Sam Watson
Peace, love and solidarity to all. We fought a great fight and we achieved great things; but PM John Howard's forces lied and intimidated the Australian people and they dominated the ballot box on the day.
This nation does not have a
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I have a friend who, along with his family, actively opposes the Howard government's iniquitous policies — the ones that throw asylum seekers in concentration camps and turn Australians into US lap dogs, making us targets for acts of retaliation.
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Lisa Macdonald In early September, National Party leader and deputy prime minister John Anderson said of the Australian Greens: "This idea that they are some warm, nice midway house between the Coalition and the Labor Party overlooks the fact that
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Alison Dellit Once upon a time, this country had a telecommunications system that was, mostly, designed to put us in touch with each other. It didn't make megabucks, but that was okay, because we didn't need it to. We weren't bombarded with animals
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Message Stick — Sydney Aboriginal artist Brooke Andrew challenges the stereotypical image of Indigenous art. ABC, Friday, October 22, 6pm. Cuban Missile Crisis Declassified — Tells the story of 13 days in 1962 when the world stood on the brink
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Alison Dellit "In Victoria, Labor and the Democrats are responsible for the Family First candidate winning the last Senate seat instead of the Greens. Family First received preferences from both Labor and the Democrats, who have effectively
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Doug Lorimer "If the pre-election opinion polls in Australia were anything to go by, Mr Howard was going to be punished by the electorate for his support of Mr Bush in Iraq. But when it actually came to voting, Australians preferred Mr Howard's
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Alison Dellit As the dust settled on PM John Howard's decisive victory, across Australia social justice activists have been trying to make sense of the election outcome. This discussion has not been restricted to the opinion pages of the print
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Coming out of the October 9 federal elections, it seems that Family First candidate Steven Fielding may have the balance of power in the Senate, after receiving just 42,560 votes, because most parties, including Labor and the Democrats, preferenced
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Alex Bainbridge, Hobart Despite claiming his plan would protect forests and jobs, Prime Minister John Howard's October 9 election victory means that high-conservation-value forests in Tasmania will continue to be destroyed while timber industry
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Sarah Stephen In the days following the re-election of the Coalition government, the corporate press crowed about Howard's fresh mandate for reform. The October 11 Australian Financial Review editorial argued that PM John Howard "now has a thumping
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This is a man's account of Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) and immigration department (DIMA) staff's attempt to forcibly deport him from Villawood detention centre. I'd been informed by the DIMA for the first time on 11 October 1999 I am
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Stuart Munckton& Sarah Stephen The federal election result does not amount to an endorsement of the warmongering and racist polices of the Coalition. The election was not a referendum on Australia's involvement in the unpopular and disastrous
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Croc country The dude who was on the menu of the croc up north should spend the rest of his life kissing the ground of the brave lady who rescued him walks on. If it'd been me there, I'd a waved him goodbye from the back of my ute where I'd a been
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Kate Durham gave the following speech to an August 27 Sydney meeting on refugees and detention. She has been an outspoken critic of the Pacific solution, under which asylum seekers attempting to reach Australia are housed in makeshift camps outside
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Sarah Stephen Sharif, a Bedoon (stateless person) from Kuwait, spent three years in detention in Australia and had his asylum claim rejected. The Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) argued that he could live
News
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PERTH — The campaign by Western Australia's nurses to win wage parity with nurses in other states looks set to escalate in the lead-up to the state elections, following a government backflip. In response to threats by the Australian Nurses
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Jess Melvin, Sydney The South-East Asian department at the University of Sydney will cease to exist in 2006 unless students and staff can stop its closure. Indonesian language, Thai language and South-East Asian history and politics subjects are
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Tim Vollmer October 15 marked the first anniversary of the death of Joel Exner, the 16-year-old who fell 15 metres to his death on his third day of work. Joel's death highlighted the need for tougher laws to bring an end to the hundreds of deaths
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Chris Latham, Perth On October 13, Alcoa was charged with the unauthorised discharge of a prohibited substance. This followed a toxic spill that released between 300,000 and 1.3 million litres of caustic soda at its Alumina refinery at Kwinana,
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Sarah Stephen On October 14, the immigration department deported MK, an Iranian Christian, from the Baxter detention centre in South Australia. Australia is the only country that deports asylum seekers to Iran. "Immigration minister [Amanda]
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Blind faith and ... "I'm not a politician and the decisions aren't mine to make, but I think oftentimes our commander in chief has a much broader view of things than your average Joe who is for or against the war." — US Marine chaplain Josh
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SYDNEY — In an interview printed in the October 14 Bulletin magazine, Indian writer and anti-globalisation campaigner Arundhati Roy, comparing Australia's Aborigines to India's untouchables, said she wanted to donate her $50,000 Sydney Peace Prize
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Kathy Newnam, Darwin Postgraduate students at Charles Darwin University have declared their determination to continue to fight university management attempts to relocate 35 postgraduate research students to what they are calling "holding pens".
