Khalil (not his real name) is a middle-aged married man with four young children. He is a Shi'ite Muslim, was born in Iraq and was a shoemaker by profession.
As a teenager, he was conscripted into the Iraqi army. That was in the
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Leigh Hughes joined the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) in November 2000 following the tumultuous events at the S11 protests in Melbourne. He is 17 years old, and is a Year 12 student at Tuggeranong College, a college in an
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Is marriage doomed in the 21st century? asks Jane Smiley in "Money marriage & monogamy", in the January 6 issue of the Sydney Morning Herald's lifestyle magazine, Good Weekend. Unlike anti-feminist Bettina Arndt's ravings which regularly grace the
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BY PETER ELLETT & ANDREW HALL CANBERRA — In a move that has shocked historians, academics and researchers across Australia, the Australian National University (ANU) has slashed funding to the country's largest archive of business and labour
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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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Adelaide: January 25, 6:30pm.Cannon Poole Room, 5th Floor, Union Building, Adelaide Uni.Ph 8231 6982. Email <m1adelaide@start.com.au>. Brisbane: January 23, 6pm.Grassroots Centre, 237 Boundary St, West End. Darwin: February 1, 7pm9
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The incoming administration of George W Bush is planning a controversial national missile defence (NMD) system as part of its broader military build-up — a reprise of the failed "Star Wars" efforts of Presidents Ronald Reagan and
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Reprinted below is the introduction which appeared in the first thing ever printed under 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳'s masthead, its "issue 0", January 1991. This special 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ broadsheet has been produced as a response to the Gulf War. Coverage of the war by
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Activists in every capital city in Australia have begun organising around calls for a worker-student strike and blockade of the stock exchanges on May 1. The M1 coalitions have brought together veterans of the S11 blockade
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BY ANTHONY BENBOW AND MELANIE SJOBERG Workers employed at BHP operations in WA's Pilbara region must be feeling a bad sense of d‚j… vu. In January last year, they were forced to fight to defend their jobs and hard-won conditions when
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George Walker ("Dubya") Bush will be inaugurated as the United States of America's 43rd president on January 20. Even before he sets foot in the White House, vast numbers of Americans are already convinced that Bush has no legitimate
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This week, 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly celebrates its 10th birthday. Through a decade of tumult, of wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions, we've lived long and prospered. Our first issue actually appeared on February 28, 1991 but, such
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With its December 14 response to the final report of the Reference Group on Welfare Reform, the McClure report, the federal government has taken a giant step down its desired path of restructuring the entire welfare system. By
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BY SIMON MILLAR & CHRIS SLEE With their enterprise agreement due to expire in September 1999, the Yallourn Energy workforce of 580 began enterprise bargaining negotiations with Yallourn Energy in May 1999. Yallourn Energy, which generates
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Best of all possible parliamentary worlds Look at that will ya? If you ask me they're a pack of vultures going on, baying at the heels of the pollies. — What are you on about? This thing that's happening to the Labor Party. It's tragic,
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The call for swift execution of 13-year-old Nathaniel Brazill, who was suspected of shooting a school teacher to death earlier this year, sparked controversy. Many people all over the world are joining the struggle against death as a
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Rise Like Lions Although I was prepared to accept criticism of Rise Like Lions in a review published in GLW, I feel a response to the thoughts of Jonathon Strauss is justified. I was somewhat offended at being associated with nationalism and
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On December 6, the Australian government released its long-awaited defence white paper, "Defence 2000 — Our Future Defence Force", to almost unanimous acclaim from ruling class commentators and the big business media's op-ed
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"I wish them the actuarial tables in Cuba". That was the parting wish that outgoing US secretary of state Madeleine Albright extended to the new administration of George W Bush, during a January 10 media conference in Washington. Cuban President
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The Democratic Socialist Party's 19th congress held January 3-7 unanimously endorsed the following statement in support of the Yallourn power workers. The DSP pledges its full support for the Yallourn power workers in their struggle to keep their
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George W. Bush became the 43rd president of the United States by a five-to-four vote of the US Supreme Court. But the die was cast long before the November 7 election. One of the dirty aspects of the 2000 presidential elections was
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BY SUE BOLAND It is just a little over 12 months since the protests against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Seattle awoke the world to the gathering strength of a new anti-corporate movement against neo-liberal
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What do revolutions look like? Many people have a stereotyped picture of what a revolution is: a revolution is an event in which people with guns take over a city or a country. This image confuses a revolution with an
News
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PERTH — The lack of funding and resources has led to a crisis in Western Australia's hospital system. In the face of low pay and an ever-increasing workload, many nurses are leaving for better paid jobs. Nurses are to take action
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Castro 9, US 0 "Not including Mr [George "Dubya"] Bush, the 74-year-old Dr Castro has outlasted nine US presidents since coming to power in 1959, surviving not only assassination attempts inspired by Washington but also the abortive 1961 Bay of
