According to Prensa Latina on March 24, Venezuela has replaced some 45 million incandescent light bulbs with white light thrifty bulbs, benefiting more than 4 million households. The move is part of an energy saving program, the Energy Revolution Mission. More than 3000 activists have been involved in carrying out the bub changes, and are aiming to replace about 54 million in total. The mission is also expanding renewable energy sources such as solar and wind and beginning to replace petrol with gas to supply cars. Prensa Latina points out that while Venezuela is the fifth-largest exporter of hydrocarbons, it is encouraging the use of less contaminating energy sources.
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Following a decision by Fijis interim government to cut public servants pay by 5% and reduce the retirement age from 60 to 55 years, a range of unions have conducted ballots for strike action. The Fiji Public Service Association and the Fiji Nursing Association voted in favour of the strike and the Fiji Teachers Association will soon conclude its ballot. On March 30, more than 90% of Fiji Post and Telecommunication Employees Association members voted in favour of a strike. Public Service secretary Taina Tagicakibau claims the governments decision is non-negotiable and that any strike action would be illegal and result in job losses. The military has also threatened to intervene if the strike goes ahead.
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SYDNEY — On March 31, the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network’s Sydney committee annual general meeting forged plans for expanding the campaign to invite Venezuela’s socialist president Hugo Chavez to tour Australia this year — an antidote to US President George Bush’s scheduled September visit. Guest speaker Venezuelan charge d’affaires Nelson Davila underscored the popular changes transforming Venezuela out of poverty and towards socialism. The meeting also decided to embark on monthly films, forums or street actions in support of Venezuela to build momentum towards the Latin American and Asia Pacific International Solidarity Forum being held in Melbourne this October. To get involved phone Kiraz on (02) 9690 1977.
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After the NSW elections it looks very much like your times up, John Howard.
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HOBART The Howard government has promised to spend $200 million on an international fund to halve the rate of deforestation in Indonesia and the Asia Pacific as part of Australias contribution to stopping climate change. However the government hasnt mentioned putting an end to the 20,000 hectares of native forest that are clear-felled and burned each year in Tasmania. Greens leader Bob Brown highlighted this hypocrisy on March 30.
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Workers and concerned community members are continuing to hold rolling protests outside Preston Motors sites across Melbourne after the company’s refusal to negotiate a wage increase for its warehouse employees.
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On the National Day of Shame March 26 more than 100 supporters of voluntary euthanasia from across Australia came together at Parliament House, chanting Not the church, not the state, let the people decide their fate. A Freedom Ride from Sydney to Canberra marked the 10th anniversary of the federal governments overturning of the Northern Territorys Rights of the Terminally Ill Act.
News
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Green Left Weekly is taking a short break. The next issue will be dated April 18.
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The CFMEU ACT Rank and File Action Group met on March 14 to discuss the state of the ACT branch of the union. Reports were presented about the CFMEU federal office investigation of the branch, the groups campaign for a clean and strong union that is accountable to its members and the state of industrial organising in the ACT.
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On April 4, students at the University of Sydney will protest against the $50-$100 million development of the United States Studies Centre (USSC), a think tank designed to strengthen the relationship between Australia and the US.
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A March 28 forum of 150 people, organised by the Refugee Action Collective, was told that a new detention centre being built on Christmas Island will have the capacity to hold 800 people under 24-hour surveillance, and that detainees will have to wear electronic ID tags and be tracked at all times.
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The major parties green credentials were again put to the test on March 22 when Greens Senator Christine Milne introduced Australias first climate change bill. Despite some high profile backing for the bill which attempted to set legally binding targets for cuts to greenhouse gases the major parties refused to support it, giving the lie to their concern about climate change.
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Parasites' progress "This is the richest year ever in human history. Never in history has there been such a notable advance." — Forbes magazine chief executive Steve Forbes, March 9, commenting on the latest Forbes' annual Billionaires List, the
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Tasmanian Labor Premier Paul Lennons Pulp Mill Assessment Bill, which fast-tracks approval of timber giant Gunns Ltds proposed $1.5 billion Tamar Valley pulp mill, was passed by the Legislative Council, the state parliaments upper house, on March 29. Seven days earlier the bill had been passed by the lower house.
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The following is abridged from a statement received by the socialist youth organisation Resistance from the Frente Francisco de Miranda (FFM), an organisation of revolutionary youth at the forefront of Venezuelas socialist revolution.
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A hunger strike of 35 detainees in the Villawood immigration detention centre was initiated on March 28, sparked by the actions of Global Solutions Ltd (GSL) guards under the instructions of the immigration department. GSL guards snatched a Chinese woman from her bed in LIMA, the single women’s compound at Villawood. Dressed only in her pyjamas, she was dragged screaming from the compound and was deported only hours later.
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Sixty students and staff rallied in the Queensland University of Technology Kelvin Grove amphitheatre on March 15 to protest against the recent arrest of four QUT students for unauthorised political activity on campus.
