On May 12, 400 people from the NSW mid-north coast packed the Kempsey Anglican Hall for a public meeting organised by the Macleay Nuclear Free Alliance (MNFA). With the theme Nuclear power not the answer to climate change, the afternoon forum had as its featured speakers anti-nuclear campaigner Dr Helen Caldicott and NSW Greens MP John Kaye.
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On May 30, an Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network forum heard from Adam Leeman and Federico Fuentes, two participants in this years May Day brigade to revolutionary Venezuela.
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KATOOMBA — David Bradbury’s latest anti-nuclear documentary, Hard Rain, attracted more than 40 people to a screening in the Blue Mountains on May 28. Bradbury’s film thoroughly debunks the many myths now being pushed hard by big business and the major parties, and documents how immensely dangerous and destructive to human beings and the natural environment both uranium mining and nuclear power are. The film prompted a wide-ranging discussion about alternatives to nuclear power and solutions to global warming. The event was organised by the Socialist Alliance and Green Left Weekly.
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KURANDA More than 100 people took part in a march and festival to mark Recognition Day on May 27. The march was organised by the Kuranda Womens Group. Speakers at the festival opening included Judi Enoch, secretary of the Ngoonbi Cooperative Society, Terry OShane and other local Indigenous activists and elders. They highlighted the need to be conscious of Indigenous peoples history of struggle and the sharp attacks on their rights and living conditions in the decade the Howard government has been in power.
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The union movement must take urgent action to end the ALPs backflips on industrial relations.
News
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On May 31, 300 people packed the Wesley Uniting Church in Melbourne’s CBD for a public meeting organised by the LinkUp Melbourne campaign for the city’s train and tram systems to be put back under public ownership when the contracts with the current private operators expires in November.
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A June 1 student conference held at Sydney University resolved to make George Bush’s visit to Australia and the September APEC summit in Sydney a focus for the anti-war and environment campaigns on campus.
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On May 24, the Peel Hotel in Collingwood was granted an exemption to the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act, allowing the venue to refuse entry to all women and heterosexual men.
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A new report on the effects of the cluster bombs used against Lebanon by Israel during its July-August invasion last year was launched at the Northcote Town Hall on May 29. Around 100 people attended, including members of the Lebanese community, politicians, local councilors and activists.
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On May 30, the crown prosecutors opened their argument in the trial of Bryan Law, Jim Dowling, Adele Goldie and Donna Mulhearn from Christians Against All Terrorism (CAAT) in the Alice Springs courthouse. The “Pine Gap Four” were charged under the Defence (Special Undertakings) Act 1952.
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These are exciting times for Resistance, Emma Clancy, a member of the socialist youth organisations national executive, told Green Left Weekly. In the past year we have gone from strength to strength. Clancy is helping to organise the 2007 national conference of Resistance, which will be held at Sydneys Glebe Town Hall from July 5 to 8. The conference will involve in-depth strategic discussions about all of the protest movements in Australia.
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More than 400 people protested against Prime Minister John Howard’s anti-union government outside Bathurst’s Carrington restaurant on May 25. Howard was in town to address a fundraiser, part of a desperate attempt to save Liberal MP for Macquarie Kerry Bartlett from likely defeat at the federal election.
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On May 31, the nine Sydney men who were arrested in raids on their homes in November 2005, and who have been incarcerated in Goulburn maximum security prison since, finally faced a hearing in the Supreme Court. The nine men pleaded not guilty to the charge of conspiring to organise a terrorist act under the Howard government’s so-called anti-terror laws.
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More than 55 people met at the University of Technology, Sydney on May 28 discuss the upcoming Stop Bush! demonstrations, which will be held during the September APEC summit in Sydney. The meeting was a promising sign that people believe APEC is an important opportunity to build the campaigns that can challenge Prime Minister John Howard and US President George Bushs neoliberal agenda.
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Friends of the Earth Australia has called on the Australian government to commit $1.8 billion a year in funding for adaptation to climate change following the release on May 29 of an Oxfam International report Adapting to Climate Change: Whats Needed in Poor Countries, and Who Should Pay.
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On May 28, 30 people picketed an administration building at the Queensland University of Technology s Gardens Point campus to support Dr Gary MacLennan, a long-time radical activist and academic at QUT, who was facing disciplinary charges over his criticism of a PhD film project mocking disabled people.
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On May 29, a public meeting was held at Shellharbour, south of Wollongong, to oppose the NSW Labor government’s plans to allow private development in the Killalea State Recreation Park. The meeting was attended by 160 local residents, unionists, environmentalists and Indigenous people, following a call by the South Coast Labor Council.
