PERTH — You'd be forgiven for not noticing the Perth Airport Immigration Detention Centre. Nestled back from the road at the entrance to the domestic terminal, it was built to house only a few dozen detainees.
On March 15 and
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Shock! Horror! Media magnate Rupert Murdoch's hired mouthpieces at the Australian have accused the Coalition government and the Labor Party of turning on big business, in particular the banks. While the Murdoch family doesn't own
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WOLLONGONG — Residents in the Illawarra region are fighting Wollongong City Council and the multinational Stockland company over a 428-lot housing development planned for Sandon Point, Bulli. This piece of land is one
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Green tinted glasses Friends of the Earth's Peter Barker (Write on, GLW #442) says that I "neglect to understand the depth and diversity of people that make up FoE's huge international network" in my review of FoE International's document Towards
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Virtual taxes The issue of taxation on the internet has worried governments ever since electronic business became a household phrase in the late 1990s. A shopper in Melbourne buys a book or CD from the US. The shopper has just managed
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"Globalisation is about an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world; it is about international trade, investment and finance that has been growing far faster than national incomes." — James Wolfensohn, president, World Bank.
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Machine Gun Fellatio has become a household name after the band's second show at Melbourne University was cancelled by the Student Union, on the grounds that the show was sexist. The RMIT and Swinburne University of Technology student unions have
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On the night of March 29, up to 60 refugees protested the removal for deportation of some of their fellow detainees from Port Hedland Immigration Detention Centre. Almost a week later, on April 4, more protests broke out at the
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"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." — Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey), The Usual Suspects, 1995. "M1 can be as big as it likes", someone recently said to me, "but isn't opposing
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“His Majesty's ship Leopard forced the [USS] Chesapeake to surrender off the Virginia Capes in 1807, and sullied American national honor by impressing American men ... two of the four impressed sailors were men of color. White dominated
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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, 9pm. Ph 9565 5522. Access News — Melbourne community TV,
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BY VIRGINIA BROWN & SARAH STEPHEN PERTH — This year's International Women's Day march here on March 10 was a huge success, with larger numbers marching with more energy and enthusiasm than for many years. There was also an unusually large number
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Immigration minister Philip Ruddock's proposed law to allow strip searches of refugees, increase prison terms for those that flee detention and further restrict visitor access to detention centres are a disgrace. Their introduction into
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DARWIN — Students at the Northern Territory University have many questions and complaints about catering on campus: the outlets are often shut, the food and beverages are very expensive and of low quality and there is no
News
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Building workers walk off over safety BRISBANE — Building workers walked off 100 major construction sites in south-east Queensland on April 4 in response to the death of a worker. Unions demanded a safety audit of all building projects
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CANBERRA — Seventy supporters of refugee rights have called for the resignation of immigration minister Philip Ruddock at an emergency protest here on April 3, barely a day after Pakistani refugee Shahraz Kayani set himself on fire
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BY RA GREEN & SIMON BUTLER BRISBANE — In a bid to access an extra $15 million of state government funding, the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has decided to abolish its arts faculty and replace it with a new faculty called "creative
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BY JOHN McGILL& BRONWEN BEECHEY ADELAIDE — On April 2, Adelaide City Council voted to make the streets and parks of the inner CBD a "dry zone". The issue had been under consideration by the council since last year, when it commissioned a market
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With just three weeks to go until the big day, M1 Sydney has begun to plan in detail how it will fulfill its stated aim, to "shut down corporate Sydney".
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BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE & ROHAN GAISWINKLER HOBART — For the first time in the company's 20 year history, workers at boat-building company Incat took strike action on April 3, after management walked away from negotiations on a new enterprise
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Unfortunately, neither can the rest of us "I will not walk away from my decision." — Former Australian Democrats leader Senator Meg Lees commenting on her decision to support the introduction of the GST, widely attributed as the reason for her
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CANBERRA — The ACT Trades and Labor Council has decided to back the planned M1 blockade of Mining Industry House and to move its traditional May Day march from the following Saturday, May 5, to May 1 itself. The TLC voted at its
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SYDNEY — On April 6, 140 people gathered in the Resistance Centre to hear speakers discuss the political crisis in Indonesia. The event was organised by Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor. "In May 1998, Indonesian
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SYDNEY — Hundreds of local residents and supporters of public education rallied in the suburb of Marrickville here on April 7 to denounce the planned closure of the local high school. Marrickville High is but one of several inner-city schools
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BRISBANE — Beautiful slides of Cuba were a highlight of a solidarity night held at the Resistance Centre on March 31. The slides were taken by Tim Stewart during his January-February visit to Cuba on the "In the Footsteps of Che"
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Due to a sub-editing error, the sentence in the article “Refugee kept eight months in solitary” by Ben Collins (GLW #443) read: “While the agreement between the government and Australasian Correctional Management, which runs the centre,
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BRISBANE — The decision to blockade the Australian Stock Exchange was the subject of much debate here at the March 31 "Fighting for the Future" conference, with some arguing that the movement needed to be more positive in its
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Thousands of students took to the streets on April 5 in a national day of action called by the National Union of Students. Students and supporters demanded an end to corporate control of universities, a liveable income for all,