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Around 120 people rallied outside Liberal MP for Deakin Phil Barresi’s electoral office in Mitcham, Melbourne, on March 27, the anniversary of the proclamation of the federal Coalition government’s unpopular and destructive industrial relations laws. The lunchtime protest and barbecue were organised by the Deakin community and Your Rights at Work campaign group, which has been raising awareness and campaigning in the area against the anti-worker laws.
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Emboldened by the current right-wing security environment, spy agencies are attempting to recruit at Australian universities.
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Esperance Port Authority workers and residents angry at the heavy metal contamination scandal affecting the town and Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) workers have banned handling lead through the port. More than 700 residents packed the Esperance Civic Centre on March 26 to hear reports of a pattern of bureaucratic buck-passing on the lead and nickel pollution.
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The NSW Minerals Council has backed away from legal action against Rising Tide, a community group campaigning against the expansion of the coal export industry in the Hunter region.
Analysis
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With the 15-year resources-led boom stimulating the economy, inflation at about 3% and official unemployment at just under 5%, Australians should have little to complain about. But, according to Tony Vinson of Sydney University’s Department of Social Work, the social divide between the rich and poor is deepening and increasing.
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“Democracy remains a great danger to those who have privilege and control. When you are part of the top 1% of the population that has as much income as the bottom 75% of the people, democracy is a permanent threat to your interests.”
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This is an account of an encounter I had with police officers on March 6 outside the federal Parliament House. At about 3.30pm that day, I went there with the intention of standing in the forecourt and holding up a Bring David Hicks Home! poster.
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While all eyes have been focused on the terrible plight of David Hicks, Willie Brigitte has been convicted and sentenced in France, nine Muslim men are undergoing a committal hearing in Sydney, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has allegedly confessed to a multitude of terror attacks and calls to ban the Muslim group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, in Australia have become more strident. This is all cause for concern, not because of a sinister threat by “terrorists”, but from the government-driven “war on terror”.
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Greenpeace has revealed that an independent report into safety testing by genetic engineering giant Monsanto was ignored in the lead-up to a vote on whether the company’s new genetically engineered maize would be approved for consumption in the European Union.
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For a number of years Washington has been threatening Iran for its alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons. Until now, the consensus has been that to undertake military action against Iran was so crazy that even President George Bush would not attempt it. But whenever questioned about whether military action or the use of nuclear weapons is under consideration, Bush’s officials repeat that “all options” are on the table.
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After five years of solitary confinement in a small metal cell, David Hicks pleaded guilty on March 26 to one of the two charges brought against him by US military prosecutors on March 1, to finally get out of the notoriously brutal US military prison at Guantanamo Bay. Hicks’s case has revealed just what a sham the US-led “war on terror” really is.
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After five years imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay without trial, David Hicks has agreed to a plea-bargain deal at his military commission trial to hasten his return to Australia. “I think most of you would be pleading guilty to something to get out of the place”, Hicks’s father Terry told the assembled media after returning to Adelaide from Guantanamo Bay on March 29.
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'Disturbing' assistance? The March 21 South Florida Sun Sentinel reported that Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, warning against the "spread of socialism" in Latin America, attacked the governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia while
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In the lead-up to the April 27-29 ALP national conference in Sydney, a number of federal Labor frontbenchers and state premiers have declared themselves in favour of scrapping the party’s “no new mines” policy in favour of an unrestricted expansion of uranium mining. This push — which ignores the views of a majority of Australians and the extreme dangers inherent in uranium mining and the nuclear cycle that it is part of — reflects booming prices for the mineral on the world market. However, a number of trade unions have opposed the policy change and vowed to fight it at the conference.
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On the grass outside an abattoir on the Western Plains of New South Wales, in the dark, cool air, a few workers are forming the late-night shift of a picket. Some journalists are hanging around, talking to them. It is less than a week after the federal governments new industrial relations legislation, known as Work Choices, has taken effect. The men are outside the Cowra abattoir, not inside, because they have received termination notices. Twenty-nine have been sacked from their jobs for operational reasons.
World
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On March 23, hundreds of thousands of people from all over India converged in Delhi to express their anger at the killing of peasant protesters on March 14 by police and thugs aligned with the West Bengal Left Front (LF) government. Those killed were resisting eviction from their land in Nandigram. Similar killings also happened on January 7. The mass rally was preceded by two days of cultural protests.
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Munya Gwisai, a member of the national coordinating committee of the International Socialist Organisation (Zimbabwe) as well as the deputy chairperson of the Zimbabwe Social Forum considers issues facing the democratic movement. He writes in a personal capacity.
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On March 28 and 29, a series of rightist mobilisations took place in Jakarta, including a 500-strong mobilisation aimed at disrupting a march and rally organised by the National Liberation Party of Unity (Papernas). The Papernas rally was protesting foreign domination of the Indonesian minerals sector and demanding its nationalisation. The right-wing thugs were armed with scythes, knives and canes. This was the fourth time in the last six months that Papernas has been targeted.
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Hanan Aruri, a Palestinian woman from Ramallah, became involved in the fight against the Israeli occupation as a teenager during the 1987 intifada (uprising). Today she is an activist in the international campaign to boycott Israel, and is also involved in campaigns for womens rights. She was a guest at the Socialist Alternatives March 30-April 1 Marxism Today conference. Aruri spoke to Green Left Weeklys Emma Clancy about the current dynamics in Palestinian politics and the struggle against the Israeli occupation.
