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BY JONATHAN STRAUSS "We have a chance to fight ... to present a unified picture of workers", said N. Vasudevan, general secretary of the Federation of Blue Star Workers Unions, as I talked with him in the union's office in Mumbai. Behind him were
REVIEW BY SARAH STEPHEN Song of TibetDirected by Xie Fei 2001 Sydney Film Festival Set in Lhasa, in the hills of Tibet, Song of Tibet captures much of the rugged beauty of the country. In recalling her life, Yixi takes us back to the 1950s, when
BY MEGAN WHITE-FOX BYRON BAY — US Independence Day (July 4) was marked here by the burning of a US "dollar signs and stripes" flag as part of a rally demanding drug law reform. The flag burning symbolised the US-led "war on drugs" that
On July 3, an Israeli settler named Yair Har-Sinai was shot to death near a settlement enclave south of the West Bank. Fellow-settlers, who were extensively interviewed, explained two things about him: unlike other settlers, he did not carry a gun
BY VIVIEN MILEY The involvement of the giant corporations in the global HIV/AIDS fund may quickly destroy what hope there is that the global fund will help stop the spread of the virus. On June 26, the day after the UN General Assembly's special
On July 5, representatives of the East Timor Transitional Cabinet, the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor and the Australian government met in Dili and signed the Timor Sea Arrangement, concluding 10 months of negotiating and
BY JAMES VASSILOPOULOS& BERNIE WUNSCH CANBERRA — "No reconciliation without justice", demanded protesters at a July 1 rally and march on Parliament House organised by the Indigenous Students' Network. The protesters called on the government
HOBART — Australia's "minister for racism" Philip Ruddock received an unwelcome reception when he spoke to a Liberal party meeting in Salamanca Square on July 5. Fifteen protesters slammed the government's "shameful" policy of forcibly detaining
Socialism with capitalist characteristics "They are also working for building socialism with Chinese characteristics." — Chinese President Jiang Zemin, announcing that businesspeople can join the Communist Party. The CCP? "If we let people
BY MICHAEL ARNOLD Over recent years the "drug problem" has been regularly discussed in the corporate media. In the midst of this discussion, more than 1000 Australian heroin users have died as a result of overdoses between 1996 and 2000. While
BY NORM DIXON JOHANNESBURG — Trade union militants and grassroots activists involved in a wave of working-class community struggles against evictions and cut-offs of water and electricity gathered here for the annual Khanya College winter school
The city of Juarez, on the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border, provides a telling example of how "free trade" agreements affect the lives of ordinary people. Juarez is in Mexico's "free trade zone", a commercial zone along the northern border