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"Ah McCain, you've done us again!"

BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE SMITHTON — On August 1, in the largest farmer protest in Tasmania's history, 500 potato farmers and their supporters converged with tractors, trucks and other farm equipment on the McCain factory in Smithton. The blockade

'Our dream is live as human beings'

BY LISA MACDONALD Osama Saddig Yousif is one of thousands of activists in the north African country of Sudan who have been arrested, jailed and tortured many times by the Islamic fundamentalist government that took power in a military coup on June

Casual change on campus

BY VIV MILEY The number of casual staff in Australian universities has more than doubled since 1990, a report by the Australian Vice-Chancellors, Committee has revealed. The report, released on July 20, showed that the proportion of casual

A feminist perspective on pornography

BY ALISON DELLIT The debate between Joyce Wu (GLW #457: "Labor left in bed with the sex industry") and Lev Lafayette and Anthony Leong (GLW #458: "The sex industry: Socialism or censorship?") has raised an important question: is the sex industry

Much debate at Queer Collaborations conference

BY ERIN KILLION NEWCASTLE — The 150 activists who gathered for it will certainly long remember this year's annual Queer Collaborations conference, held here from July 9-13. The formal agenda prepared by the QC organising collective included

Worldwide support for PNG activists

BY NIKKI ULASOWSKI More than 200 organisations and individuals worldwide have signed a statement of solidarity with the struggle by students and workers in Papua New Guinea against an International Monetary Fund and World Bank-mandated economic

Refugee policy compounds persecution

On July 11 Maryam Ayoobi was stoned to death by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ayoobi, a mother in her late twenties, was imprisoned a year ago and sentenced to death for committing adultery. The International Committee Against Stoning had organised

Ruddock steps up crackdown on asylum seekers

BY SARAH STEPHEN Security at Sydney's Villawood immigration detention centre will be tightened in response to recommendations made in a report by Knowledge Enterprises' Keith Hamburger, former director of Queensland's prisons department.

Loose cannons

Ranting I "Globalisation describes what is happening. And ranting against globalisation is like ranting against the telephone. You can use the telephone for good or for ill. So too the wider process (of which the telephone is part) can be a force

Action updates

NT nurses strike DARWIN — On July 26 NT nurses decided to reject a 4% pay offer, and take industrial action for the first time in twenty years. With an annual rate of inflation of 6%, the government's offer represents a drop in real wages. The

INDONESIA: Elite squabbles, army arrests, people protest

BY MAX LANE An intense struggle is underway within the Indonesian elite over how to divide up the spoils after the ousting of President Abdurrahman Wahid. On August 3, 12 days after Megawati Sukarnoputri was elected president by the People's

Hundreds toast Cuban Revolution

BY KIM BULLIMORE SYDNEY — Hundreds of supporters of Cuba have gathered here twice in the past two weeks to celebrate the 48th anniversary of the July 26, 1953, storming of the Moncada barracks, the spark which set off the Cuban Revolution six