Janet Parker
Most people think that the war in Vietnam ended 30 years ago, but did it? More bombs were dropped on Vietnam than the total dropped by all sides in World War II. These bombs continue to wreak havoc; more than 84,000 people (mostly
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Dick Nichols On November 22, the Queensland Nationals crossed the floor of the state parliament to vote with Premier Peter Beattie's Labor government and against their traditional Liberal Party allies over the Howard government's Work Choices
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As an employee of a major regional newspaper group, getting a full-time job as a journalist in 2003 was conditional on signing an AWA (individual contract), there being no award offered. Under the AWA there were no penalty rates for evenings, long
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The following is abridged from a speech by Alex Bainbridge to a 800-strong civil rights rally organised by the Council for Civil Liberties in Hobart on November 12. I want to begin by telling two stories. The first is about by-law number 418,
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Niko Leka, Newcastle Twenty-seven maintenance workers employed by Boeing at the Williamtown RAAF base north of here have been locked out by the company since June 1 for refusing to sign new individual contracts. The workers, all members of the
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Sarah Stephen Four years after her unlawful deportation, and six months after its public revelation, Vivian Solon finally returned home from the Philippines on November 18. Solon's family had listed her as a missing person since July 2003, and
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Graham Matthews The federal government's Work Choices legislation aims to make illegal much of the "bread and butter" work of unions. The threat of a $33,000 fine awaits unions that continue to organise their members. The legislation also threatens
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Rohan Pearce While US President George Bush was in China fighting a losing battle with a locked door at a Beijing media conference, it was left to his vice-president, the rather less bumbling Dick Cheney, to defend Washington's troubled war on Iraq
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On November 30, 1923 the great socialist agitator John Maclean died in Glasgow at the early age of 44. His health had been ground down by years of poverty and abuse in British prisons. Maclean was jailed several times for his opposition to World War
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Pip Hinman The Melbourne-based Timor Sea Justice Campaign on November 23 described the Howard government's decision to discontinue funding to 13 East Timorese NGOs as "political interference". Timor Sea Justice Campaign spokesperson Vanessa
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Dr Leslie Cannold The current debate around RU486 is about whether or not the safety and efficacy of a drug should be impartially evaluated on the basis of the medical evidence by the Therapeutic Goods Association (TGA), or whether this drug should
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Sarah Stephen When seven asylum seekers from West Timor waded ashore near the Western Australian Aboriginal community of Kalumburu on November 5, immigration minister Amanda Vanstone declared that they were fishing, not seeking asylum. This fiction
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As around 600,000 workers took to the streets around Australia on November 15 against the Howard government's draconian anti-union/anti-worker laws, some 120 New Zealand workers protested in solidarity outside the Australian High Commission in
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'I may be blind, but I can see through the lies' Pip Hinman Duncan Meerding is a member of the socialist youth organisation Resistance and one of the hundreds of volunteers who, week in and week out, help distribute Green Left Weekly. Early
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Liam Mitchell Federal Labor Party leader Kim Beazley told the November 15 demonstrations that he would tear up the Howard government's Work Choices legislation when he became prime minister, but he hasn't indicated what industrial relations system
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Bakhtiyaris Ian Rintoul (GLW #647) professes to have a far greater knowledge of the Bakhtiyari case than he has. In fact David Corlett was almost entirely correct except in his assertion that Ali might well be from Pakistan. McGeough with his
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Doug Lorimer A number of submissions made to the Senate legal and constitutional legislation committee's inquiry into the Howard government's Anti-Terrorism Bill (No 2) 2005, which will issue its report on the bill on November 28, have highlighted
News
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SYDNEY — The International Labour Organisation has upheld an ACTU complaint that the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act breaches ILO conventions on freedom of association and collective bargaining rights. On November 21, the ILO
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Sarah Smith, Perth The WA branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) has come under increasing attack since the federal Coalition government's Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act was passed in September.
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Dave Holmes, Melbourne Green Left Weekly has won the right to resume its Saturday morning stalls at the big Barkly Square shopping centre in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Brunswick. After years of responsible and trouble-free operation, Green
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Kathy Newnam, Darwin At a November 23 public forum, 50 people heard three Medical Association for the Prevention of War members challenge the myth that the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney is necessary on medical grounds. Dr Peter Tait
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Don Fowler, Sydney The Leichhardt Peace Group has written a letter of concern about the proposed anti-terrorism legislation to the secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, and has requested he refer it to the Office of the United
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Paul Oboohov, one of the Members First candidates in the watershed Community and Public Sector Union elections, spent last week campaigning in Canberra. The union elections are being held from November 18 to December 7, and Members First is
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SYDNEY — The NSW Rural Fire Service Association (RFSA), representing the state's 70,000 rural firefighters, said it will campaign to retain the existing award protection for volunteer rural firefighters, which may be under threat from the federal
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Jim McIlroy, Brisbane Around 60 members of the Aboriginal community and their supporters held an angry meeting at Jagera House on November 23 to discuss the increasing police harassment of Indigenous people in Musgrave Park and other areas of the
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Amanda Freund, Newcastle Newcastle City Council will fly the West Papuan flag from City Hall on December 1 as a gesture of support for the West Papuan people's struggle for independence from Indonesian rule. Council general manager Janet Dore
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Ruddock — no!' LISMORE — On November 21, federal attorney-general Philip Ruddock was met by 120 protesters when he came to Lismore. The protest was organised by the Lismore Civil Rights Coalition and protesters chanted "Free speech — yes,
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DARWIN — On November 19, 70 people attended the first screening of David Bradbury's latest documentary film, Blowin' in the Wind. The documentary focuses on the use of depleted uranium in "conventional" munitions and the impact of DU munitions
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Susan Price, Sydney On the night of November 22, following threats of eviction, the University of Newcastle moved to changed the locks on the offices of the National Tertiary Education Union on the campus. The NTEU had previously made attempts at
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Jon Lamb, Darwin On November 18 it was revealed by defence minister Robert Hill that one of the outcomes of the Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN), held on November 17-18, was that the Australian government had given the
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Emma Clancy, Perth More than 100 protesters occupied the Western Australian ALP state conference on November 26, held at the Perth Convention Centre. The protesters urged federal Labor to vote against the Coalition government's so-called
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Roger X. & Marce Cameron, Sydney "Nobody should assume any of these people are guilty", Dr Waleed Kadous, co-convenor of the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network (AMCRAN), told a November 21 public forum attended by 100 people. Kadous
World
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Alex Miller On November 21, police arrested Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) member of the Scottish parliament Tommy Sheridan after a peaceful direct action that prevented British immigration officials from carrying out dawn raids on refugees' homes.
