In just two weeks time, Green Left Weekly will be celebrating our 700th issue!
Almost every week since 1991, Green Left Weekly has been providing people across Australia and around the world with a wide range of alternative news and views. That's
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Twenty-five people rallied in Anzac Park on January 24 to call for the return to Australia of Guantanamo Bay prisoner David Hicks, during a visit by federal attorney-general Philip Ruddock.
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The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) is launching a campaign to regulate safety in the power industry following two workers deaths late last year in the Latrobe Valley.
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Turkish activists who have been on hunger strike in protest at the treatment of political prisoners in Turkeys F-type isolation prisons have ended their death fast, following the Turkish governments announcement that it would improve conditions in the jails. Prisoners will now be able to meet together in groups and have greater time to socialise and see visitors. Lawyer Behic Asci was taken to hospital for treatment after ending his fast, after 293 days without food. Since 1982, 122 protesters have lost their lives through the death fasts. Human rights groups, student organisations and unions joined demonstrations in recent months in support of the campaign. The Australian TAYAD (Solidarity with Political Prisoners) committee, in a January 26 statement welcoming the decision, said: We will continue our struggle with all different means of resistance until isolation is removed totally.
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A two-week strike ended late on January 27 after an agreement was reached with President Lansana Conte to delegate some of his powers to a new prime minister. More than 90 people were killed and hundreds injured during police crackdowns on the strike. Hospitals ran out of blood supplies on January 22, when attacks by soldiers and police left dozens dead. Unions called the strike to demand that the president step down and to voice anger at the appalling living conditions in the extremely impoverished west African nation. Guinea, ruled by Conte ever since he took power in a military coup more than 22 years ago, was ranked the most corrupt African country in Transparency Internationals 2006 survey. While Guinea is rich in natural resources, some neighbourhoods in the capital, Conakry, do not even have running water or electricity, and low wages and massive inflation mean many cannot afford to buy food. Last May, police killed 20 people when mostly youth protesters in Conakry took to the streets to protest rice and fuel price rises.
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When former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib announced last week that he would contest the March 24 NSW state election, the corporate media in Sydney cranked up a campaign of vilification against him. Habib was held in the US prison at Guantanamo Bay for more than three years before being released in January 2005 without charge.
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Five footballers at North Carolinas Guilford College were charged with ethnic intimidation and the assault of three Palestinian students on January 21. The FBI will also investigate whether the footballers should be charged with hate crimes. The three Palestinian students were brutally attacked by up to 15 members of the college football team, who used brass knuckles and called them terrorists, sand niggers and fucking Palestinians. Students at the college have condemned the attacks as racist and have begun to organise in support of the Palestinian students. On January 24, Yes! Weekly online magazine reported that students have also threatened to walk out of school if the attackers were not suspended.
News
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On February 2, former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib launched his NSW state election campaign in the western Sydney seat of Auburn. The seat is currently held by the ALPs Barbara Perry.
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Oliver Ressler, an Austrian artist and co-director (with Dario Azzellini) of Five Factories Worker Control in Venezuela, hosted special screenings of his film in Melbourne and Sydney. Resslers presentations were part of the If You See Something, Say Something exhibition and were sponsored by the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network (AVSN), LASNET and the Melbourne Bolivarian Circle.
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The Socialist Alliance will launch its campaign for the NSW election with a rally and concert on February 24.
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Private train operator Connex is under fire after tests revealed its fleet of new Siemens trains were unable to brake if soapy water was on the tracks.
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One-hundred people gathered at Brisbanes Riverside Centre on January 27 to discuss Indigenous self-determination and the United Nations draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which is expected to be ratified this year.
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With the NSW elections looming, Labor Premier Morris Iemma seems determined to try to outdo the federal government from the right. On January 28, Iemma demanded that Canberra ban the Sunni Muslim organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, which was holding a conference in Lakemba in Iemmas western Sydney electorate.
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Petersham TAFE in inner-western Sydney, like most TAFE campuses in NSW, is experiencing the beginnings of a mass exodus of teachers into retirement, precipitating a drastic skills shortage that will start to bite in the next few years.
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When questioned by the media about opposition in the US Congress to the George Bush administrations surge of troops to Iraq, Vice-President Dick Cheney kept his message simple: It wont stop us. In the January 24 interview with CNN, Cheney added, We have to have the stomach to finish the task.
