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History - not so 'safe' for those who live it

Gallipoli
Les Carlyon
Macmillan, 2002
600 pages, $35 (pb) The Great War
Les Carlyon
Macmillan, 2006
880 pages, $55(hb)

Build the vote for Socialist Alliance!

As the 2007 federal election gets underway, an odd trend is showing up in the opinion polls. After eleven-and-a-half years of Coalition government and an ALP “opposition” that stood “shoulder to shoulder” with it in so many of its crimes, the combined vote for the two “parties of government” is back up to 90% (48% for Labor and 42% for the Coalition according to the Nielsen poll released on October 19).

Winners of the Venezuela Solidarity guessing competition

The guessing competition run by the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network this year was drawn on October 14 at the Latin America Asia Pacific International Solidarity Forum in Melbourne. The winners are: first prize, Barry Healy (Perth); second prize, Steven O’Brien (Newcastle); and third prize, Rowan Stewart (Geelong). The AVSN thanks all those who supported the competition, which raised $2500 for Venezuela solidarity activity in Australia.

'Send the Burmese military regime into the dustbins of history!

@body intro = My name is Ayi Layah Mon and I am a member of the Mon Youth Group.

New Zealand: 'Anti-terror' raids condemned

Two-hundred people protested outside the Wellington District Court on October 17 to protest the arrest of four Wellington men appearing in the court following massive police raids on the homes of many social activists two days earlier, according to a NarcoNews.com article by Julie Web-Pullman. Aotearoa Indymedia reported on October 17 that 80 people protested in Christchurch and 30 in Melbourne on October 16, and 50 protested in Rotorua and 30 in Sydney the following day.

Behind the blather

In the lead-up to the federal election, here’s a guide to what’s really happening in the Liberal and Labor camps, as well as anecdotes from the Socialist Alliance’s campaign trail.

Two years of Workers Radio

In August 2005 Workers Radio Sydney emerged on to the Sydney breakfast radio scene. In the two years since the first broadcast, the show’s producer and presenter, Craig Bulley, has established a dedicated and growing audience who tune in between 6am and 9am weekday mornings for a hearty breakfast of music and politics. The show has become a listener’s hub for unionists, activists and community campaigners, as well as the many concerned Australian workers and their families who rely on the show for information about the attacks on their rights and conditions under the Howard government and its Work Choices regime.

Cutting off voting to disenfranchise youth

The Howard government’s changes to electoral legislation, passed last year, will mean a large portion of young people who are of voting age will be left off the electoral roll for the November 24 federal election. This legislation — an obvious move to bar certain voters from the political process — affects mainly those who are statistically more likely to vote against the government, such as the young, homeless people, house-renters and those who speak English as a second language.

Respect's Salma Yaqoob: 'Determined campaigning and a radical agenda'

Andy Newman, an editor of British blog Socialistunity.com, spoke to Salma Yaqoob for Green Left Weekly. Yaqoob is the national vice-chair of anti-war coalition Respect — the Unity Coalition, as well as a leader of Birmingham’s Stop the War Coalition and a Birmingham city councillor.

US officer: 'Taliban has strong recruiting base'

On October 9, Prime Minister John Howard declared that David Pearce, an Australian Army trooper killed by a Taliban-planted roadside bomb in Afghanistan, had died for a “just cause” while fighting “brutal terrorism”. Pearce’s death was only the second combat loss for the 950 Australian soldiers participating in the US-led occupation of Afghanistan. A Special Air Service sergeant died in Afghanistan in February 2002 when his vehicle hit a landmine.

Former US captains: 'Bring back the draft or get out now'

In an opinion piece printed in the October 16 Washington Post, 12 former US Army captains who served in Iraq between 2003 and 2006 argued that the US should either reinstate compulsory military service — “the draft” — or immediately withdraw all its troops from Iraq.

War, revolution and the birth of the Communist International

During the upsurge of working-class and liberation struggles that followed the 1917 Russian Revolution, socialists from all continents joined in founding a world party, the Communist International, or “Comintern”.