Sue Bolton, Melbourne
In a shock decision, three Appeals Court judges on August 27 overturned a County Court sentence and jailed former Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) Victorian state secretary Craig Johnston for taking part in a 2001
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Trade union leaders on August 27 expressed their total disgust at the jailing of their colleague, former Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) Victorian branch leader Craig Johnston, by the Court of Appeal. The sentence showed just how far
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һƷ̽ Weekly's Vannessa Hearman spoke to Chip Henriss-Anderssen, a US-born, former Australian army officer who served with the UN's Interfet peacekeeping force in East Timor. He left the army in 2001 and subsequently joined the Greens. He is now
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Terrorism makes many of us feel insecure and concerned. The images of 9/11 and the Bali bombing, the Howard government's "be alert, not alarmed" campaign, Australian participation in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the endless debate between
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Peter Simpson is Queensland state organiser for the Electrical Trades Union. He is currently involved in a campaign to win a new enterprise bargaining agreement that will push electrical workers' pay levels beyond the 13.5% pay increase achieved in
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Roberto Jorquera The Venezuelan government's victory on August 15 is not only a victory for the people of Venezuela, but for working people worldwide. The Venezuelan voters decisive rejection of the right-wing bid to recall President Hugo Chavez
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"The only thing that was on my mindWas just shoving my dick up this bitch's behindI looked at the girl and saidBabe, your ass ain't nothing but a base hitI'm going to have to get rid of your ass, yeah'Cause you're on my dick, dick, ding-a-ling."
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Appalled I was appalled and disgusted with the lies and attacks in Barry Sheppard's article, "Democrats sabotage Nader-Camejo campaign" (GLW #595), on the Green Party, its processes and its candidates. You, along with the scum at Counterpunch, have
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Bernard Ryan's article in the August 12 Sydney Star Observer criticised the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby's lack of action on same-sex marriage. In response, letters in the SSO defended the lobby for "not prioritising marriage as the major election
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Rodney Croome In Baghdad, a young woman cowers by her window watching US troops and Iraqi fighters killing each other in the street, and she wonders why. In Tasmania's ancient southern forests, helicopters firebomb another clearfelled, poisoned
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Zoe Kenny, Melbourne The "Punish Howard" student rally in Melbourne on August 19 was lively and upbeat and there were a number of contingents from places that haven't attended rallies in a while, including Victoria University and several high
News
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Ruth Ratcliffe, Sydney Three years after the Tampa affair, when Prime Minister John Howard's government refused to allow 400 asylum seekers who had been rescued by a Norwegian freighter to set foot on Australian soil, 250 refugee-rights supporters
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HOBART — Fifty people protested against Prime Minister John Howard as he attended a business function on August 26. The protest was organised by the Greens, the Socialist Alliance and the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group. Howard was
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Kylie Moon, Sydney A national campaign has been launched by the Victorian branch of the Communication, Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU) to convince Australia Post (AP) workers to reject a proposed enterprise agreement, and to engage in a more
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Working stiffs, as always "Most rich people are able to avoid taxes, and if you can't raise enough money from taxing the rich, guess who pays the taxes?" — Emperor George Bush II, August 11, defending his tax policy. Land of opportunity "The
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Dave Andrews, Fremantle Power maintenance workers based in Collie, near Bunbury in Western Australia's south-west, are continuing their strike for better working conditions. The strike by 110 workers, now entering its eighth week, has provoked a
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Nicola Paris, Perth Despite overwhelming opposition, Western Australia's Labor government and the Cable Sands mining company are intent on mining the last tall tuart forest in the world, in Ludlow, near Busselton, in WA's south-west. All approvals
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Abolish profit system, says socialist candidate BRISBANE — "We need a total change in politics. We need a new society, for the millions, not the millionaires", Coral Wynter, the Socialist Alliance candidate for the federal seat of Brisbane, told
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Queensland Rail announces job cuts BRISBANE — Queensland Rail will cut more than 700 jobs from its workforce of 13,500 in the initial stage of a drastic restructure, which follows the loss of a major rail freight contract to private company
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Graham Matthews, Melbourne Prime Minister John Howard's Coalition government has "worked to dehumanise asylum seekers, to use them as a tool in wedge politics", David Ristrom, the lead Victorian Senate candidate for the Australian Greens, told an
