Lebanon/Gaza attacks We are horrified at the slaughter of civilians and destruction of homes and infrastructure that has occurred and continues in Lebanon, Israel and Gaza. The Israeli action constitutes collective punishment of the Lebanese
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Nick Fredman On August 8, Gerard Henderson, weekly columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, attacked Green Left Weekly (as he does regularly) and others for promoting the recent Hiroshima Day rallies' opposition to Israel's war on Lebanon, and the
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Stuart Munckton The assumption that the Cuban revolutionary government will inevitably collapse after the death of President Fidel Castro underpins much of the coverage of Castro's illness in the corporate media. The August 5 Sydney Morning Herald
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Colin Mitchell Sydney architect Faheem Khalid Lodhi, convicted on June 19 of preparing for a terrorist act, faces sentencing in Sydney on August 23. He was arrested in January 2004, charged under the new "anti-terror" laws, and has been locked up in
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Warren Smith, Sydney The Maritime Union of Australia (NSW) is campaigning for the foreshore redevelopment of Sussex Street wharves in East Darling Harbour to be renamed "The Hungry Mile" in recognition of the men and women who worked the wharves and
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Doug Lorimer During the night of August 7, an Israeli warplane fired a missile into an apartment block on Haijaj Street, in the densely populated southern Beirut suburb of Shiyyah. "We thought it was safe here as there are no Hezbollah people or
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Sue Bolton July 5 is now a significant day in the history of Australia's labour movement. It was the day on which 107 Western Australian construction workers began being served with writs for taking strike action in February on the Leighton
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Jess Moore The National Union of Students has abandoned the campaign against "voluntary student unionism" (VSU) and yet, in the context of a weakened student movement and current attacks on higher education, students need strong unions now more than
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Zoe Kenny The federal Coalition government is pushing ahead with a bill to make major changes to the 1976 Northern Territory Land Rights Act. The amendments severely weaken Indigenous people's control of their land in the NT and are the most
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Jim Green Recently, the prime minister has become fond of likening a domestic industry for enriching uranium to building factories to knit garments from Aussie wool. It's a cosy argument for value-adding, but it masks the security and environmental
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Fred Fuentes Students across Australia are organising against Israel's barbarous war on the people of Lebanon and Palestine. Anti-war activists have hit campuses with speak-outs, public meetings, stalls and petitions, resuscitating and broadening
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We join with people from across the world in condemning Israel's brutal attacks on Lebanon and Gaza as outright acts of state terrorism. Israel has carried out a reign of terror against the people of Lebanon and Palestine that has targeted civilians
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Melbourne Stop the War Coalition offers its sympathies to the brave people of Lebanon and Palestine, and those whose relatives have been killed in the last few weeks. We are also here to voice our anger and opposition to this brutal war. For
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Jay Fletcher, Wollongong At least 150 students participated in an open-air forum organised by Wollongong University's Students Against War collective entitled "No Peace Without Justice - what the media doesn't want you to know about the war on
News
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Marcus Greville & Graham Williams, Melbourne Striking workers at the Amcor Flexibles plant in the northern suburb of Preston were given a big morale boost when workers at 13 other Amcor workplaces around the country took solidarity action during the
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By a vote of 78 for and 62 against, the federal Coalition government's Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill was passed by the House of Representatives on August 10. Three Coalition MPs — Petro Georgiou, Russell Broadbent and
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Dave Riley, Brisbane The new attack by the Howard government on native title is being pushed through parliament without any real consultation with Indigenous communities. Socialist Alliance Indigenous spokesperson Sam Watson said the changes would
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Kim White On August 11, the Gippsland Trades and Labour Council issued a call for a royal commission "into issues relating to the detention and the treatment of refugees, asylum seekers and immigration detainees". In a media release, GTLC secretary
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Ema Corro, Melbourne In 2002, the French companies Connex and Alstom, international investors in Melbourne's Citypass Consortium, won a 30-year tender to operate a light-rail system between illegal Israeli settlements around Jerusalem. The contract
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Annolies Truman, Perth The conference of the WA branch of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) in Fremantle on July 26-28 strongly condemned the use of section 457 visas, used by employers to bring guest workers to Australia. It denounced the
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Tony Iltis, Melbourne Peace activist and socialist David Glanz has received messages of solidarity from the National Tertiary Education Union, the RMIT Student Union and various left activists following a slanderous attack on him in the August 4
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Tony Iltis, Melbourne Following several weeks of mass demonstrations against Israel's wars on Lebanon and Palestine, there have been calls in the corporate media for the federal government to make it illegal for anti-war protesters to carry
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HOBART — On August 9, Tasmanian-based timber company Gunns Ltd was ordered to pay preliminary legal costs of nearly $87,000 to defendants, including Greens Senator Bob Brown and Tasmanian Greens leader Peg Putt. Gunns, one of the world's biggest
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Kerry Smith On August 7, the Edmund Rice Centre (ERC) released information indicating that up to nine asylum seekers and several of their children were killed upon return to Afghanistan after they were detained on Nauru by the Australian government.