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The Socialist Alliance welcomes the decision of Bryce Gaudry to stand as an independent for the seat of Newcastle in the NSW state election on March 24, alliance spokesperson Steve OBrien said on January 31.
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Thirty workers at Tristar Steering and Suspension in Marrickville are still fighting for redundancy entitlements provided for under a longstanding enterprise agreement (EA), which expired in September. The workers have been idle since production shifted overseas in July, while the company has used PM John Howards Work Choices legislation to save money by not paying the workers their due.
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“It must never again be the case that a death in custody, of Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal persons, will not lead to rigorous and accountable investigations and a comprehensive coronial inquiry.”
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Isnt it great to begin the new year of struggle with a victory! The January 26 announcement that Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley will be charged with the manslaughter on Palm Island in 2004 of Mulrunji, a young Indigenous man, was a historic victory. This will be the first time in Queensland history (and only the second time in Australian history) that a police officer is to be charged in relation to an Aboriginal death in custody.
Analysis
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Tim Zammit, a young worker at Woolworths in Hackham, South Australia, wrote the following letter to his union the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) in response to the recent employment agreement negotiated by the SDA.
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Queensland Aboriginal activist Phil Perrier died on January 26 after struggling with cancer for several months. A ceremony for Phil was held on February 2 at Sorry Place on Jagara nation tribal land in Brisbane’s West End.
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This May-June, 12,000 Australian soldiers and nearly l4,000 US troops and sailors will bombard our shores and fragile landscape, storm our beaches gunning down terrorists in the newly-built urban guerrilla warfare training centre, and test their latest laser-guided missiles and smart bombs in some of the most pristine wilderness on this planet.
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“Brilliant, fantastic, inspiring … Never shaken so many hands in one day”, commented Pat Rogers, a Brisbane staff member of the Electrical Trades Union, after experiencing the May Day march of more than 1 million workers in Caracas during the Australian trade union solidarity brigade to Venezuela in April-May last year. People in Australia will have the opportunity to join a May Day brigade to Venezuela again this year, from April 30 to May 9, organised by the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network (AVSN).
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After five years of incarceration at Guantanamo Bay without trial, it is increasingly clear that David Hicks has committed no serious crime and that he is no threat. Yet, he is being held in a prison camp, often in solitary confinement, subjected to endless interrogations and physical and mental abuse to try and break his resistance to a guilty plea. Hicks is now in such a state that he cannot even bear to talk to his father on the phone.
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The announcement on January 30 that Australia’s first nuclear reactor was to be decommissioned sounded good. But residents and activists hoping for an end to the nuclear industry will be disappointed to hear that this is not the end of Australia’s nuclear experimentation. The old HIFAR reactor, Australia’s only multi-purpose research reactor, has been superseded by another reactor in the same suburb of Lucas Heights.
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David Hickss demonisation, and continued incarceration in Guantanamo Bay, helps the US and Australian governments promotion of its endless war on terror. The Australian government is keen for the US to prosecute Hicks rather than have him return home because he has done no wrong under Australian law.
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Mulrunji Doomadgee I am pleased to see that justice will finally be delivered in regards to the death in custody on Palm Island. This is one victory among many for all those who have been fighting for justice ever since the tragic death of
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Terry Hicks’s son has been detained for five years, without trial, in a prison camp likened by some to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
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The Labor and Liberal parties have been falling over each other in their rush to rub out the final vestiges of multiculturalism. In December, newly elected Labor leader Kevin Rudd renamed immigration spokesperson Tony Burke’s portfolio “immigration, integration and citizenship”. In his January 23 cabinet reshuffle, PM John Howard caught up, changing the name of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
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In her 2001 book, Blue Army: Paramilitary Policing in Victoria, senior lecturer in criminology at Monash University Associate Professor Jude McCulloch reports 44 victims of police shootings in Victoria since the 1980s, mostly poor people from non-Anglo backgrounds, but also police themselves. That number is now more than 50.
World
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Global warming has “very likely” been caused by humanity’s actions. This is one of the main conclusions of the fourth assessment report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released on February 2.
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Walter Chavez, an adviser to Bolivian president Evo Morales, has found himself in the centre of a well-orchestrated corporate media campaign aimed at delegitimising the Morales government internationally by linking it to terrorist groups. This accusation comes only a week after attempts by the Spanish media to link Moraless party the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) with the Basque separatist group ETA.
