Azad Arman, a socialist from the Kurdish region of northern Iraq who fled his homeland in 1991 and is now living in Australia, said life in Iraqi Kurdistan today is miserable.
Issue 699
News
For two days now in parliament Treasurer Peter Costello has attacked ALP signatories of our sign-on invitation for Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to visit Australia, Kiraz Janicke from the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network told Green Left Weekly on February 15. But Costellos attacks have been both ridiculous and factually inaccurate.
On the third anniversary of the death of young Aboriginal man TJ Hickey, his mother Gail told a rally of some 200 people at the site of his death in Redfern that her family was still being harassed by the cops. Hickey said police harassment of young people in Redfern must stop, or there would be more deaths like that of her son, who was impaled on a fence while being chased by police.
October 2007 will be the 40th anniversary of Ernesto Che Guevaras death in the mountains of Bolivia. It will also be the occasion of what will hopefully be the biggest anti-imperialist convergence Australia has seen in decades the Latin American and Asia Pacific International Solidarity Forum.
On February 15, PM John Howard’s government announced that it had agreed to the construction of a new US spy-satellite ground station at the Kojarena intelligence base 30 kilometres east of Geraldton. The new facility will transmit data to and from two US geostationary spy satellites focused on the Middle East and Asia.
The Howard governments Work Choices laws are not bringing about a more flexible, simpler and fairer system of workplace relations for Australia, as the Howard government likes to argue, according to two recent damning research papers. The studies also disprove Canberras claim that the laws have improved productivity, increased wages, balanced work and family life and reduced unemployment.
Analysis
On February 16, ABC News featured the US military prosecutor Colonel Morris Davis vilifying Adelaide father of two David Hicks as a war criminal. Davis would not specify when Hicks would be brought before a military tribunal of the type that was ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court last June but reinstituted by Congress a few months later.
Two months before the Howard government’s draconian Welfare to Work package went to federal parliament, Labor’s spokesperson for employment and workplace participation Penny Wong argued that the proposals were “the most extreme attack on the social security system in history”.
Rachel Siewert, Greens senator for Western Australia, is concerned that the federal opposition hasnt come out more strongly against the governments welfare package. We would get rid of Welfare to Work and look towards better options that support people, she told Green Left Weekly.
The call by Australian Greens’ leader Senator Bob Brown on February 9 for a long-term plan to phase out coalmining, exports and power generation has predictably stirred a barrage of outrage from the coal industry. Brown’s call also flushed out the Labor-Coalition bipartisan consensus of support for coal-company profits over the environment.
The Socialist Alliance is campaigning for urgent action to address the environmental catastrophe in NSW caused by drought and decades of bad management.
I voted yes and will always vote yes, Reuters quoted Laurinda Duarte as saying. Abortions will always take place so why not vote to allow women to carry them out under decent conditions? I am a Catholic but that does not mean I am not free to vote.
At a meeting in Melbourne on February 8 journalist and film-maker John Pilger hailed Shirley Shackleton as one of Australias heroes. He praised her tireless dedication, since 1975, in exposing the genocide in East Timor and in pursuing the truth about the death of five journalists in Balibo, East Timor. One of the journalists killed was her husband Greg Shackleton.
The following article was submitted by members of the Ongoing G20 Arrestee Solidarity Network: Last November 18, approximately 40 men met at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Melbourne. The discussions of the G20 finance ministers took place behind barricades and high fences to, as Treasurer Peter Costello argued, create a space conducive to free and frank dialogue.
The Australian Youth Climate Coalition was launched around the country on February 16, World Kyoto Day. In Sydney, activists gathered at the Bondi office of federal environment minister Malcolm Turnbull to deliver the AYCCs declaration.
World
Protests against tuition fees brought Canada to a standstill on February 7. In Toronto, as temperatures dropped to as low as -20°C, more than 6000 students took to the streets, demanding the government increase funding to make post-secondary education accessible.
The Solomon Islands government wants the Pacific Islands Forum to initiate talks on an exit plan for the PIFs Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), Solomons foreign minister Patterson Oti told a PIF consultative meeting in Honiara on February 12.
Dita Sari is arguably the most well-known progressive activist in Indonesia today. A former trade union leader and political prisoner under the Suharto regime, she is now the chairperson of the People’s Democratic Party (PRD), which is the leading force in the new, broader National Liberation Party of Unity (Papernas). Sari was interviewed in Jakarta by Green Left Weekly’s Peter Boyle after the founding conference of Papernas in January, which selected her as its candidate for the 2009 presidential elections.
