Only one other term has featured as boldly and often in the establishment media as the word "mandate" since the March 2 election. "Political correctness", used in its derogatory sense to trivialise and attack attempts by
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BRISBANE — Lost in all the rhetoric of the federal election, an important event occurred at Griffith University here in mid-February. On February 18, 50 people, representing some 220 of south-east Queensland's local
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New Zealand unions Eva Cheng's review of Jane Kelsey's Economic Fundamentalism (GLW #223) thankfully draws attention to the lie that many here claim to be the New Zealand miracle. However, the accompanying photo might give the impression to
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WOLLONGONG — On March 20, students at Wollongong University attended a Resistance forum on the theme "East Timor: Freedom Now!". A key issue raised in the discussion was the Australian government's tacit support for the
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LONDON — Latest figures showing record ozone depletion over the Arctic come as no surprise, since the world continues to sanction the production of ozone-destroying chemicals, Greenpeace said on March 12. The statistics, released by the World
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East Timor Update DARWIN — Around 50 people attended an East Timor Update held by Australians for a Free East Timor on March 19. The meeting was also a commemoration of activist Jason Porter, who recently died in a motorcycle accident in
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George Brown was an elder from the Wreck Bay community. He began his successful struggle for land rights for his people in the early '70s. Like all Aboriginal land rights struggles, it was long and tiring, but it culminated after more than 20 years
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The March 15 announcement by the minister for resources, Senator Warwick Parer, that Australia would be "delighted" to sell uranium to Indonesia for its planned nuclear power stations, is an indication of just how quickly the
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Bold GirlsBy Rona MunroDirected by Ken BoucherBelvoir Street Theatre until April 14Reviewed by Trish Corcoran This play gives the audience an insight into the way families are affected in countries at war. In particular, it explores the issues that
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"As Republican women who have been imprisoned for our beliefs, we feel that the struggle for national liberation cannot be wholly separated from the struggle for the complete equality of women. Despite the fact that women are not accepted as equals
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Student control of student funds, repeal anti-student unionism legislation and drop the charges against the Rabelais editors are the central demands of a student national day of action which has been called for March 28. In NSW, an
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Actively Radical TV — Community television's progressive current affairs program tackles the hard issues from the activist's point of view. CTS Sydney (UHF 31), every Sunday, 4pm-7pm. Movie: The Rat Saviour (1976) — Set in a central
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Katherine Whitty Why we're angry We are 65,000 child-care workers professionally caring for you and your 450,000 children for any of many reasons, all of them justified and none more than the others. I am fortunate enough to work in a
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In the clearest example of its hostile intentions and a blatant grab for votes from the Cuban exile community in the November US presidential elections, the Clinton government has signed the Helms-Burton bill into law. The
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"Modern poverty is not the poverty that was blest in the Sermon on the Mount." — George Bernard Shaw Ms Stewart was very near despairing as she looked out of the window because she had no food and because she had only 25 cents left. She was
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The thousands of people who took to the streets around Australia for International Women's Day showed that feminism is still very relevant to many people. KAMALA EMANUEL spoke with KAREN FRY, ANGELA HATFIELD and CHERYL WALSH about what feminism
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Sometime in our lives, many of us will make a trip overseas. Perhaps it will be for political reasons, family reasons, or simply to see something different. Whatever your reason, why not take 91̳ along for the ride? 91̳ Weekly is
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Choices: Women Getting Involved — Many women feel so strongly about the obstacles in their lives that they become motivated to get involved in politics. Often this is at the community level and sometimes even parliament. In this program we
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At a time when business profits are up, women's wages and work conditions are on the way down. According to the head of the Affirmative Action Agency, women and their dependent children make up 70% of those living in poverty.
