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Organising is underway for demonstrations during the APEC summit, which PM John Howard is hosting in Sydney on September 8-9 and which US President George Bush and other “world leaders” will be attending. The Stop Bush collective is organising a convergence for September 8, aiming to draw people onto the streets to protest against the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. The protest will also call for urgent action to stop environmental destruction and for the defence of workers’ rights.
“There are two big issues in this dispute: the right of academics to free speech and the question of QUT [Queensland University of Technology] conducting unethical research”, left-wing academic Dr Gary MacLennan told Green Left Weekly on May 24.
Two hundred young people attended a protest on May 19 to demand that the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay be closed. The action, organised by the combined schools Amnesty International group, heard from a range of speakers, including high school students, ALP state MP Lisa Sing and Greens state MP Nick McKim.
Tom — not his real name — became a “person of interest” after taking part in the G20 protests in Melbourne last November. This softly spoken 24-year-old, a postgraduate student at Sydney University, is one of the latest victims of the police-state laws that seem designed to intimidate activists from organising, or attending, protests.
The deepening of Australia’s drought- and global-warming-driven water crisis has thrown into sharp relief the historical and current inadequacy of the Liberal-Labor political establishment to put the needs of working people before those of big business.
OSLO — On May 23, 43 organisations signed a letter to the Moroccan government demanding an immediate end to its attacks on Sahrawi students. Since early May, Moroccan police have been on an offensive against Sahrawi students at colleges and universities throughout Morocco and Western Sahara. Dozens of students have been beaten, arrested and detained and there have been reports of sexual abuse and harassment of victims in hospital. On May 9, Sultana Khaya, while peacefully calling for the release of fellow students, was brutally attacked by police, leaving her blind in one eye. The violence is also disrupting students’ final preparation for June exams. The letter called on the Moroccan government to release the arrested students, guarantee the Sahrawi students’ physical safety and freedom of expression, prosecute those responsible for the violence, and “address the underlying legitimate grievances of the Sahrawi students by respecting human rights in occupied Western Sahara and allowing for a free, fair and transparent referendum on independence in the occupied territory”.
On May 13, the Left party won 8.4 % of the votes in Germany’s smallest state, the adjoining north-western cities of Bremen and Bremerhaven. This was sufficient for the party to enter a west German state parliament for the first time, with seven MPs.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) could not be clearer: “The right to strike is one of the essential means available to workers and their organisations for the promotion and protection of their economic and social interests” (1983).
On May 13, the Left party won 8.4 % of the votes in Germany’s smallest state, the adjoining north-western cities of Bremen and Bremerhaven. This was sufficient for the party to enter a west German state parliament for the first time, with seven MPs.
May 27 will be end of the 20-year concession granted by the Venezuelan government to the RCTV corporation — owned by multi-millionaire Marcel Granier — to use the state-owned Channel 2 broadcasting signal. The Venezuelan government has announced that the channel will become a public station, similar to a number of stations in Europe, based on programs made by independent producers
While public support in the US for Washington’s counterinsurgency war in Iraq has collapsed, the Pentagon has drawn up plans to almost double the number of US combat troops deployed in the oil-rich country by the end of this year.
Tom Lewis, 83, is a long-time Green Left Weekly subscriber in a small town between Bundaberg and Gin Gin, Queensland. His eyesight is rapidly failing and he can no longer read. But last week he renewed his subscription to the paper and made a $100 donation to our fighting fund.