BY EMMA MURPHY& LESLIE RICHMOND
Fourteen men claiming to be Kurds from Turkey, four Indonesian crew and one small fishing boat drifting into shore on Melville Island, 80km from Darwin — that's all it took for the government to declare "national
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David Spratt, an organiser for the Victorian Peace Network, wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald's Webdiary, run by Margo Kingston, on October 21. Describing opposition leader Simon Crean as "dead in the water", he explained that he had resigned from
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Australian women are having less children than ever before. Not only are more women childless, the one-child family is the fastest growing family type in Australia. While much of the resulting talk of a "fertility crisis" is based
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The federal Coalition government is clearly using the hysteria around the deportation of Willie Brigitte for alleged "terrorist" activities and the arrival of a small boatload of asylum seekers at Melville Island to prepare the most favourable terms
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SYDNEY — "Kill a dog — go to jail. Kill a worker — pay a fine", read a placard at an October 27 rally of building workers angered by the death of yet another young worker on a dangerous work site. The placard's slogan sums up
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"What was Willie Brigitte doing in Australia for five months?" and "Why did the federal government not take action against him sooner" are the questions that the corporate media has repeatedly asked since news of the 35-year-old
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[Andrew Wilkie, a former Office of National Assessments analyst who resigned in protest at the government's support for the war on Iraq, gave the following speech to the protests outside US President George Bush's address to
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Anti-war movement and union action In GLW #560, Bryan Sketchley argues that the massive worldwide anti-war protests went unheeded by US imperialism and that the anti-war movement needs to be reoriented away from mass street protests towards
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MELBOURNE — "The second worst thing imaginable would be if our child died fighting in a just war — that we believed should be fought. The absolute worst thing would be if he died in a war that we believe is wrong", Nancy
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Having spearheaded the campaign of fear and hysteria against "boat-people" for the last five years, former immigration minister Philip Ruddock is again leading a charge of racism and fear — this time as attorney-general. As one
News
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300 rally for Medicare MELBOURNE — On November 7, a lunchtime rally protested the cuts to Medicare and called for the public health care system to be extended. The speakers included Dr Tim Woodruff; Sharan Burrow, the president of the
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MELBOURNE — John Setka, vice-president of the Victorian branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), was found guilty on November 3 of issuing a threat against a project manager for construction
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MELBOURNE — The Victorian education department has threatened to sack several hundred staff. Education workers have been threatened by the department with the loss of up to 400 jobs since August. The threat spilled over into the
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ADELAIDE — Wearing a shirt with "The battlefield is between your ears: put up a fight" written on it, David Barsamian, founder of Alternative Radio in the United States, gave a lecture on war, propaganda and hypocrisy at the
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MELBOURNE — Some 150 people spent the evening of November 3 rocking the Maritime Union of Australia's hall in North Melbourne. This fundraiser was just one part of the MUA's solidarity work with East Timor's Transport and
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MELBOURNE — On October 23, workers at Wilson Transformers Pty Ltd in Glen Waverley went on strike in response to management's refusal to negotiate on the latest enterprise bargaining agreement. Wilson Transformers management
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MELBOURNE — As the first leg of his tour of Australia, Scottish Socialist Party member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) Colin Fox will be speaking at the conference Resisting the Empire: Building Alternatives to War, Racism and Imperialism at
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SYDNEY — Palestinian Legislative Council member Dr Hanan Ashrawi, who is also the secretary-general of the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Peace (MIFTAH), arrived in Sydney on November 4 to be
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Three-hundred people gathered in Sydney, 150 in Canberra, and fifty in both Melbourne and Brisbane on November 9, and 30 in Perth on November 8, as part of an international day of against the apartheid wall being built by Israel. Pictured is the
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DARWIN — It has long been known that Darwin's Longgrass community is home to some fantastic musical talent, so it is not surprising that the launch of the first Longgrass Live CD at the third annual Freedom to Sleep Festivities
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NEWCASTLE — Newcastle's Save Our Rail campaign has called a protest for November 19 outside NSW Parliament House in Sydney. The group is protesting the proposal to close rail services between Broadmeadow station and Newcastle
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DARWIN — On the second anniversary of the federal election, won by the Coalition parties on the basis of lies to demonise refugees, refugees' rights activists in Darwin launched a campaign against the government's excision of the
