701

Underneath the enormous conveyor belts at the back of the Yallourn power station, 49 metalworkers from MEC Engineering, which is part of the Eliott group, have maintained a six-month “protest embassy” to win their jobs and entitlements back.
The new constitution of Afghanistan formally grants equal rights to women and men. The government has also endorsed the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which, according to development agencies, is significant progress on gender equality “policy advocacy”. The first time I arrived in Kabul the women I saw on the streets were wearing scarves on their heads and those wearing full chador were a minority. Maybe, at a superficial glance, the situation had improved for the women of Afghanistan?
Young people are likely to be hit hard by Work Choices, the Youth Coalition, the peak youth affairs body in the ACT, told the Legislative Assembly’s select committee on working families on March 1.
On February 28, Major Michael Mori, David Hicks’s US military lawyer, addressed a packed Founders Hall at the University of Ballarat. The mixed crowd of at least 600 learned a whole lot more about how Hicks is the Australian government’s sacrificial lamb in the “war on terror”.
During a visit to Venezuela, Argentinean President Nestor Kirchner signed an agreement with Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chavez that will launch the “Bank of the South” (Bancosur) within four months, reported a February 22 Venezuelanlaysis.com article. Bancosur is part of the push, led by Venezuela, for Latin American integration to challenge US corporate domination. Chavez has promoted the bank as a source of cheap credit for countries in the region and a non-exploitative alternative to the First World-controlled International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
After an epileptic seizure on December 15, Sharif Assad, a Syrian being held in Sydney’s Villawood immigration detention centre, was transferred to Bankstown hospital against his will and tied to a bed.
While Qantas workers’ job security remains uncertain if the Airline Partners Australia (APA) $11.1 billion takeover bid for Qantas succeeds, executives at the national carrier stand to pocket millions.
The first congress by the Preparatory Committee for the Acehnese People’s Party (KP-PRA) was disrupted on February 28 when around 75 participants were rushed to hospital with suspected food poisoning.
Hicks has spent five years, mainly in solitary confinement, at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, which the US set up on illegally occupied Cuban territory to ensure independence from the legal system of any country, including the US itself.
On February 23 and 25, US and Iraqi forces raided the head offices of Iraq’s national trade union centre, the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW). One of the union’s security staff was arrested and later released. The soldiers destroyed furniture and confiscated a computer and fax machine. The union has condemned the attacks as unprovoked and is demanding a written apology from the occupation forces, the return of seized property and compensation for damages. Messages of protest can be lodged at: <http://www.labourstart.org/iraqraid>.
In Venezuela, after decades of class polarisation, neglect of the needs of the majority, corruption on a massive scale and unbridled bureaucracy, the magnitude of problems that Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution led by socialist president Hugo Chavez is attempting to tackle is enormous.
The Melbourne City Council is taking steps to introduce a partnership scheme that will allow Victorian same-sex couples to have their civil unions recognised by the council.