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On the evening of June 1, international shipping company Canada Steamship Lines (CSL) announced it was backing down after a tense four-day stand-off with Port Kembla members of the Maritime Union of Australia. Garry Keane, Port Kembla MUA branch secretary, reported to jubilant wharfies and community supporters that CSL had agreed to let “shore-based labour” unload the bulk carrier Capo Noli.
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Environmental activists, excluded from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperations May 27-30 energy summit, erected a large inflatable cooling tower outside the fenced-off security zone surrounding Darwins Parliament House. Energy ministers from the US, Australia and the Pacific rim failed to come up with any solutions to the global warming crisis, reaffirming instead the dominant role of fossil fuels in future energy supplies.
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May 31 marked the first day of a court challenge launched by the Wilderness Society (TWS) against the federal government, which TWS claims has broken its own environmental laws. According to TWS, federal environment minister Malcolm Turnbull acted illegally by allowing a proposed billion-dollar Gunns Ltd pulp mill in Tasmania’s Tamar Valley to escape proper assessment by the independent Resource Planning and Development Commission.
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The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and Electrical Trades Union (ETU) have established an ongoing protest embassy outside the front office of Toyota's Altona assembly plant to protest the dismissal of AMWU delegate Tony Carvalho. Carvalho was dismissed for allegedly bullying two employees who are currently on stress leave. The charges from the two complainants were drafted by a prominent law firm and were directed at Toyota. But Toyota management suspended Carvalho during an investigation, and ultimately sacked him on May 3.
Analysis
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The Latin America and Asia Pacific International Solidarity Forum (LAAPISF) in Melbourne on October 11-14 will be attended by one of the most important and interesting leaders of the Venezuelan revolution Comandante William Izarra.
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The good news this week is that the Green Left Weekly Fighting Fund has reached a third of the way to its $250,000 target for 2007!
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On May 30, Labors industrial relations spokesperson Julia Gillard shocked many unionists when she announced at the National Press Club that a Rudd Labor government would retain the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) until January 31, 2010. This back flip comes a month after Labor decided, at its national conference, to abolish the hated body. ACTU president Sharan Burrow said she did not support the delay.
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The following is an abridged version of the Beyond Zero Emissions stationary energy plan for the state of Victoria. It is reprinted with permission from MATTHEW WRIGHT of Beyond Zero Emissions, a non-profit, volunteer-run campaign set up under Sustainable Energy Future Inc. The full version can be read at http://www.beyondzeroemissions.org.
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The sudden departure on May 29 of visiting Jakarta governor, General Sutiyoso, after being asked to give evidence at the inquest into the death of Brian Peters in East Timor in 1975, further incriminates him in the plot to kill five Australian journalists in Balibo, East Timor, in 1975. According to deputy NSW state coroner Dorelle Pinch, Sutiyoso had allegedly been part of Team Susi, one of the Indonesian military units in Balibo when the journalists were killed. It has taken 32 years for there to be an inquest into the murder of the Balibo Five. Mark Tedeschi QC, counsel assisting the coroner, told the court that eyewitness accounts provided incontrovertible evidence that the men were not caught in crossfire when Indonesian troops attacked Balibo, but were deliberately killed by Indonesian soldiers after they tried to surrender. Witnesses gave evidence that the Gough Whitlam government knew of the Balibo executions within hours of them being carried out. Below, SHIRLEY SHACKLETON, the widow of Greg Shackleton, one of the five who was murdered, recounts some of the bloody struggle for self-determination.
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The Kyoto Protocol calls for rich countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% compared to 1990 levels. Britain, South Australia and Victoria have gone for a 60% reduction by 2050, and California proposes a cut of 80%.
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Dave Noonan, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union’s construction division national secretary, has slammed the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) for “intimidating and bullying” workers.
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Therese Rein has done very nicely under the Coalition government — particularly since its 1996 decision to privatise the Commonwealth Employment Service and set up a private Job Network to steamroll the unemployed into often underpaid and unrewarding jobs. From humble beginnings in Brisbane in 1989, Rein has built up an international employment business with an annual turnover of $175 million. She should be a poster child for the benefits of the Coalition’s privatisation drive for business, except that she is also the wife of federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd.
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The Canadian-owned Barrick Gold Corporation, the worlds largest gold producer, is exploring, building and operating huge, open-pit goldmines on nearly every continent on the planet.
