The following statement was issued in response to the August 27 jailing of former Australian Manufacturing Workers Union Victorian secretary Craig Johnston.
We, the undersigned Socialist Alliance candidates in Victoria for the upcoming federal
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On August 18, Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin introduced a bill designed to prevent the federal government from constructing a nuclear dump in the Northern Territory. While applauding her move, candidates from the Greens and the
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Bill Mason, Brisbane The Socialist Alliance candidate for the federal seat of Brisbane, Coral Wynter, has issued a challenge to National Party candidate Major Nick Withycombe to debate the Iraq war and truth in politics. The challenge follows
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Jim McIlroy Leslie John (Jack) McPhillips, a long-time leader of the Communist Party of Australia and trade union official, died last month, aged 94. Jack was one of the early generation of CPA union officials, who were prominent in the union
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Sarah Stephen Many people will approach this federal election campaign with cynicism and resignation, and who can blame them? It can seem a depressing prospect: four more weeks of election advertising, during which the major parties will make all
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Jenny Long, Sydney At a September 2 meeting to set up a campaign to free jailed Victorian union militant Craig Johnston, around 25 activists made plans for a protest against the Victorian government, which successfully pushed for Johnston's
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Sue Bolton, Melbourne As the implications of the August 27 jailing of militant unionist Craig Johnston sink in, support has been growing for the campaign to free the former secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU). Some
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An estimated 700,000 to four million people are trafficked annually worldwide. Trafficking occurs for a variety of purposes, including bonded labour, forced prostitution, forced marriage and the stealing of human organs. Approximately 50,000
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On September 3, the Craig Johnston Trade Union Support Committee was formed and issued a statement saying that no trade unionist should be imprisoned for taking part in an industrial dispute. The committee is calling for the immediate release of
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Duncan Meerding Workers want higher wages and better conditions, while employers want to keep down labour costs. This is one of the major contradictions in the capitalist world today. The labour costs that employers come across include not only
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We need your help to: distribute information speak at workplaces move motions in your union raise money for the campaign. To help out, phone Sue Bolton on 0413-377-978 or email sueb@dsp.org.au From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, September 8, 2004.
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US Greens In response to Tennessee reader Howard Switzer's complaints (Write On, GLW #596) about my comments on the US Greens in my article in "Democrats sabotage Nader-Camejo campaign" (GLW #595), the main point of my article was the fact that the
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Outgoing President George W. Bush is hoping to use the rights of same-sex couples as a battering ram in this year's US presidential election campaign. It's an old tactic of ruling elites to exploit religious bigotry. But the Republicans and the
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Paul Benedek "'Trust' is indeed a key issue in the coming election. The Australian people can have absolute trust that the Howard government will lie about its record and its real intentions", Coral Wynter, the Socialist Alliance candidate for the
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Leslie Cannold Recently, ABC TV's Compass program screened a documentary about abortion. The British filmmaker Julia Black is the daughter of the founder of Marie Stopes International. Heavily pregnant during the filming, Black sets out to revisit
News
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Jim McIlroy, Brisbane "Time for a change: Refugees; Iraq; Medicare; social services; education; Aboriginal rights. Join a range of community groups to say 'enough is enough'." This call is featured on publicity for Brisbane's "Time for a change"
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Jenny Long, Sydney As part of its campaign against new job-threatening multi-year contracts to clean schools and other public buildings announced in June by the NSW Labor government, the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union (LHMU) announced
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Simon Butler, Newcastle The mining division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) has welcomed the August 9 conviction of the companies and individuals responsible for events that led to the tragic deaths of four coal
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Helps them put up a better defence "It's very depressing because we don't want an intimidated judiciary." — Pauline Popp-Madsen, described as "a justice adviser from Denmark", quoted in an August 27 London Daily Telegraph article reporting that
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Chris Slee, Melbourne Donna Mulhearn, an Australian volunteer aid worker who has lived and worked in Baghdad for six months, and who visited Fallujah while the city was under attack by US forces, spoke to 50 people at a public meeting organised by
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Iggy Kim, Sydney "Truth" and "lies" (and "rodents") are fast becoming hackneyed election buzz words. But the national "End the lies" rallies being held on the weekend before the elections will put back some of the real content. Since the election
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Chris Latham, Perth On August 31, Australian Defence Industries informed the Western Australian Equal Opportunity Commission that it intends to apply for an exemption from the WA Equal Opportunity Act. If upheld, the application would allow ADI
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BRISBANE — The Brisbane Timor Leste Goodwill Coalition for Justice in the Timor Sea has launched "A Fair Go for Timor Leste" campaign, with plans to distribute a brochure over the period September 4-14 outlining the case for East Timor.