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BRISBANE — The March 28 national day of action against voluntary student unionism here will begin at noon in King George Square, with a march to Parliament House. There will also be live entertainment on the Kidney Lawn at
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Racial categories are purely social — founded not on biological realities, but on objectively meaningless and arbitrarily selected physical traits, such as skin colour. Racial categorisation fetishises these features and
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WOLLONGONG — Students from the University of Wollongong distributed the controversial article, "The Art of Shoplifting", in the local mall on March 22. The action was designed to bring attention to the trial of the editors of
News
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Lateral thinking "I don't think anybody is saying that it's an easy thing to change, but there are certainly many people thinking laterally, thinking how we can actually rejig this, how can we actually get the money to be able to knock off
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BRISBANE — The Australian Conservation Foundation has accused Queensland Premier Rob Borbidge of using "scare tactics" to frighten people into believing the controversial Tully Millstream hydro-electric power scheme should go
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SYDNEY — Eighty delegates of the NSW Department of Social Security sector of the Community and Public Service Union (CPSU) attended the sector's annual meeting here on March 7-8. Union organisers warned the meeting of impending
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BRISBANE — The Democratic Socialism '96 conferences are shaping up as "lively discussions of the key issues facing the progressive movement", according to Brisbane conference organiser John Nebauer. Guest speakers at the Brisbane
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PERTH — On March 21, Metrobus drivers here refused to collect fares in protest against the Court government's unfair treatment of the public carrier in the competitive tendering process for the metropolitan bus service.
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CANBERRA — In the last two weeks, unions involved in the ACT public sector pay claim dispute have begun to negotiate separate agreements with the Carnell minority Liberal government. The picket on the Legislative Assembly has been
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Socialists and other progressive activists from around Australia will be gathering in all capital cities (including Darwin and Canberra) on or around the Easter long weekend to participate in a political feast. The "Democratic
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In the face of a propaganda offensive by the major parties, the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the establishment media for the election of a "stable" government, the Tasmanian Greens lost of one of their five seats
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Almost three weeks after the federal election, the last Senate position has finally been decided, won by the Australian Greens' Tasmanian candidate, Bob Brown. On March 20, Democrat candidate Robert Bell conceded defeat even
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Mining of the Jabiluka uranium deposit appears set to gain federal government approval following meetings last week between Energy Resources Australia (ERA) boss Phillip Shirvington and the new federal Minister for Resources and
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HOBART — On March 22, a 23-year-old man died in a police cell here. The death made headlines when, the next day, a "street gang" (his friends) went on what the local media described as a "rampage through city streets",
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MELBOURNE — The first "Wring out" of Fairlea Women's Prison was held in 1988. This describes the encircling of the prison and putting the squeeze on the Department of Corrections. The aim is to get people to come to the prison
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BRISBANE — After months of negotiations with the Bundaberg Cab Company, cab drivers struck on March 14 in protest at victimisation and discrimination faced by union members. Transport Workers Union drivers later returned to work,
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ADELAIDE — The Public Transport Union (PTU) held a 24-hour combined bus, tram and train strike here on March 20. The action followed minister for transport Diana Laidlaw's refusal to discuss the impact of competitive
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MELBOURNE — On March 22, child protection workers and their supporters in the state public service struck for 24 hours and held one of the most spirited rallies since the big anti-Kennett demonstrations in 1992. The action was
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SYDNEY — The March 20 half-day strike by members of the NSW Teachers Federation was well received by large 91̳ of the community. About 300 associations across the state lobbied politicians in support of the teachers'
Analysis
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It didn't take long for new treasurer Peter Costello to sound the lament, as every incoming government now does, about the cupboard being bare. We've been told by the treasurer that there is an underlying deficit of $7.6 billion. Not that this
World
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A March 8 meeting of thousands of men and women celebrating International Women's Day at a hall in the city of Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, was attacked by armed Islamist groups. In addition to the harassing and assaulting of large numbers of women's
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Justice still eludes victims of the Bhopal gas disaster, according to the Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, a coalition of health, human rights, environmental and economic justice organisations founded in the wake of the Bhopal disaster. In 1984, a
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New evidence of dioxin's ability to cause cancer in humans has come to light just as environmental justice activists across the US are planning a major campaign to attack dioxin at its sources.