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Margarita Windisch, Caracas Once again, Venezuelans are gearing up for elections. On December 4, the people will go to the polls to elect 167 representatives of the National Assembly (AN) for a five-year term. Since the election of President Hugo
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At its national conference in November, the anti-war Respect coalition passed the following resolution pledging solidarity with Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution. 1. This conference extends its solidarity to the people of Venezuela and applauds its
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Lee Yu Kyung, Pusan The cost of accommodation for each leader attending the APEC summit was US$4000 per day. US President George Bush occupied the whole of Western Chosun Hotel. Some 1000 official participants swallowed $1.5 million at the
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On November 24, plans were put in place to evacuate the 980 people living on the six Carteret atolls, after they battled for decades with the effects of climate change. The Papua New Guinean government will move 10 families at a time to Bougainville,
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Stuart Munckton A key witness in the trial of those charged over the assassination of Venezuelan state prosecutor Danilo Anderson has identified FBI and CIA agents as being involved in planning his death. Anderson, who was killed by a car bomb on
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Diet Simon, Bonn While both major parties making up German Chancellor Angela Merkel's new "grand coalition" government — the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats — are committed, on paper, to the gradual closing down of the country's 17
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On November 24, Irish Ferries sent union-busting security guards to take over its ferries in the Irish Sea. Guards boarded the Isle of Inishmore at Pembroke as passengers, then informed the Seamen's Union of Ireland that they had been ordered to take
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Kerryn Williams On November 22, the US State Department decided to override restrictions on US-Indonesian military ties imposed by Congress less than two weeks earlier. A foreign aid bill approved by Congress made the resumption of US military
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Mike Krebs, Vancouver The crisis on the Kashechewan native reserve in northern Ontario has once again placed the brutal social and living conditions of indigenous people in Canada onto the centre stage of politics. On October 14, Health Canada, the
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At least 600 people rallied on November 25 in support of 25 doctors who resigned from the public health system on November 16 after striking for more than two months. The doctors resigned when Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi declared they
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Silke Stockle On November 19, solidarity groups from all over Germany that support the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela gathered in Berlin's Humboldt University. The meeting discussed building a solidarity movement able to prevent a bloody coup
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Federico Fuentes, La Paz This year marks the 20th anniversary of the implementation of Decree 21060, which heralded the dawning of the era of neoliberal "free market" policies in Bolivia. According to Jim Schultz, executive director of the
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On November 19, Cuban-born Santiago Alvarez Magrina was detained in Miami by federal US authorities. Alvarez is linked to terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, who was behind the bombing of a commercial airliner that killed 73 people. A stockpile of
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Doug Lorimer On November 20, four days before the UN International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-member board began its three-day November meeting, the Majlis (Iran's parliament) adopted a resolution requiring the government to cancel all its voluntary
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Revolutionary Venezuela is challenging the centuries-old prejudices of machismo and homophobia, the legacy of Spanish colonialism in Latin America. Yet as Heisler Vaamonde of the Revolutionary Gay Movement (MGR) told Green Left Weekly's Kiraz Janicke
Culture
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TankAsian Dub FoundationVirgin Music REVIEW BY JAMES VASSILOPOULOS Once in a decade, a band comes along with a unique mix of creative, new music and politics of depth and definition. The Asian Dub Foundation (ADF) is this group. They have been
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Canto Coro, a Brunswick-based community choir with a repertoire composed of new work and Latin American and Greek choral classics, and the popular Andean band Inka Marka, present the concert ABLAZE, featuring the beautiful music of Victor Jara.
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I first met Melanie Shanahan in Hobart 20 years ago. She had moved down there because of her interest in environmental issues. She was active in Greenpeace in Sydney and, like many other activists, had been inspired by the Save
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Russian Dolls: Sex Trade — The story of 10 women forced into a life of prostitution and sexual slavery. SBS, Friday, December 2, 10.05pm. Message Stick: Art Therapy — Looks at how Aboriginal art and artistic expression is being used to help