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Jon Lamb, Darwin On September 2, a cross-union meeting of academic and general staff at Charles Darwin University voted not to accept the university's offer of a 10% wage rise, and discussed taking industrial action. Up to 1500 staff members may
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2 'Make refugee rights a political issue' BRISBANE — "The best thing we can do to help the refugees is to make refugee rights a key political issue", Aladdin Sisalem, the last asylum seeker to be held on Manus Island, told a public meeting of
Analysis
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The August 27 Court of Appeal decision to jail militant unionist Craig Johnston is a sharp illustration of the class prejudices of Australia's legal system. While Johnston is locked up because of property damage sustained during an industrial
World
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Fred Fuentes Mass protests are shaking Bolivia, forcing interim President Carlos Mesa to back down from his threat not to authorise any new bills until his hydrocarbon law was passed, unamended and without discussion. Mesa had claimed that the
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Meredith Aby, Minneapolis Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist. On average, right-wing paramilitary death squads or the military murder three Colombian trade unionists a week. Many more are threatened each day.
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Lance Selfa, Chicago Officials in an administration that has gotten the US bogged down in an unpopular war and overseen a net loss of jobs and a net increase in poverty should be polishing their resumes for their inevitable defeat in November. Yet
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UNITED STATES: DOJ drops subpoena on ISP worker On September 1, the US Department of Justice abandoned an attempt to subpoena Nicholas Merrill, a worker at Calyx Internet Access, the internet service provider for New York City's Indymedia website,
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Eva Cheng Just after midnight on August 18, five grassroots organisers of the Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (Liberation), retired after yet another busy day in the party's Paliganj local office, near Patna, the capital city of the
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Rohan Pearce It was the biggest-ever protest against a political convention in the United States. The August 29 demonstration against the Republican National Convention was a resounding rejection of the White House and its "war on terror". The
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Doug Lorimer On August 30, rebel Shiite leader Moqtada al Sadr instructed his Mahdi Army militia to suspend attacks on US-led occupation troops and their puppet Iraqi security forces. The decision followed a three-week US-led assault on the Iraqi
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Rohan Pearce & Alison Dellit The appalling end to the hostage crisis in Beslan, Russia on September 4, which left more than 300 dead, had people all over the world horrified. The killing of so many children helped neither the Chechens fighting the
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David Zirin The modern Olympic games began in 1898 as a place for imperial rivals, in the process of carving up the world from Cuba to the Congo to the Philippines, to wave flags and use sports to whip up a nationalist frenzy. Since those times,
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Michael Shaik Deepening the rift between the United States and Europe, the US government led by President George Bush is supporting Israel's plans to build a further 533 settlement homes in THE West Bank on top of the 1000 construction tenders
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Norman Brewer, Berlin On August 30, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of eastern Germany's cities for the fourth Monday in a row to protest the plans of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democratic-Greens coalition government
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Doug Lorimer In the wake of his victory in the August 15-16 presidential recall referendum in which he received the backing of 59% of voters, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called on the country's private business operators to work with his
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Norm Dixon On August 30, United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan reported to the Security Council's 15 members that, despite a failure to meet "some of the core commitments it has made", the government of Sudan had made "some progress" in
Culture
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Travels in American IraqBy John Martinkus Black Inc books, 2004224 pages, $24.95 pb REVIEW BY ANNA SAMSON Smart bombs. Guided missiles. Minimal collateral damage. Attacks on high-value targets. All phrases designed to give the impression that
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Silent StormSBSSeptember 9, 8.30pm REVIEW BY JIM GREEN Silent Storm tells the fascinating story of CSIRO scientist Hedley Marston and his battle to alert the Australian public about radioactive contamination from the British atomic tests carried
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Message Stick: Ankula Watjarira — Follows the Ernabella Choir — established in the Ernabella Mission in remote South Australia in the '50s — as it travels to the Adelaide Festival, blending Western hymns into Pitjantjatjara language. ABC,
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LondonTheir message:Two hundred thousand miscellaneous persons, surging streets.It was the arthritic knees ignored(Grandmother Edith's first march);It was the lunch missed,the school test - zero scorethe prioritisation of expressed disgust(red
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I, RobotDirected by Alex ProyasStarring Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan and Alan TudykThe Stepford WivesDirected by Frank OzStarring Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Glenn Close and Christopher Walken REVIEW BY RJURIK DAVIDSON The