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BY PAUL BENEDEK SYDNEY — The last person you would expect to launch a book on East Timor would be Gough Whitlam, who was, in 1975, the Australian prime minister who allowed Indonesia's occupation of that country. So I was surprised to find
Afghan refugee pleads: Don't send us back! NOORIA WAZIFADOST is a 16-year-old Afghan refugee now living in Sydney. She arrived in Darwin with her family in 2000, and spent 40 days in the Curtin detention centre before being released on
Spanners in Beattie's dirty works BY ANDREW PHILLIPS BRISBANE — Workers at QBuild, the state government agency responsible for building all Queensland government buildings, schools and offices, are fighting for justice after being
SOUTH AFRICA: Sacrificing AIDS victims for corporate profits BY PATRICK BOND  JOHANNESBURG — During the last few days of June, at the same time as the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and Congress of South African Trade Unions
BELGIUM: War criminal escapes prosecution BY ROHAN PEARCE The Brussels Court of Appeals ruled on June 26 that a case against Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for war crimes cannot be tried under Belgian law. The case was brought by
BY JO WILLIAMS HAVANA — Critics continue to say that Cuba is undemocratic, closed off, repressive, and that critical ideas in general are suppressed. An investigation of the education system and the young people in Cuban schools paints a very
BY SARAH STEPHEN The European Union faces an ironic contradiction in coming decades. As birth rates continue to decline, many countries face negative population growth. The EU needs more immigration. Yet the European Council's June 21-22 meeting in
AFGHANISTAN Sham assembly installs warlord coalition BY NORM DIXON The much-hyped loya jirga — or grand assembly — was supposed to be post-Taliban Afghanistan's first step towards the creation of a representative democratic
CMG workers return to work BY TERRICA STRUDWICK ROCKHAMPTON — Meatworkers at the Packer-family-owned Consolidated Meat Group's Lakes Creek abbatoir returned to work on June 20 after spending two weeks on strike and another week locked
Abortion still an issue in Tasmania BY ANTHEA STUTTER LAUNCESTON — “Despite the emergency sitting of the Tasmanian parliament last December, ostensibly to pass legislation to solve the abortion access crisis, women still don't have full
BY PIP HINMAN& SARAH STEPHEN On June 23, the same day that 13,000 people took to the streets across Australia to oppose the mandatory detention of asylum seekers, detainees at the Woomera detention centre began a hunger strike. By June 24, 180-190
BY SARAH STEPHEN The Howard government's Migration Legislation Amendment (Procedural Fairness) Bill 2002 passed through the House of Representatives with the support of the Labor Party on June 26 with very little publicity. The new act