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Band banned for politics HOBART — On August 24, Hobart College band Mr Mukhole played at the school's assembly. Before the band started to play, the lead singer, Bryn Heathwood, explained the band's name and reason for existing. As Heathwood
Analysis
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After being held incommunicado and in solitary confinement at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for nearly three years, Australian citizen David Hicks was brought before a five-member US military tribunal on August 26 and charged with
World
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Rohan Pearce "The smell of burnt flesh filled the air and blood smeared the deserted streets of Najaf's Old City after heavy US air strikes on Shiite militia positions around Iraq's revered Imam Ali shrine", reported Agence France-Presse on August
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Federico Fuentes A little more than a month after the July 18 referendum on the future of Bolivia's natural gas industry, President Carlos Mesa's "victory" has begun to unravel. Many commentators had predicted that Mesa's "victory" had given him
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John Pilger Most of the US's recent wars were launched by Democratic presidents. Why expect better of their current nominee John Kerry? The debate between US liberals and conservatives is a fake; Bush may be the lesser evil. On May 6, the US
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Jonah Gindin & Robin Nieto Despite rumours that Venezuela's right-wing opposition would boycott the regional elections scheduled for October, on August 24, at a meeting of labour leaders belonging to the social-democratic Accion Democratica,
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Max Lane On August 21, Chuzaini, the radical left-wing Peoples Democratic Party's chairperson in the Javanese provincial town of Pekalongan, died in the local prison. PRD national chairperson Yusuf Lakaseng told the Indonesian National Human Rights
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Dr Ilan Pappe is one of Israel's most prominent "new historians". In May 2002, Pappe was threatened with expulsion from his university, the University of Haifa, for supporting a Jewish graduate student whose dissertation documented an massacre of
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Alex Miller In a blockade of the Faslane naval base on the River Clyde, near Glasgow, organised by Trident Ploughshares and Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament on August 23, police arrested 63 protesters for attempting to prevent staff from
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Doug Lorimer Despite attempts by New York City Republican mayor Michael Bloomberg to deny them permits, protests during the August 30-September 2 Republican Party national convention are expected to draw tens of thousands of anti-war activists.
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Cuba severs ties with Panama On August 27, Cuban authorities announced that country had severed diplomatic ties with Panama, in reaction to outgoing Panamanian [resident Mireya Moscoso's pardon to four Cuban terrorists. The four had been convicted
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Jeff Shantz, Toronto "The foundation of our movements, often unacknowledged, is our ability to take care of each other." With these words from Sue Collis, a resident of Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory in Ontario, and a longtime member of the Ontario
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On August 2, the Traprock Peace Center's Sunny Miller interviewed Mordechai Vanunu, Israel's most famous whistleblower. Once a technician in Israel's power plants, Vanunu was kidnapped from Italy, convicted of treason in a secret trial and jailed for
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Eva Cheng In January 1994, China's State Council announced a plan to lift 80 million households in 592 rural counties out of poverty within seven years. Dubbed the "Eight-seven plan", the scheme targeted counties with an annual per capita income of
Culture
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A very dark cloud has enveloped the Earth,It is the engine of growth driven by greed,The creation of wealth, without concern for human need. This wealth can be seen As digits on a computer screen,So when there is a virus or computer error,It
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Mutiny: The True Story of Red October — Unlike the disaffected captain of a Russian nuclear submarine in Hollywood's version of events in The Hunt for Red October, Captain Valery Sablin was not a defector, but loyal to Communist ideals. Sablin had
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REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON Sacco & Vanzetti: Agony and triumph Ocean Press, 2004119 pages, $18 (pb) It was just another payroll robbery with murder in the US in South Braintree, Massachusetts, on April 15, 1920, and the Slater & Morrill Shoe
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QuidamCirque du SoleilSydney until October 10, Brisbane from November 4, Melbourne from March 4, Adelaide from May 12 and Perth from June 30. Another one of Cirque du Soleil's delightful displays of acrobatic virtuosity and human harmony has
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Mission Impossible: the Sheiks, the US and the Future of IraqBy Paul McGeoughQuarterly Essay 14, 2004Black Inc117 pages, $13.95 (pb) REVIEW BY ALEX MILLER There can be no doubt that Sydney Morning Herald journalist Paul McGeough has got bottle.