The discussion around the issue of the Socialist Alliance's preference policy at its founding conference revealed differences within the alliance over its orientation toward the Labor Party and the Greens which will undoubtedly be
-
-
BY TAMARA PEARSON & SARAH STEPHEN Zaher and Riz are "illegal" Afghani refugees who were held in an immigration detention centre and eventually granted refugee status. They are now living in Sydney on three-year temporary protection visas. Green
-
CANBERRA — Con Sciacca, the Labor Party's federal shadow minister for immigration, addressed the question "Is Australia's refugee policy racist?" at a public meeting organised by Racial Respect on August 9 at the Canberra Workers
-
Drowning in abundance As the US economy balances on the edge of recession, information technology companies are suffering from their success. This is a peculiar aspect of capitalism as an economic system, pointed out by 19th century socialist
-
BY MARK WAKEHAM & KIRSTEN BLAIR DARWIN — Natural gas is currently being depicted as a clean source of energy, which will help to wean the industrialised world away from its dependence on oil and coal and play a key role in Australia's response to
-
Munyaradzi Gwisai, the Zimbabwe ISO's charismatic young MP, told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly that new possibilities have opened up for the left internationally. The collapse of the Stalinist movement, which discredited socialists in the eyes of the working
-
"How your taxes help drug users lie to the police and cheat jail", screamed page three of the July 26 Melbourne Herald-Sun. The article underneath was a sustained attack upon the drug users' magazine Whack, published by drug users
-
Technology access I found Sean Healy's "No technofix for Third World poor" (GLW #460) a valuable description of the relationship between technology and society, but in error in its discussion of the internet. The internet is the first globally
-
A storm of public outrage has been provoked by an investigation by ABC TV's Four Corners on the conditions inside Australia's immigration detention centres. The report, screened on August 13, was a damning indictment of the
-
The Victorian branch of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union sees the Socialist Alliance as a very welcome development. Working people are increasingly demanding strong, militant progressive unions to represent their needs
-
GEELONG — Controversy has erupted among environmentalists, trade unionists and community activists over plans for a $200 million power station to be built eight kilometres outside the city. Anger at the plan bubbled over at an
-
the moon has moved the birds are involved in civil war taxation has stopped the reach of trees into the blue identity of heaven the nine models of evil justice have resulted in uncolliding planets for whose existence most of us must take
-
Tafadzwa Choto, ISO Zimbabwe's national coordinator, urged activists protesting at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Brisbane in October not to be taken in by Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe's "anti-imperialist" rhetoric. "Mugabe talks
-
The small nondescript three-room flat on Harare's busy Josiah Tongogara Street, which doubles as the International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe's national office, was a hive of activity when 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly spoke to MUNYARADZI
-
Since the August 6 publication of a Daily Telegraph "special investigation" into "ethnic crime gangs", racist hysteria has been given considerable space in most 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of the Sydney corporate media. When on August 7, a young white woman was raped,
-
Oil giant BP has proclaimed a new identity for itself — British Petroleum now says it is "Beyond Petroleum". For the world's second largest oil company to move beyond petroleum would be a boon for a world so addicted to oil. Yet what does BP mean
-
To this day "[Racists hate] any black writer who invokes black history ... [it is] tiresome to hear people deny truth that, in any other context, they would consider obvious. Namely, that we are all shaped by history. All challenged by it,
-
How should environmentalists progress the fight against greenhouse polluters in the wake of the compromise struck on the Kyoto Protocol at the United Nations conference in Bonn, Germany in late July? And should environmentalists demand
-
A report written by a US nuclear consultancy firm calls the bluff on the federal government's claim that a new nuclear reactor is required in Australia to produce medical isotopes. The report, titled Alternatives to a 20 Megawatt
-
Picket against sweatshop labour ADELAIDE — Resistance activists picketed clothing store Supr‚ in Rundle Mall on August 17. The protesters demanded that the clothing retailer sign the Homeworkers Code of Practice. The code guarantees signatories'
News
-
Activists in northern NSW are gearing up to participate in October protests in Brisbane during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting — and on August 11 50 of them gathered to discuss the issues, and debate the
-
HOBART — Two students will be contesting the Tasmanian University Union elections under the banner of the Socialist Alliance. Shua Garfield and Sarah Cleary, both members of the socialist youth organisation Resistance, will be
-
CANBERRA — Hunger strikers chained themselves to the fence of the Indonesian embassy on August 16 to highlight the fact that Indonesia currently has more political prisoners than when the dictator Suharto fell in 1998. An effigy
-
HOBART — Thousands of people amassed outside the ALP state conference on August 11, calling for an end to logging in old-growth forests. Tasmania currently accounts for more than two-thirds of Australia's total woodchip
-
BRISBANE — Sisters Inside, the organisation representing women in Queensland prisons, has launched a campaign against large-scale strip searching in the state's jails, according to SI co-ordinator Debbie Kilroy, addressing an
-
NEWCASTLE — Two independent candidates have been elected as President and Women's Officer of the Newcastle University Students Association (NUSA) under electoral regulations designed to discriminate against political parties.
