While there are treatments to slow the progression of AIDS, adding decades to sufferersÂ’ lives, access to them is a case study in the vast gap between rich and poor nations. Few deny that HIV/AIDS is a massive health crisis. What is now clear is that it is also a social one, exacerbated by the contradictions of a world dominated by the wealthy minority of First World countries.
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Two Chinese detainees have been on hunger strike in the Villawood detention centre for more than 40 days. During that time, an asylum seeker in Stage One has stabbed himself. His condition is deteriorating.
HOBART — Thirty people greeted foreign minister Alexander Downer on May 11 with chants and fliers critiquing Australia foreign policy in Iraq. The lecture hosted by the University of Tasmania was about “diplomacy”. The demonstration was organised by the Hobart Peace Coalition and protesters explained that war is not diplomacy and that the occupation of Iraq must end.
Treasurer Peter Costello's May 8 federal budget was aimed at investing in the future of big business. It cements the government's privatisation agenda, further running down already neglected public services and throwing money at private-profit alternatives. It fails to even begin to address global warming, and contains a further major hike in military spending. At the same time, the government feathered its re-election bid with a rash of small to middling tax cuts.
Depleted uranium
While there are some beneficial uses of radiation such as for X-rays and anti-cancer therapy, expanding the uranium industry to cater to a world greedy for electricity is fraught with great danger.
Most people are not aware
Some 100,000 protesters flooded Tel AvivÂ’s Rabin Square on May 3 to call for the ouster of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. But after surviving three no-confidence votes in parliament a few days later, it appeared that Olmert would hang on.
Well-known left-wing academic Dr Gary MacLennan and his Queensland University of Technology colleague John Hookham are facing possible suspension or dismissal without pay on charges of “straight misconduct” over their public criticism of a PhD project approved of by the QUT ethics committee.
The federal budget includes a multi-million package of extra spending on "security" during coming years, according to media releases from the attorney-general's department.
As PM John Howard prepares to host the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit (APEC) in Sydney in September — to which US President George Bush and around 21 world leaders have been invited — a debate has opened over tactics for protests against the summit.
Nine hundred police were used in simultaneous raids across Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen and other cities on May 9 as part of a pre-emptive strike against anti-G8 protests planned for June 6-8. Some 100,000 protesters are expected to demonstrate against the summit, which will be held in the northern seaside resort of Heiligendamm. The G8 draws together eight of the world’s largest industrialised powers — the US, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Russia and Canada.
“Anyone who says this camp is being built for refugees is talking nonsense”, union activist and former leader of the 1985 SEQEB dispute Bernie Neville told a Socialist Alliance meeting of around 25 people on May 9. Neville recently returned from working on the construction of the secret new detention centre on Christmas Island, dubbed “Australia’s Guantanamo Bay”.
I held such hope for the Sydney Coroner's inquest into the death of Brian Peters, one of the Balibo Five in East Timor in 1975, because we were promised an open court. But now the rules have been changed to allow vital evidence to be given "in camera", which gives Commonwealth bureaucrats the opportunity to censor that evidence.
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