World
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On May 31, a picket of 50 people organised by Solidarity Unity protested outside the offices of Mighty River Power, which supplies electricity to Mercury Energy, the company responsible for the death of an Auckland woman on May 29.
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The following letter, signed by a range of prominent figures in Britain, calls for respect for the Venezuelan governments decision not to renew RCTVs broadcasting licence. Signatories to the letter, which appeared in the British Guardian on May 26, include Tony Benn, John Pilger, Tariq Ali, Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter and various MPs and trade union and student leaders.
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The arrest of two prominent Republican activists has strained the new power-sharing government in Stormont (the Northern Ireland Assembly), established between Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party of Ian Paisley in May. In January, as a step towards a coalition with the DUP, SF agreed to recognise the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI); SF members took up positions on the Policing Board for the first time on May 31.
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“We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us”, the May 27 New York Times reported being told by US Army Staff Sergeant David Safstrom, who was commenting on the US-recruited and trained Iraqi Army.
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Venezuela has been facing the most sustained campaign of destabilisation, including a barrage of media lies internationally and violent riots inside Venezuela, since the last serious attempt to overthrow the left-wing government of Hugo Chavez in 2004.
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The proposed anti-terror laws would allow police to demand peoples names and addresses and question them as to where they have been and where they are going. Those giving unsatisfactory answers could be arrested and fined up to £5000 (about A$12,000). Under current British laws, police already have powers to stop and search people, but not to demand answers to questions or to issue fines for non-compliance. Stop and question powers are already in place in Northern Ireland.
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In the wake of the Democratic Party taking control of the US House of Representatives and Senate in the November 2006 elections, hopes were high among the more liberal layers of the anti-war movement that it spelled an end to President George Bush’s Iraq war. No-one seriously doubted that behind the Democrats’ electoral resurrection was anger about the war, by that stage over three-and-a-half years long.
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On May 25, Moqtada al Sadr, Iraqs widely popular Shiite cleric whose Madhi Army militia has been accused by US officials of being responsible for a wave of killings of Sunni Muslims since February 2006, emerged publicly for the first time in months to deliver a Friday evening prayer speech in the southern holy city of Kufa, in which he called for US forces to get out of Iraq and vowed to protect Iraqi Sunnis and Christians.
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The Fianna Fail party of current Taoiseach (prime minister) Bertie Ahern won a resounding victory in the May 24 elections with 41% of the vote. FF, which has held power for 10 years, fell five seats short of an outright majority. Ahern will likely form a centre-right coalition with the right-wing Progressive Democrats (PD) and independents, although there are also reports of contact with the Greens about forming a coalition. There is a June 14 deadline for the formation of the incoming government.
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June 5 marks the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War, during which Israel attacked and defeated the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria, seizing the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank from Jordan.
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Sporadic fighting was reported to have erupted on May 29 on the edges of the Nahr al Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon between the Lebanese Army and a Sunni Arab Islamist group called Fatah al Islam. On May 21, the Lebanese Army had laid siege to the camp and its 45,000 residents after the pro-US government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora alleged that members of the little known Islamist group had carried out a bank robbery the previous day.
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Israeli military death squads assassinated two members of the Fatah-aligned Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Ramallah and Jenin on May 29. The public executions, which resulted in at least seven Palestinian civilians injured in Ramallah, were part of Israels escalating campaign of assassinations and military assaults in the West Bank and Gaza.
Culture
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Hamas: A Beginners Guide
By Khaled Hroub
Pluto Press, 2006
170 pages, $36.95 -
The Weird Mob 2: The Italian Invasion
June 4 to 9, Parliament House of NSW and Chauvel Cinema, Paddington
http://www.theweirdmob.com, 0406 135 607 or info@theweirdmob.com -
Peering back and forth, dead men weep.
No sleep, for victims of the holocaust
Auschwitz! Treblinka! Sobibor!
As
Kindred spirits cry for Palestine. -
Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change
By Clive Hamilton
Black Inc. Agenda, 2007.
266 pages, $29.95 (pb) -
Compass: Judah and Mohammad — An intimate portrait of two teenage boys, one Israeli and one Palestinian, filmed over 18 months. ABC, Sunday, June 10, 9.30pm. Message Stick: Men's Business — A group of Aboriginal men respond to the issues
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Rest in peace, carbon profits, bathed in blood. Before you drown us in your flood, we will rise to bury you. Tremble in fear, carbon merchants, profiteers. You refuse to lift Earth's shroud, your carbon mushroom cloud. A people's fire