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Ruth Ratcliffe "Aceh — the struggle for independence", an exhibition of photos taken by freelance photographer William Nessen, toured to the small town of Toronto on Lake Macquarie on October 15-16. Nonie Hodgson from Action in Solidarity with
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Margarita Windisch, Melbourne Up to 1800 people marched on Victorian state parliament on October 13 to protest the proposed toxic dump site at Hattah in north-western Victoria. A "toxic" truck and eight busloads of people left Mildura before dawn
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Sarah Stephen Plans are underway for a national convergence on Canberra on November 16, the first sitting day of federal parliament since the October 9 federal election returned the Coalition to government. The convergence is a joint initiative
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Rachel Evans, Sydney On October 11, 200 people packed out Gleebooks for the launch of Bob Brown: Gentle Revolutionary by James Norman. With the Greens consolidating as the third force in Australian parliamentary politics, the book's timely release
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Sue Bolton, Melbourne On October 12, a Federal Court judge ordered the Howard government's Building Industry Taskforce to stop accessing the personal banking details of members of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) employed
Analysis
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PM John Howard now claims a mandate for a raft of reactionary measures that he didn't even mention during the federal election campaign. Before polling it was all about security, trust and "rewards". Just four days after the election, treasurer
World
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"These terrorists are serious, they're deadly and they know nothing except trying to kill. I understand that. That's why I will never stop at anything to hunt down and kill the terrorists." — John Kerry, St. Louis debate, October 8. "[I]t is very
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Elizabeth Schulte, Chicago In an effort to emphasise the few differences between his campaign and President George Bush's, Senator John Kerry is arguing that Bush's invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Not because of the terrible human cost of the war,
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INDIA — Villages condemn political killings On October 1, a meeting of several hundred elected village representatives in Patna, capital of Bihar state, condemned the increasing number of killings of leading members of the Communist Party of
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Norm Dixon "Like a whistle was blown to halt the activity, the entire metropolis suddenly went dry of vehicles from 7am... Lagos was shut down... Banks, markets, business houses and state and federal secretariats were under lock and key", read the
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Eva Cheng Hong Kong's recently elected pro-worker parliamentarian Leung Kwok-Hung, known as Long Hair, has overcome one threat to his elected position, only to have more descend. After being elected to the Legislative Council (the territory's
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Alex Miller The opening of the new Scottish parliament building in Edinburgh by Queen Elizabeth II on October 9 was upstaged by an alternative republican ceremony organised by the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) and other Scottish republicans. As
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Justin Podur The Venezuelan government, under President Hugo Chavez, has created "missions" to provide services to Venezuela's population. Perhaps the most well-known of the missions is Mission Robinson, which has brought adult literacy programs to
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Kim Bullimore, West Bank At the height of the 18-day military offensive in Gaza, which has resulted in at least 136 Palestinians being killed, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's senior adviser, Dov Weisglass, revealed that Israel's much-touted
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Chris Slee Sri Lanka's clothing industry, which directly employs 340,000 workers and indirectly employs another million, faces a "sudden collapse" when the Multi-Fibre Agreement (MFA) expires next year, according to Kalani Subasinghe, a staff
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Leslie Feinberg, New York "We have called on the anti-war and peace movements to join us on October 17 and they are coming by the tens of thousands", Million Worker March leader Clarence Thomas explains, "because the war in Iraq, just like the
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Zimbabwean anti-globalisation activists, social movements, NGOs, community-based organisations, faith-based groups and unions opposed to neo-liberalism and corporate-led globalisation which were scheduled to hold the second Zimbabwe Social Forum from
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Kim Bullimore, West Bank Thirteen-year-old Iman Alhamas was shot dead on October 6 as she walked to school in the Rafah refugee camp. One of 30 children killed during the 18-day Israeli offensive into Gaza, Iman's body was riddled with 20 bullets.
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Doug Lorimer The Los Angeles Times has reported that US officials have told it the Bush administration has decided to delay a major offensive to recapture rebel Iraqi cities until after the November 2 US presidential election. A week earlier,
Culture
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REVIEW BY VANNESSA HEARMAN Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia and the Independence of East TimorBy Clinton FernandesScribe Publications, Melbourne 2004138 pages Clinton Fernandes, a Melbourne-based writer on politics and international
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David Rovics, the US's most radical folksinger, stepped onstage in Albuquerque on October 2 wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the face of George Bush and the caption "International Terrorist". The audience applauded wildly. Rovics
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REVIEW BY ALISON THORNE Revolutionary Integration: A Marxist Analysis of African American LiberationBy Richard Fraser and Tom BootRed Letter Press, Seattle 2004224 pages, $28.00 (pb)Available in Australia from Feminist Education Association, PO Box
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REVIEW BY JESS MELVIN The Resistible Rise of Arturo UiA play by Bertolt BrechtDirected by Erin ThomasPACT Theatre, Erskineville, Sydney. October 7-30Tickets $24/$18, bookings (02) 9699 344Concession tickets available for 91̳ Weekly readers.