Write on: feature letter
Christianity and liberation
Barry Healy (GLW #389) is unjustified in criticising Nick Carr and Kate Carr for their article "Why God hates homosexuals and women (and we hate Christmas)" (GLW #388).
He charges Nick and
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Incompetence as virtue The traditionally staid Institution of Engineers Australia has identified a trend in government: once you get rid of people with specialist technical skills, you make mistakes which could have been avoided.
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Gambling health: don't bet on it"Governments are addicted to gambling", says Michelle Gunner, a PhD student from the University of Western Sydney, Nepean. Once a nurse therapist treating all manner of addictions, Gunner
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Pangea Resources, the company that wants to dump 75,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste in Australia, is spreading its wings. A new company, Pangea Resources International (PRI), is being set up, and Pangea Resources Australia will
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'Pink capitalism' can't avoid the rulesOnce upon a time, setting up a club for gays and lesbians with a sensible business plan was a licence to print money — but not now. Look around today and you'll see the considerable road
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The Indonesian National Front for Labour Struggle (FNPBI) expresses our support and solidarity to those of you taking industrial action at BHP in the Pilbara in defence of the right to collectively bargain. This move by BHP, the "Big Australian", to
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Actively Radical TV — Sydney community television's progressive current affairs producers tackle the hard issues from the activist's point of view. CTS Sydney (UHF 31), every Sunday, 9-11pm. Ph 9565 5522. Access News — Melbourne community TV,
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BHP's attack on the Pilbara iron ore workers can be beaten. In Australia, while big business pushes for individual contracts, millions of workers continue to want the union organisation and collective work agreements that the
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BRISBANE Solidarity picket. Tuesday, February 1, noon, BHP headquarters. Organised by Resistance. Ph 3254 0565. CANBERRA Speak-out in solidarity. Friday, February 4, 12.30-2pm, Civic merry-go-round. Organised by Resistance. Ph 6247 2424.
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Resistance as a strategy for sustainabilityTo someone active in the environment movement in Australia, the debates about tactics and vision in environmentalism often occur within fairly narrow perimeters. Direct action or
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The following is a statement, being distributed by the Democratic Socialist Party, in support of the BHP workers in the Pilbara. We, the undersigned, extend our support and solidarity to striking workers at BHP Pilbara in their action to defend the
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Family By Brandon Astor Jones "The rise and fall of a people begin at home. Our future depends on the unity, love and support of the family." — Susan L. Taylor, editor in chief, Essence magazine I received a very nice letter recently from
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Since September, a battle has been unfolding in Western Australia's north-west Pilbara region, the outcome of which will affect the conditions and wages of workers throughout Australia. The fight to prevent individual contracts at
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Imagine how you would feel if your boss called you into an office and presented you with a contract outlining your new working conditions. "This is a special contract just for you", s/he might say, but you know that your work
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Campaigns to win with For the last two and a half decades of neo-liberal attacks, the Australian trade union movement has been under siege from the bosses and their politicians. On the principle that the best form of defence is to go on the
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'Racist' anti-racists? At the recent NSW state Broad Left meeting in Newcastle, in discussion around protests and campaigns against the Howard government's Border Protection Act, it was suggested that, in order to keep within the "principle" of
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A chimpanzee that chose her portfolio of internet stocks by chucking darts at a list of companies has been hailed a financial whiz kid by her keeper. Six-year-old Raven delivered a 213% gain on 1999, outperforming most of the yuppies on Wall Street.
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and ain't I a woman?: It goes far beyond tampons The recent row over whether tampons and sanitary pads should be GST-free has divided the Liberal Party along gender lines, confused Australian Democrat leader Meg Lees, who didn't know that tampons
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Advance Australia — notFederal minister Philip Ruddock has announced that the government has rewritten the national anthem, "Advance Australia Fair", to reflect the threats to Australians' national identity. We must all learn
News
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Seventy-three people deported to ChinaThe federal government has deported 73 people back to China after only five weeks of investigation. The group arrived at Christmas Island, off Australia's north coast, in December and has since
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Police raids on One Nation condemnedOn January 21, offices of the One Nation party in Ipswich, Queensland, and Sydney were raided by the Queensland police major fraud squad and the New South Wales commercial crime squad.
