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Gollinger interview Eva Gollinger, in her interview "US continues destabilisation push in Venezuela" (GLW #716), regrettably made errors in referring to our organization, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC). She says that our
On July 18, six students were arrested on the Garden’s Point campus of the Queensland University of Technology when 20 police brutally attacked a peaceful protest outside the University Council, which was meeting to pass the final decision to shut down QUT’s humanities and human services faculty.
On July 20, 80 people rallied outside the Brisbane immigration department offices to protest against the detention of Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef. The rally was called by the Stop the War Collective.
The global climate crisis and campaigns for environmental and social justice, including the defence of Aboriginal land rights against the Howard government’s takeover of Northern Territory communities featured prominently at the Students of Sustainability (SoS) conference at Murdoch University from July 9-13. Some 300 Students and activists attended from around Australia.
Two Tamil men, Sivarajah Yathavan and Aruran Vinayagamoorthy, who were arrested in Melbourne in May under the “anti-terrorism” laws, were granted bail by Justice Bernard Bongiorno on July 17.
On June 2, 1975, sex workers in Lyon, France, occupied a church for two months, an action that inspired the contemporary sex-worker rights movement. On June 2 this year, 60 sex workers and supporters held a demonstration at Circular Quay to protest against the NSW parliament’s passage of the Brothels Legislation Amendment Act. Protesters described the legislation as a significant “reversal of decriminalisation”.
Lawyer Michael Bozic, unionist Peter McLelland and investigative journalist Wendy Bacon addressed 100 people at a July 16 Sydney public forum. The meeting was organised by the Stop Bush Coalition in the lead-up to protests during the September APEC summit, which US President George Bush will attend.
The decision by immigration minister Kevin Andrews to throw 27-year-old Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef into immigration detention — despite a Queensland court granting Haneef bail on charges of “recklessly” (meaning not deliberately) supporting terrorism — has further exposed the Howard government’s utter disregard for civil rights and the judicial system, and the dangers inherent in its “anti-terror” laws.
Ford’s decision to close down its Geelong engine plant will have a catastrophic effect on the town. It’s not just the 600 jobs at Ford that will be lost; hundreds of jobs will probably also be lost in the car components factories and various supply companies. This flow-on could mean up to 2400 more unemployed workers in Geelong.
Max Lane spoke to the Socialist Party of Timor’s (PST) secretary-general, Avelino da Silva Coelho, in the wake of East Timor’s June 30 parliamentary elections, in which the PST received 0.96% of the vote.
Four thousand timber workers and their families attended a rally in Launceston in support of the controversial Bell Bay pulp mill on July 19. The Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU) called the rally as part of a one-day stop-work action aimed at “combating the threat to jobs posed by radical green groups”.
On July 17, PM John Howard’s climate change policy was released amidst great fanfare. For most of his political career, Howard has denied the link between climate change and human industry, and the threat that it poses to the planet and society. Now the scientific evidence is irrefutable he has changed tack, and is promoting “solutions” to the climate change threat that avoid threatening the profits of the polluting corporations.