Prime Minister John Howard announced on June 21 a plan to take control of some 60 Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, supposedly to tackle a child sex abuse crisis in those communities. It is a plan that severely limits and in some instances eradicates the democratic and land rights of all Aboriginal people in remote NT communities.
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The Tasmanian state Labor government has rejected a claim by public sector nurses to bring their pay and conditions in line with their mainland counterparts.
More than 4000 teachers, school support staff, parents and students rallied outside the South Australian parliament on June 14. The rally, called by the Australian Education Union (AEU), protested the efficiency dividends announced in the recent state budget, which will result in funding cuts of $50,000-$100,000 to most schools.
Im taking control, said Johnny Howard, with a contrived quiver of righteousness in his voice. His face was set into a familiar pastiche of horror and disgust at the degraded behaviour of lesser beings. He also conveyed a weariness the weariness of shouldering the white mans burden.
Proposed laws introduced into the NSW parliament mean that the greater Sydney area will become a police state for two weeks around the APEC summit. The APEC Meeting (Policing Powers) Bill 2007 is expected to be passed without significant amendments.
The enormity of China’s environmental nightmare is well-known. However, its root causes — especially the part played by First World capital — is less widely understood. One example is the massive dumping in China of First World “e-waste” — electronic and electrical waste.
The Vote Against Discrimination
Kirrit Barreet Aboriginal Art and Cultural Centre, 407 Main Road, Ballarat
Free entry, until August 30
Kirrit Barreet Aboriginal Art and Cultural Centre, 407 Main Road, Ballarat
Free entry, until August 30
As the national strike by more than 700,000 South African teachers, nurses, health workers and other public servants entered its fourth week on June 22, the African National Congress (ANC) government steadfastly refused to seriously revise its miserly pay offer. President Thabo Mbeki knows that if his neoliberal, pro-big business regime relents and grants the public-sector workers a much-needed above-inflation pay increase, it will embolden the country’s private-sector workers to fight for a similar rise.
On June 13, explosions destroyed the two 100-year-old minarets of the highly revered Shiite Askariya mosque in the largely Sunni inhabited city of Samarra, 100 kilometres north of Baghdad. The Askariya shrine means a lot to us, the people of Samarra, Abu Abdullah, a Sunni who lives next to the shrine, told the June 13 Washington Post, adding: To lose the shrine hurt us a lot, and made us afraid about what will happen next. Someone wants to create sectarian strife by doing this act.
On June 18, Vilma Espin Guillois, legendary guerrilla fighter and leader of the Federation of Cuban Women, passed Away in Havana. An official note issued by the Cuban government is abridged below.
The following are excerpts from a statement made by Cuban President Fidel Castro on June 20, the day after revolutionary leader Vilma Espin Guillois died in Havana.
On June 19, Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) general secretary Farooq Tariq was released from jail after being detained for 15 days by the Punjab government. His arrest was part of a crackdown on political activists following an escalation in Pakistans pro-democracy movement after President Pervez Musharrafs decision to suspend Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry on March 9. Tariq, who is demanding a judicial inquiry into the detentions, will be a guest speaker at the Latin America and Asia Pacific International Solidarity Forum in Melbourne on October 11-14. The following is abridged from a statement issued by Tariq after his release.
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