550

NEW YORK — More than 1500 organisations and individuals have endorsed the call by the International Act Now to Stop War and Racism (ANSWER) coalition's call for a massive demonstration in Washington DC on October 25 to demand an end to the US
BY KAMALA EMANUEL LAUNCESTON — The lockout of members of the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union (AMIEU) employed at the Blue Ribbon Meatworks will enter its 21st week on August 18. It is the longest lockout in Tasmania's history,
BY RUSSELL PICKERING PERTH — The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) has written to Western Australian police minister Michelle Roberts seeking information about special training being given to six senior regional police
WASHINGTON — Galvanised to action by US President George Bush's inane and reckless "Bring 'em on" challenge to the Iraqis who are resisting the US occupation of their country, Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace and other organisations
BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE HOBART — Forest activist Neil Smith, known as "Hector the Protector" for his role in the 1998 campaign to save forest around Mother Cummings Peak in northern Tasmania, faces jail for refusing to pay a $5000 fine. Smith told
Bill Game replies As a show of evenhandedness, it would have been nice to be afforded the same opportunity by Green Left Weekly (issue #549) to contribute my thoughts on the present [WA CEPU/ETU] election bearing in mind I am held in high regard by
BY KAREN FLETCHER MELBOURNE — The 2003 Melbourne Writers Festival will open on August 21 with a keynote address by Tariq Ali, the radical London-based author of the anti-imperialist bestseller The Clash of Fundamentalisms. Ali's address, "War,
BY LEX WINDSOR AUCKLAND — The international solidarity movement for West Papua met in Otara, Tamaki Makaurau, on August 8-10. The gathering called on the government leaders who constitute the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) to remember the unresolved
BY LINDA WALDRON MELBOURNE — Progressive activists won a victory on August 12, when the Sunshine Magistrates Court dismissed charges against Socialist Alliance activist Tony Iltis. Iltis was charged with distributing leaflets for an anti-war
MELBOURNE — Three months after Socialist Alliance's second national conference, which decided that the alliance should move toward becoming a multitendency socialist party, Green Left Weekly's GRAHAM MATTHEWS, a Victorian co-convenor of the

The Australian-funded detention centre on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island first opened on October 21, 2001. The first group of Iraqi asylum seekers to arrive there were dismayed to find they had been tricked into thinking they were being taken to Australia.

BY CHRIS LATHAM It is expected that during the current session of federal parliament, a range of new anti-union legislation will be introduced by Prime Minister John Howard's Coalition government, including legislation aimed at "reforming" the