Mike Sambo, the national coordinator of Zimbabwes International Socialist Organisation, explained to Green Left Weeklys Steve Marks on February 16 what lies behind the regeneration of class struggle in the country.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Global Footprint Networks 2006 report, Living Planet, released last October, painted a grim picture of the calamitous state of the worlds environment. It warned that human activities are outstripping the natural worlds capacity to regenerate.
“We, and millions of people around the world … believe another world is possible, a world free from war, poverty and hunger. Here in Venezuela the [government of socialist President Hugo Chavez] along with the majority of the people in our country are fighting hard to build this new world, despite the attempts of the old elite and the US government to prevent us from succeeding.” This is what 25-year-old university student Germania Fernandez told Pablo Navarrete, according to a December 1 article on Venezuelanalysis.com.
Over the February 3-4 weekend, 60 people participated in a conference on European anti-capitalist left unity projects organised by left-wing Swiss party SolidariteS. Held in the border town of Le Locle in the Neuchatel canton, the conference attracted mainly SolidariteS members and supporters, but members of the French Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR) also attended.
Washington is growing increasingly frustrated that its European Union allies are refusing to toughen financial sanctions that were imposed on Iran by the UN Security Council last December to pressure Iran to abandon research into the production of enriched uranium.
The US troop casualty rate in Iraq surged to a post-invasion high over the four months to the end of January, according to a February 7 Associated Press. AP reported that more US troops were killed in combat in Iraq over the past four months at least 334 through Jan. 31 than in any comparable stretch since the war began.
Faced with thousands of protesters, reflecting growing popular pressure, Ecuadors Congress voted on February 13 to allow a motion by President Rafael Correa for a referendum on a constituent assembly.
After months of internecine fighting that has resulted in more than 90 Palestinian deaths, Fatah and Hamas signed a deal on February 8 to form a new unity government. The deal, brokered by Saudi Arabia, was signed after a two-day emergency meeting in Mecca.
Culture
As a schoolboy, Maximilien Robespierre gave a speech of welcome for King Louis XVI in a 1775 coronation ceremony at his college in Paris. Eighteen years later, Louis was decapitated by Robespierres revolutionary government. What, asks Ruth Scurr in her biography of Robespierre, had turned the dutiful student into a regicide, whose name in conventional history has left behind no trace but terror?
Blood Diamond
Directed by Edward Zwick
With Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou and Jennifer Connelly
In cinemas
Directed by Edward Zwick
With Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou and Jennifer Connelly
In cinemas
Kylie Tennant: A Life
By Jane Grant
National Library of Australia, 2006
156 pages, $24.95 (pb)
By Jane Grant
National Library of Australia, 2006
156 pages, $24.95 (pb)
Editorial
PM John Howard is facing an election later this year and knows that his governments support for Washingtons war in Iraq is highly unpopular hence his vituperative attacks on Labor leader Kevin Rudds pledge to withdraw Australian troops.
General
An article by Adele Horin in the February 15 Sydney Morning Herald reported the findings of a world authority on income inequality, Sir Anthony Atkinson, of Oxford University, which he presented at a seminar at the social policy research centre at the University of NSW.
Protest Cheneys visit!
Join the protests against US Vice-President Dick Cheneys visit.
Sydney
* 5.30pm, February 22, Sydney Town Hall
* 8am, February 23, Shangri-la Hotel, cnr. Essex and George Streets, the Rocks
Phone Simon on 0438 297 552 or Paddy on 0415 800 586
Canberra
* 5pm, February 23, Garema Place, Civic
Phone James on 0403 943 529
Letters
Aslyum seekers
On February 15, the US government agreed to offer asylum to 7000 Iraqi refugees who had left their homeland and had been waiting in third countries such as Jordan and Syria. A US team is scheduled to go to Amman, Jordan, on February
Resistance!
A disturbing trend is spreading across Australian universities some universities have begun barring political groups from orientation week (o-week) events.
The global youth radicalisation of the 1960s illustrated the revolutionary potential of students in society. Young people and students have played a vital role in revolutionary struggles in the past and continue to do so today. In Latin America, young people are energetic leaders and participants in the social movements, and in Venezuela, young people view themselves as being the “foot soldiers” of the revolution.