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20,000 converge on Canberra to demand peace

BY ANGELA LUVERA CANBERRA — In the largest peace protest yet in Canberra, 20,000 people converged on the lawns outside federal parliament on March 23 and 24. Although most were from Canberra, protesters arrived from 22 cities and towns

UNITED STATES: Rumsfeld ignored Iraq's chemical weapons in the '80s

Examining recently released government and corporate sources, researchers at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) have uncovered new evidence that oil has long been the driving concern behind US-Iraqi relations. In the 1980s, key figures

Greens call for war powers inquiry

BY ALISON DELLIT A Greens proposal to hold a Senate inquiry examining the legality of the Iraq war and looking into ways to ensure wars cannot be embarked upon without parliamentary approval was defeated in the Senate on March 27. The commitment

200 attend refugee forum

BY OSCAR JUKES DARWIN — Two-hundred people attended a March 23 public forum to discuss the federal government's plans to deport 84 East Timorese refugees living in the Northern Territory. Organised by the East Timor Action Network, the forum

Alternative news sources on the Iraq war

Al Ahram weekly newspaper from Egypt features regular articles from Edward Said — <http://weekly.ahram.org.eg> Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based TV station — <http://english.aljazeera.net> Al Jazeera (not the TV station) —

We must step up our efforts to stop the war

The anti-war movement in Australia — which is one of the aggressor countries in the US-led invasion of Iraq — has a moral duty to escalate its campaign now, before more innocent Iraqi lives are sacrificed in this war. That needs no argument.

BRITAIN: Australians Against the War forms in London

BY MARTIN ILTIS LONDON — On March 22, up to 500,000 people demonstrated in central London against the US-British-Australian invasion of Iraq. Among those hundreds of thousands of concerned people were a vocal contingent of Australians

Building industry royal commission — the bosses' tool

BY SUE BOLTON MELBOURNE — The release by commissioner Terence Cole of the royal commission into the building industry’s final 23-volume report showed decisively that this commission had nothing to do with fighting corruption, and everything

US veterans oppose war

Ìý Ìý > Veterans for Common Sense

The hypocrisy of a 'war of liberation'

BY SARAH STEPHEN The war against Iraq, the US government and its allies say, is being waged for a just and moral cause — to free the Iraqi people from a despotic and brutal dictator, to allow the people of Iraq to build a free and democratic

Teachers union slams Beattie over strike ban

BY BILL MASON BRISBANE — Queensland Teachers Union president Julie-Ann McCullough has slammed Labor Premier Peter Beattie's government after the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission (QIRC) ordered the QTU to end its campaign of rolling

CANADA: Behind Chretien's token opposition to US war

BY BRAVE BEAR ONTARIO — The US-led invasion of Iraq has raised huge questions and created deep confusion within both the population and the political and economic elite in Canada. The government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien has repeatedly