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By Melissa Corbettand Justine Kamprad MELBOURNE — More than 350 people marked "Invasion Day" here on January 26 with a rally in the Bourke Street Mall. It was one of several events held around the country on the day. Rally chairperson Charmaine
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Promises, promises "What we are seeking is public declarations from the CEOs that they will comply." — David Cousins, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's GST commissioner, on preventing companies from profiteering when the GST
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SYDNEY — Members of the NSW Public Service Association (PSA) will be presented this week with a televised message from their union leaders urging them to vote for the state Labor government's offered pay rise of 16% over four
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ADELAIDE — Vehicle manufacturer Mitsubishi has confirmed it will stay in South Australia for at least another 10 years but will impose a major restructuring program which will cost up to 1000 jobs — more than a quarter of its
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By Diana Haywood-Rankine and Stuart Munckton ADELAIDE — South Australia's only daily newspaper, the Rupert Murdoch-owned Advertiser, ran a page-one story on January 15 headed, "Weapons of street war. Vietnamese gangs 'vicious and violent'". The
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BRISBANE — The Queensland Labor government's proposed indigenous heritage legislation continues the trend of both Labor and Liberal governments winding back the clock on land rights for Aboriginal people. Premier Peter Beattie's
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BRISBANE — Pauline Hanson was forced to flee from a One Nation meeting in the small town of Oakey, near Toowoomba in Queensland, on January 20. Her pursuers were not enraged leftists, but former colleagues who had left One
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By Nabaz I am 16 years old and arrived in Australia from Iraq last February. In Iraq, I had to leave school when I was 11 and get a job to help my family survive. I had to get a labourer's job. The pay and conditions were extremely bad. There were
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ACI extends lockoutMELBOURNE — Locked out workers at the ACI glass mould manufacturing plant in Box Hill have received letters from the company telling them that the lockout will continue until March 4. The lockout, which began
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A campaign for an open door for all TimoreseJakarta's long war against East Timor may be (officially) over and may now be less of a "foreign policy issue" in formal Australian-Indonesian relations. But justice is still a long way
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Darwin solidarity group joins ASIETDARWIN — This city's East Timor-Indonesia Solidarity Group (ETISG) decided, at its first meeting for the year on January 26, to join the national solidarity group, Action in Solidarity
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MELBOURNE — Resistance held a stall on January 21 in Bourke St Mall to campaign in solidarity with the Pilbara workers who are fighting attempts by BHP to introduce individual contracts. Participants sold many copies of 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly and
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SYDNEY — The state Labor government released its proposals for the southern NSW regional forest agreement on January 28. The agreement will allow large-scale logging to continue in NSW's forests. The agreement is to be finalised by
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Mater Hospital staff rally against privatisationNEWCASTLE — On January 4, more than 400 Staff walked off the job and rallied in opposition to plans to privatise the Mater Hospital. The protest was part of a "public awareness
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With all the politicians' and mass media talk of "aliens" and "illegals", it can be easy to forget that they are referring to human beings. The passage of the federal Border Protection Act on November 25 made Australia one of the
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Action for workplace safety Workers covered by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union at the Western Australian government's Belltower project walked off the job for seven days from January 25. Black flags were hoisted over the
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By Stephen O'Brien NEWCASTLE — National Textile workers have vowed to continue their fight to win their full entitlements after their January 21 sacking, even at the risk of being jailed. The workers, some of whom have up to 46 years experience,
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Another wetland threatenedWOLLONGONG — The re-opening of the Port Kembla copper smelter continues to cause hardship to Wollongong residents. On January 23, 100 residents of Primbee, a lakeside suburb five kilometres from the
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In response to the federal government's attempts to privatise higher education, Resistance has proposed that a national day of action be called for March 29 to demand "Free education, not privatisation!" and "Reverse education funding
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Adelaide lord mayor defects to ALPADELAIDE — The ALP announced on January 26 that it had wooed Adelaide Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith into contesting Labor pre-selection for the marginal seat of Adelaide. In an echo of
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Candidate to campaign for prostitution law reformADELAIDE — Speculation that brothel owner Stormy Summers will run for the position of lord mayor of Adelaide in the May council election has sparked enormous controversy.
