Others — Some outstanding women of Iranian cinema discuss the cultural, social, political and cinematic histories of their country. SBS, Saturday, July 30, 3.25pm. Blowing up Paradise — In the year of
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The Age of Commodity: Water Privatisation in Southern AfricaEdited by David A. McDonald and Greg RuitersEarthscan, 2005303 pages, $55 (pb) REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON One billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water and two billion