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BRISBANE — The International Women's Day collective here has launched a petition campaign to demand that Peter Beattie's Labor state government repeal 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of the criminal code which make abortion illegal. The
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ADELAIDE — Activists livened up a quiet Sunday afternoon here on April 1, marching around the city in a Corporate Scumbags Tour of some of Adelaide's leading businesses. As curious shoppers looked on, a noisy and vibrant tour
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MELBOURNE — Activists here have begun to consider what should happen after the M1 blockade of stock exchanges, with many participants in a "Global Action" conference here on March 31 welcoming a proposal for a September 11, 2001,
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BY JO BROWN & ROB MILLER MELBOURNE — The international community had to recognise that a war criminal was now prime minister of Israel and act accordingly, a March 30 public meeting here in support of Palestinian freedom has been told. Academic
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HOBART — Forestry Tasmania's planned Southwood Resources woodchip mill in the Huon valley is under intense pressure from increased public opposition. This was reflected most strongly in a rally here of thousands of people on
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SYDNEY — About 120 Palestinians and their supporters rallied at the Sydney Town Hall on April 7 as part of the International Day of Action for the Refugees' Right of Return. The rally heard from Susan Nasser about the trauma faced by the people in
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One hundred and seventy 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly subscribers and supporters gathered at the Granville Town Hall on March 31 for western Sydney's annual 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly dinner. Organised by the Sydney West branch of the Democratic Socialist Party, the
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East Timorese band Five from the East performing at Darwin's March 31 Rage Against Racism band night, organised by the socialist youth organisation Resistance. Despite persistent rain, 350 people attended the event and raised $1500 for 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳
Analysis
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BY SARAH PEART & JACKIE LYNCH Activists around the country are once again practising their anti-corporate chants for the blockades of stock exchanges and business districts on May 1, buoyed by the success, beyond most people's imaginings, of the
World
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LAHORE — More than 200 activists of the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) activists, members of other opposition parties, community activists and unionists packed the Lahore Press Club here on April 2 to welcome LPP general secretary
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Thousands of Turkish workers filled the streets of the country's major cities on March 31 to protest against the terms of a "bailout" package agreed between the country's government and the International Monetary Fund. Demonstrators
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Thousands of progressive and environmental activists from across North America are expected to converge on Quebec City, Canada, from April 16 to declare their rejection of the US-led push to extend the notorious pro-business North
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SEOUL — As political relations between the leaderships of South Korea and North Korea thaw, the generals and bureaucrats around North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il are not yet united on a clear, single objective. They are sure of
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BY FALEH A. JABAR The once moribund Iraqi National Congress (INC) has apparently gained a new lease on life. After weeks of intensive talks in Washington, Ahmad Chalabi — leader of the self-appointed Iraqi opposition in exile — visited Iran to
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The Anti-Privatisation Forum — an organisation that unites trade unions, township residents' groups, left-wing parties, anarchists and social justice activists — has forthrightly rejected the South African government's plan to privatise the country's electricity utility, Eskom.
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An Indian Fijian rights group in Suva is seeking compensation from the Indian, Australian and British governments, reported the Times of India on April 3. The Peoples' Organisation for Indo-Fijian Rights and Land Resolution said these
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Following the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Washington launched many unsuccessful attempts to overthrow the popular revolution that had triumphed just 140 kilometres(90 miles) from US shores. The most notorious attempt was at the Bay of
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The Pacific Concerns Resource Centre, the Fiji-based group that campaigns against the nuclear fuel cycle and supports independence movements in the Pacific Ocean region, on April 2 strongly condemned the Australian and New Zealand
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BY MALIK MIAH & RICH LESNIK SAN FRANCISCO — George W. Bush campaigned for president on two broad themes: "compassionate conservatism" and against "big government" interfering in the lives of the American people. Workers in the airline industry
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By supporting the March 26-29 shipment of high-level radioactive waste from France to the German town of Gorleben, the German Greens have ditched all four elements of their original platform — environmental sustainability,
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The first political prisoner to perish in the long-running hunger strike in Turkey's jails met his death on March 25. He was Cengiz Soydas, who died in an isolation cell in Turkey's Sincan prison after fasting for 133 days. Despite
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The Indonesian government's "limited" military operation, currently underway, is not just against the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), but against the majority of Acehnese who want an end to the violence and a referendum on
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News of what appear to be spontaneous rebellions by workers against attacks on their social rights and living standards resulting from the Chinese Communist Party bureaucracy's drive to restore capitalism continue to seep out of
Culture
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"Got pissed off and ripped Pamela Lee's tits off/And smacked her so hard I knocked her clothes backwards like Kris Kross ..." — so go the lyrics of popular rap artist Eminem's "My name is", a song that has been receiving high
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REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful CorporationBy Edwin Black Little, Brown and Company, 2001519pp., $30 (pb) IBM, as it delights in telling us, is the "Solutions
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Global Finance: New Thinking on Regulating Speculative Capital MarketsEdited by Walden Bello, Nicola Bullard and Kamal MalhotraZed Books 244pp., A$48.95 Taming Global Financial Flows: A Citizen's GuideBy Kavaljit SinghZed Books237pp., A$43.95
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REVIEW BY ALISON DELLIT Yolngu BoyWith Sean Mununggur, John Sebastian Pilakui and Nathan DanielsDirected by Stephen JohnsonAt major cinemas Yolngu Boy is better than most "teen" flicks. Set and filmed in the remote Aboriginal communities of