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Federal Labor leader Kim Beazley has announced that his party will establish a new coastguard to "protect Australia's borders" when it is elected to government. Beazley said the initiative, announced on January 23, was motivated by
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According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, in 1998 there were 21 million people "of concern" — those seeking or already granted refugee status. Amnesty International estimates that a new refugee is created every 21 seconds. One
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ALP challenged in Woodridge by-electionBRISBANE — Peter Beattie's Labor government is in danger of losing the outer suburban seat of Woodridge, traditionally one of Labor's safest, to an ex-ALP independent local councillor,
Analysis
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Tough luck The federal Coalition government has moved another step along the path of turning Australia into a low wage, low (official) unemployment and low welfare country with its plan to intensify the harassment of unemployed workers receiving
World
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The Basque Country after the cease-fire By G. Buster On January 21, 53 days after the armed, pro-independence Basque group ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasura — Basque Homeland and Freedom) announced it was ending its unilateral cease-fire, a bomb was
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Tamils call for international solidarityThe Sri Lankan army's humiliating defeats at the hands of the Tamil liberation fighters since the first week of November has proved beyond doubt the futility of a "military solution"
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Gustavo Noboa was installed as president of Ecuador on January 22. He has promised to continue the economic policies which led to the ousting of President Jamil Mahuad the previous day in a coup which took place on the back of a
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100,000 Indian workers on strike One hundred thousand electricity workers are on strike in India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, in protest against state government plans to privatise the electricity board. The strikers, who began their
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Apartheid minister backs ANC By Norm Dixon The apartheid regime's longest serving foreign minister, Pik Botha, travelled the world defending the racist system and its dirty wars against Angola and Mozambique and its terrorist attacks
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MOSCOW — ANATOLY BARANOV, a long-time activist on the Russian left, now holds a prominent post as public relations director for one of the country's leading military-industrial corporations, which produces the famous MiG fighter aircraft. Baranov
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Will Indonesia's generals get away with murder? On January 31, the investigation by the Indonesian National Commission for Human Rights into atrocities and human rights abuses in East Timor will release its report. It is likely to implicate dozens
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The following is abridged from a statement, in solidarity with the striking electricity workers of Uttar Pradesh, India, issued by the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) on January 25. The Labour Party Pakistan expresses its deepest solidarity with the
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International news briefs Iranian oil workers' struggle On January 17, 2000 workers from the maintenance section of the Abadan oil refinery in Iran went on strike to oppose a plan to "restructure" the oil industry which could lead to 40,000 of
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OAKLAND, USA — Some 50,000 people, 90% African-American, marched in Columbia, South Carolina, on January 17, the federal holiday honouring civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The protest was organised by the NAACP [National
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Mauritius government outlaws dissentThe president of the island republic of Mauritius assented on December 31 to the new Public Security Bill. The bill, introduced to parliament by Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam on December
Culture
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Bridge of Courage: Life Stories of the Guatemalan Companeros and CompanerasBy Jennifer HarburyCommon Courage Press, 1995. Review By Martin Schenke "Don't talk to me about Gandhi: he wouldn't have survived a week here ... For Gandhi's methods to
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The Scene: A private nursing home by the sea. Two elderly men sit on chairs on a balcony, staring out over the ocean. In the rooms behind them, the walls are decorated with fine paintings by Rembrandt and Botticelli. Wagner plays
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Review by Eva Cheng From the Crisis of Capital to the Hope of LabourProduced by Labor News Production, South KoreaOur Four SeasonsProduced by Sammi Specialty Steel Co. Labour Union and Labor News Production$50 institutions/$30 individualsOrder
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Marx through the keyholeKarl MarxBy Francis WheenFourth Estate, 1999431 pp., $49.95 (hb) Ever since he wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848, the theories of Karl Marx have been systematically pronounced dead and buried by the
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Manipulation in Wonderland Being John MalkovichDirected by Spike JonzeStarring John Cusack, Cameron Diaz and Catherine KeenerScreening in selected cinemas Review by Jonathan Singer Being John Malkovich has been categorised as comedy. I'm not sure
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Trouble in the LandBlack 47Shanachie records Review by Bill Nevins Loss and disappointment can sour the heart, but Irish bard Yeats built visionary poetry out of the failure of the 1916 Easter rebellion: a "terrible beauty" was born. Trouble in the
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Armed Insurrection MusicTet OffensiveOrder from 214 Ogden Avenue, Jersey City, NJ 07307, USA, or e-mail <TETLINE@aol.com> Review by Ben Courtice Let's be frank, if you're looking for a polished metal or punk sound like the Offspring or