-
BRISBANE — Activists building for the expected mass protests against corporate globalisation at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting on October 6 are fast learning that the Queensland police are prepared to use arrests,
-
HOBART — Contracted potato growers have accepted an offer by McCain to pay an extra $22 per tonne this year and another $9 per tonne next year for potatoes. This is an important win even though farmers had originally been
-
WOLLONGONG — TAFE teachers and students have joined library staff in a battle to overturn cuts to library services at TAFE Illawarra — and the extra muscle is forcing management to concede some ground in a dispute which
-
SYDNEY — An August 18 meeting of more than 90 members of the Socialist Alliance from Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle pre-selected a ticket of two to contest Senate seat in the next federal election — Asia Pacific solidarity
-
MELBOURNE — Indigenous, trade union and religious leaders from around Australia and the region will gather here in September to sign a memorandum of understanding in support of West Papua's independence struggle. The
-
SYDNEY — How can the growing revolt against greed, exploitation and eco-vandalism transform itself into a mass people's movement that can rid the world of capitalism? That question was addressed at a seminar here on August 11
-
They don't sleep at night New US research has answered the age-old question, how do right-wingers sleep at night? Answer: Badly. Dr Kelly Bulkeley found that right-wing Californian university students had more nightmares, more dreams about
-
ADELAIDE — Readying for a state election, the South Australian Liberal Party has launched a populist new "tough on drugs" campaign, which law reform advocates warn will turn back the clock on legal attitudes to drug use.
-
SYDNEY — Over the past few weeks, the Daily Telegraph and right-wing radio "shock jocks" have been working overtime, hand-in-hand with state government politicians, to whip up a racist frenzy linking migrant and non-Christian
-
Just days before the October demonstrations against corporate tyranny, socialist youth from across the country will be gathering in the Victorian town of Anglesea for the 30th Resistance national conference. The conference will
-
DARWIN — After 26 years in government, the Country Liberal Party was rocked by a 9% swing against it in the August 18 Northern Territory elections. The final result will not be known for several days, but it is likely that
-
MELBOURNE — Tensions flared outside a private meeting addressed by former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in St Kilda on August 12, when 150 supporters of Palestinian self-determination were confronted by Zionists on the
-
The country's peak welfare group, the Australian Council of Social Services, has called for an immediate suspension of Centrelink's harshest penalties on recipients of unemployment benefits, pending an independent inquiry into the
Analysis
-
The August 15 agreement between the Australian Catholic University (ACU) and its non-academic staff that provides one year of paid maternity leave, and three weeks of paid paternity leave, is a step forward for women. There are only two developed
World
-
The capital of the world's only superpower will again be hit by the wave of anti-globalisation protests when as many as 50,000 people are expected to converge on Washington in late September, during the annual meetings of the
-
MOSCOW — The battle in Genoa was not only the key event in the summer of 2001, but also marked a watershed for the anti-corporate movement. From the outset, the G8 summit in Genoa was doomed to become nothing more than a
-
The city of Glasgow has been shocked by the racist murder of Kurdish asylum seeker Firsat Yildiz in the Sighthill area on August 4. A refugee from the vicious repression of the Turkish state, 22-year-old Firsat was walking home with
-
I recently travelled to Cuba as part of a US women's delegation, sponsored by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Sojourner, a feminist newspaper, and Hermanas, an organisation dedicated to building solidarity
-
CHICAGO — Only hours into the United Students Against Sweatshops August 2-5 national conference in Chicago — before half of the participants had even arrived — students were walking the picket line in solidarity with
-
The Congress of South African Trade Unions has confirmed that its 1.8 million members will strike on August 29 and 30 to protest against the African National Congress government's privatisation program. Not only has COSATU slammed
-
Ecuadorian President Gustavo Noboa has backed down on a June presidential decree to impose a 2% sales tax, after a two-day general strike on August 8-9 brought the South American country's economy to a standstill and tens of thousands
-
Tens of thousands of Argentinians have risen up against their government's austerity plan, staging strikes and demonstrations and blockading highways throughout the country. The three-day wave of protests, from August 13-15, is the
-
Twenty activists, including members of an Austrian theatre group PublixTheatre, held since the enormous protests against the G8 summit of world leaders in Genoa, Italy, on July 20-21, have been released from prison. But as many as 30
-
The Personal Status Court in North Cairo has dismissed a lawsuit brought against Egyptian feminist and writer Nawal el-Saadawi. Nabih Al Wahsh, an Islamic lawyer, attempted to have 70-year-old Saadawi forcibly divorced from her
Culture
-
A Time for Drunken HorsesWritten and directed by Bahman GhobadiShowing at Dendy and Palace cinemas, Sydney and Melbourne. REVIEW BY ANDREA MYLES& OWEN RICHARDS A Time for Drunken Horses tells the story of life in modern Kurdistan, a territory in
-
DAVID CROMWELL talked to London-based Australian journalist John Pilger about his latest television documentary, The New Rulers of the World, which examines the real meaning of the "global economy", including the virtually unknown and bloody history
-
The BankWith David Wenham and Anthony LaPagliaWritten and directed by Robert ConnollyIn major cinemas from September 6. REVIEWED BY SEAN HEALY "Taut psychological thrillers" are two bob a dozen. So are ones with a nasty rich businessperson as
-
Not in my GardenVideo '48Documentary video, in Arabic/Hebrew (with English subtitles)US$55 individuals, US$100 institutions and groupsSend cheques to PO Box 41199, Jaffa 61411, IsraelEmail <oda@netvision.net.il> REVIEWED BY MALIK MIAH
-
SYDNEY — Former Communist Party of Australia member and ex-councillor on Liverpool council Don Symes declares: "I've been fighting for the Georges River since the 1940s!". He recalls when the Georges River surrounds were designated as "greenspace",