Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly will be taking a one-week break. Our next issue will be dated July 18.
716
East Timor is holding parliamentary elections on June 30. Many commentators predict former president Xanana GusmaoÂ’²õ new party, the National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT), will form government, ousting the current ruling Fretilin party. However, a new government is unlikely to bring an end to the severe social and economic crisis besetting the country, Tomas Freitas from Luta Hamutuk (“Struggle Together”), a Timorese activist group that monitors the state budget and the petroleum fund (now worth US$1.4 billion), told Â鶹´«Ã½ WeeklyÂ’²õ Peter Boyle. Freitas is also a member of the Consultative Council on the Petroleum Fund, which is comprised of government and civil society representatives.
Dr Gary MacLennan, a long-time socialist activist and lecturer in creative industries at the Queensland University of Technology, was suspended for six months without pay on June 6. He, along with a colleague, Dr John Hookham, was charged with misconduct following the publication of an article in the Australian that criticised a PhD film project that mocked the disabled. Students and staff launched a support campaign for the two suspended lecturers which has linked up with a struggle against QUT’s decision to close down the school of humanities and human services.
Shoalwater Wilderness Awareness Group (SWAG) spokesperson Steve Bishopric expressed concern on June 27 that the small community of Capricorn Coast on QueenslandÂ’²õ central coast faced potential pollution from undisclosed military toxins as a result of the Talisman Sabre 2007 US-Australian war games at Shoalwater Bay.
Condolence and commendation
For many years I worked in the Hunter Valley and Central Coast, and secured a modest livelihood from the splendid people who ran small businesses there. I was extremely upset at the loss of life that came about from the
Four years after an inquiry established collusion between British intelligence, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the loyalist paramilitary killers of leading Belfast civil rights lawyer Pat Finucane, the Northern Ireland Public Prosecution Service (PPS) ruled on June 25 that there was “insufficient evidence” to bring charges against any police officers or British military intelligence personnel.
Leaders of the Mutitjulu community have questioned the need for a military occupation of their small community. Below is an abridged version of their June 27 statement.
Striking workers at the Esselte Australia warehouse in Minto have described as “unrelenting” their employerÂ’²õ tactics in attempting to force them to sign individual contracts (AWAs).
During the last year the global warming debate has reached a turning point. Due to the media hype surrounding Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, followed by a new assessment by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the climate sceptics have suffered a major defeat.
Renowned left-wing author Tariq Ali told a packed public lecture at the Seymour Centre on June 26 that claims that we had reached the “end of history” had been well and truly disproven by the revolutions now sweeping Latin America.
The gay and lesbian community in Cairns is planning the inaugural Tropical Pride Festival, to be launched on September 16 at the Tanks Arts Centre from noon, with music from 5-9pm.
After several days of intensive, sometimes heated, discussions and membership consultations, public-service unions voted on June 28 to end their national strike and accept the South African governmentÂ’²õ “settlement offer”. The strike, which began on June 1, was the longest and largest public-sector strike in South AfricaÂ’²õ history, with more than 700,000 workers on strike and another 300,000, for whom it was illegal to strike, taking part in militant marches, pickets and other forms of protest.
- Previous page
- Page 2
- Next page