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Russell Pickering, Perth Mal Peters, the only remaining worker-elected occupational health and safety (OHS) representative on the Leighton Kumagai-run Perth-to-Mandurah rail construction project was sacked on August 8 after criticising fines that
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Kerry Vernon, Sydney Rotem Mor, a young Israeli "refusenik" — a conscript who refuses to serve in the military to protest against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza — has just finished an Australia-wide speaking tour. His last
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Thousands of people rallied and marched in cities around Australia on August 12, demanding an immediate end to Israel's wars on Lebanon and Palestine. A diverse crowd of more than 5000 joined the rally in Sydney, organised by the Australian Arabic
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Peter Boyle With columnists for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian attacking Green Left Weekly in the same week, we must be doing something right. On August 8, Gerard Henderson, SMH columnist and executive director of the Sydney Institute
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Green Left Weekly apologises for the error in issue #678 in which a photograph of Herman Wainggai was described as being of David Wainggai.
World
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The India Resource Center reported on August 9 that the state government of Kerala, in southern India, has halted the production and sale of Coca-Cola and Pepsi. The community of Plachimada waged a four-year campaign against the soft-drink giant
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According to police, an August 6 anti-war protest in Montreal drew 15,000 people. A coalition of 60 groups called the demonstration.
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Norm Dixon Oscar Temaru, the pro-independence president of the Tahiti Nui (Temaru's preferred name for the French colony known as French Polynesia), dropped a political bombshell in the Pacific country's parliament on July 28. Temaru released a
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Simon Cooper& Ruth Riordan, Istanbul In a modest flat in the Istanbul suburb of Sisli, a lawyer named Behic Asci has not eaten for over 120 days. His ongoing hunger strike — or "death fast" — is an act of defiance against unjust laws, a stand of
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Ha Joong Keun, a member of the Korean Federation of Construction Industry Unions, was severely beaten by riot police after joining a July 16 rally, and died in hospital on August 1. He was one of thousands of workers who attended the rally, held in
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Federico Fuentes Describing the August 3 swearing in of the 255 elected members of Bolivia's Constituent Assembly, Dan Keane wrote in the Washington Post on August 6: "On one side of the narrow aisle sat the delegates from [Bolivian President Evo]
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Some 2000 workers at the world's largest copper mine — Escondida, majority-owned by Australian mining giant BHP Billiton — have been on strike since August 7 to demand a 13% pay rise. BHP Billiton, despite increased profits from high copper
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Henning Melber Ever since independence in 1990, Namibia's South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) government has maintained the exploitative and discriminatory nature of the country's century of occupation by German and later South African
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Nine protesters were arrested and charged on August 9 after occupying the Derry base of Raytheon, a US company that produces software for "Guided Missile Units" (GBU), according to a report by Britain's Socialist Worker. GBUs are being used by Israel
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Michael Fox, Caracas On August 6, from the state of Bolivar, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced the recuperation of the largest latifundio (plantation) in the country, and the creation of what he termed the new "socialist production unit",
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Steve Mather With punches being thrown and the odd chair flying through the air, it was clear there was a good old-fashioned union debate taking place on May 27. The different factions or currents within the National Union of Workers (UNT, the
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Refusenik support group Yesh Gvul reported on July 31 that Captain Amir Pasteur was sentenced to 28 days' jail for his refusal to take part in Israel's war on Lebanon. Yesh Gvul spokesperson Ishai Menuchin said the group had contact with about a
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Alex Miller On August 4 at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, Tommy Sheridan, Scottish Socialist Party MSP and former national convener of the party, won a defamation case he had brought against the right-wing tabloid newspaper the News of the
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Neville Spencer Left-leaning presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has reiterated his call for a campaign of civil disobedience against electoral fraud, after the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) agreed only to a partial recount of
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An August 8 Casablanca protest against Israel's war against Lebanon and the Occupied Palestinian Territories drew thousands, according to the Morocco Times. The Times reported: "Hailing the resistance of Hizbollah, the demonstrators called for peace