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Women attempting to celebrate International Women's Day in Labasa, on the smaller of Fiji's two main islands, Vanua Levu, had their permission to march revoked by the district officer. The Labasa Women's Forum (LWF), had earlier
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As the melting snow runs down the slopes of the Alps, it is collected into the mighty Danube. As the river reaches the Hungarian plains, it slows down, spreads out into hundreds of rivulets and deposits its detrital material into
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The US food industry went ballistic in January when Food & Water, Inc, a grassroots advocacy group in Walden, Vermont, and Environmental Research Foundation in Annapolis, Maryland, published an ad in Supermarket News comparing
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The giant US car maker General Motors has been forced virtually to cease production after workers at GM's parts plants in Ohio began strike action to protect jobs from "outsourcing". Twenty-four out of GM's 29 assembly plants in
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A crowd estimated at 120,000 rallied in the streets of Hamilton, a steel town near Toronto, against the conservative provincial government of Ontario on February 24. The Tory government plans to slash public spending and social services. The
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The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) based in Chiapas, Mexico, has issued a call for an international conference from July 27 to August 3, the "First Intercontinental Gathering For Humanity and Against Neo-liberalism". It has also
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On March 21, the prime minister of Papua New Guinea, Sir Julius Chan, made plain his intention to escalate the war against the pro-independence Bougainville Interim Government (BIG) and the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA). In
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[This editorial, from the weekly newspaper of Alternative Rouge et Verte, follows a spate of round-ups and expulsions of North Africans in France. Translation for 91̳ Weekly by Brendan Doyle.) The government informs us
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Jose Gil Olmos, writer, Elio Hernandez, correspondent San Cristobal de las Casas, March 8 — In one of the largest concentrations of indigenous women ever in the state, nearly 5000 Zapatistas from the jungle, the highlands and the border area
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Since supporters of President Boris Yeltsin were routed in parliamentary elections in December, Russians have been faced with the prospect that their next president may be Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF).
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JOHANNESBURG — It was reminiscent of the heady mass struggles of the '80s. For four hours on January 28, several hundred trade unionists listened to fiery speeches from workers and trade union leaders denouncing the government
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Whilst the United States escalates its economic blockade of Cuba, the Cuban government's national budget for 1996 continues to prioritise the needs of the population. Though 1995 was another extremely difficult year for
Culture
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The Boy on the RoofBy Allan MackayDirected by Bryan CuttsDispensary Cafe, 84 Enmore Rd, Newtown (Sydney)Until April 20Reviewed by Brendan Doyle If you haven't yet visited Newtown's newest and friendliest performance cafe, the Dispensary, then this
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NixonDirected by Oliver StoneStarring Anthony HopkinsReviewed by Russell Pink Oliver Stone is not your average Hollywood "molestation and mayhem" director pursuing an easy Oscar. He an important, complex, if sometimes annoying creator of films about
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The Water You Drink: how safe is it?By John ArcherPure Water Press41 Cornelian Road, Pearl Beach NSW 2256120 pp., $13.50Reviewed by Dot Tumney No, don't cringe; just trade in your coffee machine for a water filter. Archer provides a useful
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Hysterical Women: A collection of 100 Australian feminist cartoonsEdited by Annie Goldflam, Denise Morgan and Ruth GrebleWomen's Electoral Lobby (WA), 1993Reviewed by Jenny Long This collection, put together by WEL (WA) with the support of other
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From Sand to CelluloidA collection of new works from indigenous film makers screening nationallyReviewed by Grant Gilbert This powerful collection of six short films takes you on an emotional journey through life from the Aboriginal perspective. The
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SYDNEY — The Chauvel Cinema, in association with the Australian Film Institute, is presenting the second of the 1996 Oz shorts programs — The Shorts Gig. It will screen twice only, on Wednesday, March 27, and Sunday, March 31. This selection
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The Rhonda Movement in DrumheadDirected by Sue GilesApril 3-20, Wed-Sat at 9.30pmBudinski's Theatre, Lygon St, CarltonReviewed by Kim Linden The Rhonda Movement, a sassy female trio, will be performing Drumhead as part of the 10th Melbourne
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This Year in JerusalemBy Mordecai RichlerNew York: Knopf, 1994. $25Reviewed by Vivienne Porzsolt Canadian Jewish writer Mordecai Richler's rich account interweaves his boyhood in Montreal in the 1930s and '40s — poor, orthodox Jewish, filled with
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The Indian in the CupboardStarring Litefoot and Hal ScardinoAt Hoyts cinemas from AprilReviewed by Natasha Simons Politically progressive children's films are hard to come by, in particular ones produced by the Hollywood film industry. In this
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Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the WestBy David RieffVintage, 1995. 240pp., $17.95Reviewed by Rob Graham Part of the rapidly growing body of literature on the former Yugoslavia, this is a liberal journalist's largely first-hand account of
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Once again the Wild Pumpkins at Midnight are off to Europe, leaving Australian fans with a snatch of gigs and a new album. According to Dan Tuffy, singer, writer and bassist for the band, the Pumpkins feel lucky to be able to
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Never Truly LostBy Paddy PallinUNSW Press, 1996. 224pp., $19.95Reviewed by Flora Graham "Paddymade" light-weight camping gear and equipment for walkers is known and used worldwide, and Paddy Pallin himself was well known and respected by bushwalkers