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SYDNEY — The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act, which was passed on June 26, has been used for the first time to arrest and question a person. The man's name has not been
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Insane bomber I "If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens. You're dealing with insane suicide bombers who are killing our people, and we need to be very aggressive in taking them out." — US Republican senator Trent Lott,
World
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NEW YORK — On November 4, the UN General Assembly voted by a record majority (179 in favour, three against and two abstentions) to demand an end to the four-decade-long economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed on
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On November 4, just days after a Ecuador court began hearing a lawsuit against ChevronTexaco for damages caused in the Amazon rainforest since the 1970s, Angel Shingre, a well-known peasant leader and human rights campaigner, was assassinated in the
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In April 2002, Greenpeace activists boarded a commercial ship off the coast of Florida. The ship was transporting mahogany illegally exported from Brazil's Amazon rainforest. The activists unfurled a banner stating: "President Bush,
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The November 2 missile attack on a US Army Chinook troop transport helicopter — which left 16 GIs dead and 20 badly wounded — has finally forced leading officials in Washington to acknowledge that the US is involved in a
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The government of Israel claims that Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat is a terrorist leader, and that this justifies exiling him, killing him or putting him on trial. Yet Israel has a long history of electing past
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The 15th congress of the Revolutionary Communist League (Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, LCR), held October 30-November 2, sealed an historic pact with France's other main revolutionary socialist party, Lutte Ouvriere (Workers
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Some weeks ago, Pentagon inmates were invited to a special in-house showing of an old movie. It was the Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo's anti-colonial classic, initially banned in France. One assumes the purpose of the screening
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SACRAMENTO — In President George Bush's USA, 122,000 people became temporary workers in the last nine months. Temporary workers are less likely to have a steady pay-check and health-care benefits than permanent workers. Nine
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A group of organisations are campaigning in support of the award-wining documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, after the Canadian Pacific Region Chapter of Amnesty International (AI Canada) decided to withdraw it from the November 6-9
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BRUSSELS — Soon, the 450 million citizens of the European Union will have their facial images screened and fingerprints taken if they request a new passport. Additionally, anybody from a non-EU state seeking entry or requesting
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Some call it an embargo, for others it's a blockade. But neither word correctly reflects the magnitude of the actions carried out by the US government against Cuba since 1959. US Secretary of State Cristian Herter used the correct
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The following appeal was adopted, by an overwhelming majority, at the 15th congress of the French Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), held on the outskirts of Paris from October 30 to November 2. It was translated by Murray Smith. Together, we
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LONDON — On November 3, 30,000 striking members of the Communications Workers Union (CWU) won a spectacular trade union victory against Royal Mail management and its New Labour masters, when the postal bosses acceded to almost
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Noam Chomsky, the distinguished US political scientist and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, has attended the 25th Assembly of the Latin American Social Science Council. Addressing the conference on October 29, also
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BY ANN SCHOLL& FACUNDO ARRIZABALAGA Argentina was once the world's granary. Now starving children haunt the villas miseria — shanty towns — and cartoneros (unemployed) families roam the streets looking for leftovers to eke a living from. Over
Culture
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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. Includes the 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ news. CTS Sydney (UHF 31), every Sunday, 9pm. Phone (02) 9564 1277. Visit
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BY NICOLE HOYE& TERRICA STRUDWICK BRISBANE — In the midst of his "Stand down Howard" tour, Steve Towson has released his powerful second album One Shot at Freedom. Towson casually describes his music as a raw-boned, electric mix of folk, punk and
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Dude, Where's My Country?By Michael MoorePenguin, 2003249pp, $40 (hb) REVIEW BY NICK FREDMAN Michael Moore is back, again bearing the weapons of leftist analysis, righteous anger and humour to smite all stupid white men, particularly George W.
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Amandla! takes you on a revolutionary journey like no other.
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Lyndon LaRouche: Fascism Restyled for the New MillenniumBy Helen GilbertRed Letter Press, 46 pagesCopies available for $7 from the Solidarity Salon, 580 Sydney Road, Brunswick, Victoria; send a cheque for $8, payable to the Feminist Education