The Islamic Girls and Womens Group will make its office in Ross House on Flinders Lane available for use by Muslim Legal Services Victoria to provide free legal services for Muslims.
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On February 28, Major Michael Mori, David Hickss US military lawyer, addressed a packed Founders Hall at the University of Ballarat. The mixed crowd of at least 600 learned a whole lot more about how Hicks is the Australian governments sacrificial lamb in the war on terror.
During a visit to Venezuela, Argentinean President Nestor Kirchner signed an agreement with Venezuelas socialist President Hugo Chavez that will launch the Bank of the South (Bancosur) within four months, reported a February 22 Venezuelanlaysis.com article. Bancosur is part of the push, led by Venezuela, for Latin American integration to challenge US corporate domination. Chavez has promoted the bank as a source of cheap credit for countries in the region and a non-exploitative alternative to the First World-controlled International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
Young people are likely to be hit hard by Work Choices, the Youth Coalition, the peak youth affairs body in the ACT, told the Legislative Assemblys select committee on working families on March 1.
While Qantas workers job security remains uncertain if the Airline Partners Australia (APA) $11.1 billion takeover bid for Qantas succeeds, executives at the national carrier stand to pocket millions.
The first congress by the Preparatory Committee for the Acehnese Peoples Party (KP-PRA) was disrupted on February 28 when around 75 participants were rushed to hospital with suspected food poisoning.
After an epileptic seizure on December 15, Sharif Assad, a Syrian being held in Sydneys Villawood immigration detention centre, was transferred to Bankstown hospital against his will and tied to a bed.
On February 23 and 25, US and Iraqi forces raided the head offices of Iraqs national trade union centre, the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW). One of the unions security staff was arrested and later released. The soldiers destroyed furniture and confiscated a computer and fax machine. The union has condemned the attacks as unprovoked and is demanding a written apology from the occupation forces, the return of seized property and compensation for damages. Messages of protest can be lodged at: <http://www.labourstart.org/iraqraid>.
In Venezuela, after decades of class polarisation, neglect of the needs of the majority, corruption on a massive scale and unbridled bureaucracy, the magnitude of problems that Venezuelas Bolivarian revolution led by socialist president Hugo Chavez is attempting to tackle is enormous.
Hicks has spent five years, mainly in solitary confinement, at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, which the US set up on illegally occupied Cuban territory to ensure independence from the legal system of any country, including the US itself.
As right-wing death squads reassert their presence and gangs and organised crime with links to the highest levels of government operate freely, campesinos (peasants) and organised youth are being persecuted and beaten in the streets. On February 27, while holding a peaceful and legal protest against the regional free trade agreement CAFTA and the governments crackdown on civil liberties, 27 young activists were detained, charged with civil disobedience and brutally beaten by the civil police. Meanwhile the Popular Youth Bloc is awaiting information on the fate of Edwar Contreras Bonifacio, who was forcibly disappeared when he left college on February 7. An international solidarity campaign is underway and people are urged to write to the nearest Salvadoran consulate or embassy demanding his safe return, as well as the release of the 27 arrested youth. The youth and popular organisations are responding to this campaign of state-sponsored intimidation with the call to Answer more repression with more struggle!
Pot calls kettle black
"Their [the Islamists] goal in the broader Middle East is to seize control of a country, so they have a base from which they can launch attacks against governments that refuse to meet their demands." — Lord Darth Cheney,
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