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Doug Lorimer On August 4, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shiites marched through the streets of Baghdad chanting "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" in the largest foreign show of support for Lebanon's Shiite-based Hezbollah resistance fighters
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Gideon Levy is a renowned Israeli journalist and broadcaster who writes for Haaretz, regularly covering the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Levy, who is also an opponent of the war in Lebanon, spoke to Green Left Weekly's Kim
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Greenpeace reported on August 4 that four of Sweden's 10 nuclear plants were shut down after the discovery of several faults. The plant closures immediately cut Sweden's electricity supply by around 20%. Following a serious incident at the Forsmark
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The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the original convictions of the Cuban Five on August 10, overturning a unanimous ruling one year earlier by a three-judge panel of the same court, which found that the hostility in Miami towards supporters of
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Students are still hiding in the forests of West Papua after fleeing the repression during a protest against the Freeport mine in March. More than 20 students were injured, five from gunshot wounds, during a March 15-16 protest at the University of
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On August 4 residents of the West Bank town of Bil'lin were joined by Israelis and members of the International Solidarity Movement to mourn the deaths of more than 1000 people killed in Gaza and Lebanon by the Israeli military. Protesters marched to
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Jim McIlroy & Coral Wynter, Caracas Since Hugo Chavez took office as Venezuela's president in February 1999, the oil-rich South American country has been threatened by right-wing paramilitary forces from neighbouring Colombia. "What we call the
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The following article is abridged from an entry by Gaza City resident Mona El-Farra in her blog, From Gaza, With Love (<http://fromgaza.blogspot.com>). August 1 — Today the Israeli Occupying Forces redeployed into the area south-east of
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Emma Clancy Watching television footage of the Qana massacre — the killing of dozens of civilians, including children — Beshara Doumani thought she was watching "the old footage of the Israeli massacre that killed one-hundred Lebanese civilians
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On August 7 a candlelight vigil in Port Louis, Mauritius' capital, expressed solidarity with the people of Lebanon and Palestine. The protest called for a UN resolution to end Israel's war, as well as for a boycott of Israeli products and for the
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Doug Lorimer US President George Bush and other US officials have opposed calls for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese forces resisting Israel's war on its northern Arab neighbour — the third in 30 years — because, they
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Sherdan Bircan& Simon Cunich Clashes between the Turkish army and People's Defence Force (HPG) guerrillas — the armed wing of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a long battle for Kurdish self-determination — have reached a
Culture
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David Suzuki: an autobiographyBy David SuzukiAllen & Unwin, 2006416 pages, $29.95 (pb) REVIEW BY FRANCIE CAMPBELL A candid self-portrayal of this leading environmentalist. He begins by revisiting his childhood, revealing the racism and
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t'feh...alaykoumraw responses from Arab artistsMori Gallery, Sydney6 September — 4 October 2006 An urgent call-out to Arab artists for raw new works for a quick response exhibition to Israel's invasion of Lebanon and incursion into Gaza.
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Sophie Scholl — The Last DaysScreenplay by Fred BrienesdorferDirected by Marc RothermundWith Julia Jentsch, Alexander Held, Burghart Klassner, Fabrian HinrichsIn German, with English subtitlesIn cinemas now REVIEW BY ALEX SALMON Sophie Scholl
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Wait for me mummy, wait for me!All is so dark, I can hardly see.Where are you taking us, mother, mother?Why are you carrying my little brother?Why are we running in the dark and cold?Mummy, give me your hand to hold.Why are we
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Honour BoundWritten and directed by Nigel Jamieson in consultation with Terry HicksChoreography by Garry StewartThe Playhouse, Sydney Opera House until September 3Melbourne Malthouse Theatre, CUB Malthouse, Southbank, September 15 until October 1
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Peace concertMonday Sept. 11, 7pmHarp Hotel, Princess Highway, Tempe$15/$10 Enda Kenny, who has been described as "Australia's finest contemporary singer-songwriter" will perform in a once-only concert to raise money for a children's hospital in
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Margaret Holmes: The Life and Times of an Australian Peace CampaignerBy Michelle CavanaghNew Holland, 2006319 pages, $29.95 (pb) REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON Prime Minister Robert Menzies, two weeks after his Coalition government had reintroduced