The following "Statement to the Muslims participating at the PM's Summit", signed by 51 Australian Muslim organisations, was issued on August 22.
Issue 640
News
The Queensland Labor government has suffered its first major electoral setback since its massive win in the February 2004 state election. In by-elections held on August 20, the ALP lost two "safe" seats in the Brisbane region, Chatsworth and Redcliffe, with swings of 13.8% and 10% respectively.
Sam Byrne, the deputy mayor of Marrickville, is standing for the Greens in the Marrickville state by-election. He believes he has a chance of taking the once safe Labor seat on September 17.
The knifing of former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Mamdouh Habib near his home in Sydney in the early hours of August 23 was not a random attack.
Two-hundred protesters converged on the Adelaide Festival Theatre on August 27, where PM John Howard was addressing the state Liberal Party's annual general meeting.
On August 16, federal cabinet endorsed the full privatisation of Telstra, despite 70% public opposition according to a recent Newspoll. At the time, Queensland National Party senator Barnaby Joyce was threatening to cross
On August 19, young environmental activists led a different sort of demonstration against global warming. Juliana Qian and Lachlan Campbell-Type, with a small group of supporters, thanked commuters at train stations for using public transport.
Capitalism and depression Jim Tran (Write On, GLW #639) correctly rebukes me for carelessly lumping lithium, used to treat manic-depression, in with anti-depressant drugs such as Prozac and Zoloft in my article on capitalism and health (GLW #637).
Australia's "poet lorikeet", Denis Kevans, died at Sydney's Westmead Hospital on August 22, following complications from heart surgery.
At its August 24 executive meeting, the Australian Council of Trade Unions decided to postpone the planned national day of action against the federal government's anti-union laws to November 15.
A rally on August 24, organised by the Macquarie University Students Against Racism Coalition, was attended by 100 students and staff angered by racist comments made to the media in July by Macquarie University academic Andrew Fraser.
Political heavyweights from six of the world's leading coal industry nations will meet in Adelaide in November. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Australia's foreign minister Alexander Downer, and high level
As little as $125 million of the pledged $1 billion in funds pledged by the Australian government for tsunami relief is going to the tsunami-ravaged province of Aceh according to the World Bank.
Prominent Stop the War Coalition activist Pip Hinman has been pre-selected as the Socialist Alliance candidate for the Marrickville by-election on September 17.
More trade union leaders have rallied to support the Green Left Weekly Emergency Appeal as it enters its sixth week with $70,173 raised and less than $30,000 to make our target.
Two Aboriginal communities say they are "bitterly disappointed" by the Federal Court's refusal to force the Queensland government to pay for lost wages. Justice John Dowsett ruled on August 19 that the state government didn't
Kathy Newnam, Darwin Letty Scott has called for the Northern Territory government to re-open the coronial inquest into the death of her husband, Douglas Scott, in Berrimah prison in July 1985. For more than 20 years she has fought to overturn the
On September 4, 1970, the Australian government, acting on the advice of ASIO, denied an entry visa to Dick Gregory, a famous African-American comedian and social activist who was outspoken in his opposition to the US war in Vietnam.
Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin's election promise to take a harder stance on "anti-social behaviour" moved a step closer to being met with police minister Paul Henderson's announcement on August 22 that new legislation will be in place by the end of the year.
A group of Iraqi women recently met the US ambassador to Iraq in an effort to push the framers of Iraq's new constitution not to limit women's rights. Many Western feminist groups and some Iraqi women activists fear Islamic law, which if enshrined as
One hundred staff and supporters protested at Ballarat University's Open Day on August 22. The action was part of the National Tertiary Education Union members' long-running campaign for a better enterprise bargaining
A mock trial of David Hicks held in front of PM John Howard's office on August 26 was organised by the Canterbury Bankstown Peace Group and Justice for Hicks and Habib Campaign.
Simon Butler, Newcastle The Newcastle City Council motion passed in late July to stop companies who force their employees onto Australia Workplace Agreements (AWAs) from receiving council contracts, has come under fire from local business groups,
A protest was held outside James Hardie's shareholders' meeting on August 19. I am a city-based Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) site delegate. Over the years, many of us construction workers have seen workmates become ill and die because of the effects of working with asbestos products made by James Hardie.
A new report by the University of Sydney's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and Elsham, the Institute for Human Rights Study and Advocacy based in Jayapura, was launched at Parliament House in Canberra on August 18.
Due to a sub-editing error, the article "Letty Scott drops charges" in GLW #639 mistakenly reported that "Douglas Scott was found hanging by a bed sheet in his prison cell in July 1985".