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Nobody can quite believe their eyes and ears. More than 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, has made it abundantly clear that his country is embarked on a socialist revolution.
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At least six people were wounded on January 24, following an operation by the UN peacekeeping force (MINUSTAH). One victim, attended to immediately by Doctors Without Borders, says she was hit by stray bullets, according to the daily newspaper Le Nouvelliste.
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On January 31, Bangladeshs acting electoral commission chief Mahfuzur Rahman and his four deputies resigned, paving the way for the countrys caretaker government to appoint new commission members as demanded by the main alliance of opposition parties.
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One of the best-known and most successful aspects of Venezuelas Bolivarian revolution has been the social missions social programs funded by Venezuelas oil wealth aiming to solve the most pressing problems of the nations poor majority. One of the best known and most successful social missions was one of the first to be established, the health program Mision Bario Adentro (Into the Neighbourghood). Established in April 2003, the mission has brought free quality health care via the establishment of popular health clinics in poor neighbourhoods across Venezuela. Before Barrio Adentro, health care was out of reach for many of the poor, as private health care was too expensive and the public health system was in a state of disrepair.
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Prosecutors are calling Amber Abreu a murderer. But the 18-year-old is a victim of restrictions on access to abortion. Prosecutors recently charged Abreu, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, with procuring a miscarriage a felony that can carry a penalty of seven years in prison. They say they are planning to file additional charges, including a possible homicide charge, against her.
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Last month, total US military casualties in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion exceeded 50,000 dead and wounded. By January 28, 3071 US soldiers had died in Iraq and at least 47,657 had been wounded, according to Pentagon figures.
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More than 200,000 public service workers in the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) held a nationwide strike on January 31, which is being followed by a two-week overtime ban. The February 1 Morning Star reported that the action hit 200 government departments, halted important court cases and paralysed passport offices, benefit centres, and tax offices. In addition, the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff was forced to abandon proceedings, and in London the British Library, Tate Modern and Tate Britain were closed.
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A foretaste of US President George Bush’s plan to use 41,500 US troops to “stabilise” war-torn Baghdad came on January 24 when the US occupation forces conducted their second assault in a month on the city’s Haifa Street neighbourhood.
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As long as Im breathing, I will fight with the foreign troops who are coming to our country, said Abdiqadir Hassan Diriye, Associated Press reported on February 1. Hassan Diriye was one of hundreds of protesters in Mogadishu demonstrating in response to the African Unions announcement the day before that three battalions of AU peacekeepers would be deployed in Somalia.
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Chanting “bring our troops home”, anti-war protesters rallied in front of the Capitol building in Washington DC on January 27 to pressure President George Bush’s administration to end the war on Iraq, now only two months short of entering its fourth year.
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Reuters reported on February 3 that at least 23 people had died in armed clashes between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza during the previous 24 hours. The deaths helped bury a short-lived ceasefire that had been declared by the groups <197> the two largest Palestinian political parties <197> on January 30. In the two months prior to the ceasefire, more than 60 Palestinians had been killed, half of them between January 25 and January 29.
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At an extraordinary Ard Fheis (congress) of Sinn Fein held in Dublin on January 28, delegates voted overwhelmingly to endorse the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), long known for its discriminatory and violent practices towards the Irish republican movement and Northern Ireland Catholics. About 90% of the 982 delegates at the congress accepted the motion put forward by Sinn Feins Ard Chomhairle (national executive), paving the way for a devolution of power to the Northern Ireland Assembly as outlined in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
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Washingtons plan for military action against Iran goes far beyond limited air strikes on its nuclear facilities and would effectively unleash a war against the country, a former US intelligence analyst told Reuters on January 21.
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A mixed message combining celebration and auto-critique came from the Nairobi World Social Forum, held from January 20-25 in a massive sports complex 10km from the city. The 60,000 registered participants heard triumphalist radical rhetoric and yet, too, witnessed persistent defeats for social justice causes, especially within the WSFs own processes.
Culture
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Petrodollar Warfare
By William Clark
New Society Publishers, 2005
$29.95 267pages -
The Battle For Islam Looks at how in some Muslim countries, it is women who are leading the charge for change. SBS, Friday, February 9, 1.30pm.
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Comrade Roberts: Recollections of a Trotskyite
By Kenneth Gee
Desert Pea Press, 2006
207 pages, $29.95 (pb)