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For the fourth time during his 14-month government, Bolivian President Evo Morales swore in a new president to run state petroleum company YPFB on March 23. This followed the eruption of a scandal that has cast doubts on the governments most popular measure to date the nationalisation of the countrys gas resources.
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The two-month-old government of leftist Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa and the popular movements that back him have emerged triumphant in their first battle with the oligarchy and the traditional political parties that have historically dominated the country. Correa in his inaugural address in January called for an opening to a “new socialism of the 21st century” and declared that Ecuador has to end “the perverse system that has destroyed our democracy, our economy and our society”.
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Today was a victory for democratic forces, not only for the Labour Party Pakistan, but for all the other parties who were able to go onto the streets in support of democratic rights, LPP general secretary Farooq Tariq told Green Left Weeklys Jim McIlroy in Lahore on March 26, following a round of demonstrations.
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East Timors presidential election campaign is now officially underway. Voting will be held on April 9. Max Lane spoke by phone with presidential candidate Avelino Coelho, secretary-general of the Socialist Party of Timor (PST).
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Many workers and unions in Australia and other imperialist countries have been involved in campaigns to stop jobs from being sent offshore to Third World countries. Unions in the rich countries usually think that this is an issue that only affects them, but the off-shoring of jobs to other countries, or to “free trade zones”, heavily impacts on workers in Third World countries, as capitalists try to drive workers’ wages and conditions ever lower.
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In front of more than 2000 promoters for the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) on March 24, President Hugo Chavez called for all the political parties that support him to unite behind the new party. These promoters will carry out the first stage in the formation of a united pro-government party by the end of the year. Chavez emphasised that a united party is vital for the success of the Bolivarian revolutionary process.
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Zalmay Khalilzad, the departing US ambassador to Iraq, told journalists in Baghdad on March 26 that US embassy and military officials had met several times with representatives of Iraqi groups that have ties to the anti-occupation resistance movement.
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The following opinion piece by Kamal Fadel, the Polisario Representative to Australia, is a response to Moroccos proposal for limited autonomy for Western Sahaha, which would include a regional government with some control over local affairs, cabinet ministries and a local judiciary. This piece was first published in <http://www.onlineopinion.com.au>.
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To no-one’s surprise, the Beijing-anointed incumbent Donald Tsang was returned in Hong Kong’s March 25 “election” for the territory’s chief executive — the third such election since the territory’s reversion to Chinese rule in 1997. What was surprising was that the rival candidate, lawyer Alan Leong — billed as representing the politically moderate middle-class democratic camp and the first ever challenger in this highly managed ballot — secured a respectable 123 votes compared to Tsang’s 649.
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Launching the second phase of La Otra Campana (The Other Campaign) on March 25, Subcomandante Marcos, the best-known spokesperson for the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), denounced “the current stage of capitalism” as a “new war of conquest”. He argued that “another world is possible, but only on top of the corpse of capitalism, the dominant system”.
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Around 5000 lawyers protesting on March 21 vowed not to rest until they succeed in removing General Pervez Musharraf from office, forcing the withdrawal of the reference against Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and gaining assurance of a full independent judiciary capable of protecting the constitution. They called for the establishment of a truly democratic government through free and fair elections. The dispute was sparked on March 9 when Musharraf suspended Chaudhry.
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Sixteen landed estates will be expropriated for Venezuelas land reform program, announced President Hugo Chavez on March 25, during his television program Alo Presidente. The total area of land that will thus become available for redistribution to peasants and agricultural cooperatives will exceed 330,000 hectares in the states of Apure, Anzoategui, Barinas, Guarico, Portuguesa and Aragua.
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On March 25, Iran announced it would limit inspections of its nuclear activities by the UNs International Atomic Energy Agency to its legally binding requirements under the countrys 1974 nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA.
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Pope Benedict XVI is travelling to Brazil in May for an important bishops meeting. To prepare the way the Vatican has slapped down Jesuit Father Jon Sobrino, one of Latin Americas major theologians and a survivor of the 1980s Salvadoran death squad war.
Culture
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Future: Tense The coming world order
By Gwynne Dyer
Scribe, 2006
256 pages, $27.95 -
(in response to Gunns withdrawing its pulp mill from the independent assessment process and Tasmanian premier Paul Lennon planning to approve it anyway)
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The Chaser's War on Everything — Australian political satire. ABC, Friday, April 6, 10.15pm. The Murder of Emmett Till — In the United States in August 1955, Till's murder and trial horrified the nation and lit a spark that helped mobilise the
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george bush, the war criminal says he's only killed about 30,000 Iraqis, more or less he's also killed more than 3000 US soldiers but that's the price you must pay for oil-ocracy, unleaded liberty, kerosene coalition benzene
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Industrial Unionism
by Peter Steiner and Frank Hanlon
Rebel Press, 2007
28 pages, $2
http://www.rebelpress.org.nz