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SYDNEY — "We must work together to build a wall of public opinion against corporate greed and exploitation", Cuban Communist Party member Abelardo Cueto Sosa told the biggest meeting of left activists to be held in Sydney's
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BALLARAT — The 2000 National Union of Students national conference, held here from December 11-15, closed in tumult and chaos, with members of the National Broad Left, the Labor left and the Labor right factions hurling abuse, and
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BY STEPHEN O'BRIEN NEWCASTLE — Mining company Colrock has followed in the nefarious tradition of National Textiles and Steel Tank and Pipe (STP) by sacking workers without paying them their entitlements. Colrock, whose parent company is the
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ADELAIDE — The trials of refugees charged with involvement in the alleged August "riots" at the Woomera Immigration Detention Centre, in the South Australian desert, began here on December 18. The case against the first defendant,
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MELBOURNE — While there might not have been any students on campus, a battle has raged during the summer break at Melbourne University between staff, who are demanding a better deal in their upcoming enterprise agreement, and
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The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union launched its national "pattern bargaining" Campaign 2001 at rallies in Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide on December 6. Campaign 2001 is raising a set of demands for inclusion in enterprise agreements being
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BRISBANE — A social services wing of the Uniting Church has cut the wages and conditions of its disability support workers by moving them from their current award to a lower-paid state award. The rates of pay in the state
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PERTH — The Western Australian Liberal government has called a snap state election for February 10. The Democratic Socialists will be running Anthony Benbow in the seat of Fremantle and Roberto Jorquera in seat of Perth. The
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ADELAIDE — Radio Rentals has locked out 40 technicians, members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, over a long-running pay dispute. The technicians have been demanding a 5% pay rise, which would be their first since
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MELBOURNE — After much successful campaigning in New South Wales, the Indigenous Students Network has relaunched itself as a national network for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Corrie Hodson, a founding member
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SYDNEY — Two solid rows of police, including some on horseback, confronted 300 people who gathered outside Newtown railway station here on December 16 for a Reclaim the Streets street party, encircling them and forcing them
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The 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly Fighting Fund got off to a flying start at the Democratic Socialist Party's January 3-7 congress. Members and supporters of the party pledged a massive $121,615 at the congress rally. It was the first of a series of special
World
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The French seaside resort town of Nice, on the country's Mediterranean coast, added its name to the list of "insurgent cities" — a list which already includes Seattle, Washington, Prague and Melbourne — when, on December 6-7, 70,000 people from
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The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), the child of Gennady Zyuganov, might to almost the same degree be called the child of Boris Yeltsin. Throughout the entire period from 1993 to 1999 the party had a clearly
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"We see the potential energy among urban poor youth, whose power has been shown many times in Indonesian history. They are brave, energetic and not afraid of new ideas and changes. We are trying to build their trust in the idea
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The process of overthrowing the Suharto dictatorship did not go sufficiently deep enough to deliver a deathblow to the political ambitions of the old regime, of Suharto's former ruling party, Golkar, and the armed forces, the TNI.
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BY PIP HINMAN Acehnese activist Kautsar has been struggling for his people's right to self-determination for some years. In 1998, he helped to form Student Solidarity with the People (SMUR), the main Acehenese student-led popular
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At 5am on the morning of December 19, Turkish military units stormed prisons across the country in a bid to force political prisoners to end a hunger strike. The operation, code-named "Return to Life", involved the use of machine guns,
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Australian mining companies and the University of Tasmania are set to play an integral role in the mineral future of Chinese-occupied Tibet. The Tanjianshan gold deposit, lying within northern Tibet's Chokle Namgyal mountain range,
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The low level of participation by voters in the December 5 South African municipal elections reflects a growing dissatisfaction among workers and poor at the African National Congress (ANC) government's repeated failure to keep its
Culture
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Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the PoorEdited by Jim Yong Kim, Joyce Millen, Alec Irwin and John GershmanCommon Courage Press, Monroe, MaineAvailable at <; REVIEW BY STEPHEN LANGFORD For
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REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XIIBy John CornwellPenguin430 pp, $22 (pb)The Catholic Church and Nazi GermanyBy Guenter LewyDa Capo Press416 pp, $38.95 (pb) If Pope John Paul II has his way, the next newly minted
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Bougainville Voices was recorded in central Bougainville in 1998 by musicologist Justin Tonti-Filippini at the personal invitation of Bougainville's leaders. He began work as soon as a truce was brokered on the war-torn island that has been fighting
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Rebel RadioCD/CD-ROM by Up, Bustle and OutNinja Tune Records The Rebel Radio DiariesBy Rupert MouldLa Prensa Rebelde REVIEW BY NICK FREDMAN "On February 1958, in the Sierra Maestra Mountains to the Northwest of Santiago de Cuba, Che installed
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The following remarks were delivered at the dedication of Jose Villa's statue of John Lennon in Lennon Park, Havana, Cuba on December 8. It was the 20th anniversary of Lennon's assassination.