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On February 19, Australian Defence Force chief Angus Houston told a Senate committee hearing that planning was underway for a mid-year withdrawal of the ADF’s 550 soldiers based in Iraq’s southern Dhi Qar province, as well as 65 army trainers. However, their withdrawal will leave in place 60% of the ADF personnel assigned to the Iraq war.
In the article “Anti-pulp mill campaigner: ’We can’t afford to lose’” in GLW #741, a quote was wrongly attributed. The article quoted a press release saying that “peaceful community protest at the construction site is a last resort and we hope it will never be needed. However, we respect the growing feeling in the community that people wish to express their distress at the failure of successive government processes to properly and transparently consider a wide range of concerns about the mill by peacefully protesting”. This press release was issued by Vica Bailey from the Wilderness society, not Bob McMahon from Tasmanians Against the Pulp Mill.
International Women’s Day, observed on March 8, is a testimony to women struggling to better their lives.
Victoria’s Labor premier, John Brumby, and education minister Lyn Kosky have refused to meet with the Australian Education Union (AEU) to resolve a deadlock in negotiations over a new enterprise bargaining agreement for teachers.
Five days after the November 24 federal election, outgoing industrial relations minister Joe Hockey admitted, in a rare moment of political honesty, that Work Choices contributed to the Coalition government’s defeat. He declared that the new Labor government was given a mandate by the people to abolish the Work Choices legislation.
On February 29, 40 people attended a protest organised by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre over the continuation of laws related to the Northern Territory intervention. The demonstration was intended to send a message to federal Indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin, who was at Hobart’s Clarence TAFE campus. “End the intervention, human rights for all”, participants chanted.
Following the announcement by Fidel Castro on February 19 that he would not stand in the election by Cuba’s National Assembly (AN) for the position of president, the Western media coverage has ranged from grudging acknowledgement of Cuba’s social gains in the face of 50 years of US aggression, to outrageous claims of “dictatorship” and US government plans for a “transition” in Cuba.
On February 28, thousands of members of State School Teachers Union of the Western Australia (SSTUWA) defied an order by the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) to attend stop-work meetings. The meetings were part of the union’s campaign to win a new public schools enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA).
“Turkish fighter jets, helicopters and hundreds of commandos streamed across the border into northern Iraq Wednesday despite Iraqi and American calls to swiftly end an operation to root out Kurdish insurgents”, Associated Press reported on February 27.
On February 25, 100 people attended a forum at the Redfern Community Centre called “After sorry — where to for Aboriginal rights?”.
The Reuters news agency reported on February 22 that the “UN nuclear watchdog said on Friday it confronted Iran for the first time with Western intelligence reports showing work linked to making atomic bombs and that Tehran had failed to provide satisfactory answers”.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party
Karl Marx & Frederick Engels (with a commentary by Leon Trotsky)
Resistance Marxist Library, 1998
74 pages, $8.50
Available at <http://www.resistancebooks.com>