The photograph accompanying the article "The demise of university education" in GLW #639 was taken by Johanna Trainor.
To grasp the real consequence Barnaby Joyce's choice on the Telstra privatisation, we need to count in billions of dollars, unused to that as we ordinary folk are.
Across Australia on August 25, around 2000 students took part in a national day of action against the federal government's "voluntary student unionism" (VSU), the second major protest this semester.
From October 1, building industry workers are likely to be separated from the main industrial relations legislation that covers other workers.
Refugee-rights activists rallied and marched in cities around the country on August 26-28, to mark the anniversary of the Tampa crisis in 2001. In Melbourne, Chris Peterson reports, around 500 people rallied at the State Library on August 26, and
Analysis
David Llewellyn faced a barrage of criticism and no-confidence motions over his handling of the health portfolio when Tasmania’s parliament resumed on August 23.
The good news is that we don't know for sure that exported Australian uranium has been used in nuclear weapons programs since the late 1940s. The bad news is that we don't know it hasn't. The regime designed to attempt to prevent
David Hicks has now spent almost four years in Guantanamo Bay, the US prison in Cuba. Along with the rest of the prisoners, he has been classed as an "enemy combatant" - legal mumbo jumbo that strips him of any prisoner-of-war rights he'd be entitled to under the Geneva Conventions.
Two comrades in my Socialist Alliance branch are heading to New Zealand in December to "get married". One is New Zealand born and the other Australian born.
The media are wrong. The people who have come out to Camp Casey to help coordinate the press and events with me are not putting words in my mouth, they are taking words out of my mouth. I have been known for sometime
World
"War, what is it good for?", asked Edwin Starr in his 1970 hit single "War". The answer he gave was "absolutely nothin'!", a sentiment no doubt shared by most people.
Without a doubt, the Zionist occupiers of Palestine did not evacuate the Gaza Strip settlers out of good will. The occupiers understood they would never be able to defeat Palestinians in Gaza, and despite all the Israeli crimes, sieges, and massacres, that the Palestinian resistance could not be broken.
Having spoken for over two hours on the significance of the Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution earlier that day, President Hugo Chavez spoke to special discussion session on August 13 attended by a representative from each of the delegations at the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students, held in Caracas on August 8-15.
By setting up a camp outside US President George Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, on August 6 and demanding he met with her regarding the death of her son, Casey, in Iraq, Cindy Sheehan and her supporters have helped reactivate the US
Dita Sari, president of the Indonesian People's Democratic Party (PRD), and a leader of the militant Indonesian National Front for Workers' Struggle (FNPBI) union federation, was a special guest speaker at the fourth Brisbane Social Forum on July 29-31. She spoke to Green Left Weekly's Mel Barnes and Jim McIlroy.
The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) has condemned Scotland's most senior church leader for inflammatory remarks against the country's Muslims.
On August 18, Richard Lugar, chairperson of the US Senate foreign relations committee, and acting as a special envoy of US President George Bush, oversaw the release by the Polisario Front of Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara of the last remaining Moroccan prisoners of war.
On August 22, well-known US televangelist Pat Robertson made headlines around the world when he called for the assassination of left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
On August 6, members of the first Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Brigade visited the Barrio 23rd of January. From the time we entered barrio's public housing, located in an old military area that had been taken over by residents, it was clear this was a place of heightened political activity and organisation.
The Unite trade union has been organising workers for three years in Auckland's low-paid and unorganised sectors — hotels, call centres, fast food outlets, and among cleaning staff, and cinema and casino workers.
Culture
Queenscliff artist Peter Forward's paintings explore the outcomes of rapid change in a volatile world. "Wars are being undertaken on our behalf for spurious reasons", Forward explained in a statement about his work.
I was thinking that I wasn't as up as I should be with core Australian values. Here we have folk in the know like that Costello bloke going on about them , when I myself are a bit in the dark in that department. How so? I guess I'm taking a lot
The battle for freedom over tyranny
Is the battle of remembering over forgetting. — Milan Kundera.
On the box — Orthodykes, Message Stick: Wayne Atkinson, Cutting Edge: Beslan, Grass, The Cirlce and The Mary G Show.
"May I wish Mr Kevin Andrews a long and excruciatingly painful life" was the response of a letter writer to the Sydney Morning Herald at the federal parliament's passing of a bill by then Liberal Party backbencher Kevin Andrews, which overturned the Northern Territory's voluntary euthanasia legislation in 1997.