Critical Times

TENS of thousands of anti-war demonstrators marched in New York overnight, demanding the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and vowing a summer of protests ahead of mid-term elections in November.
The protesters included national figures like civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon and the prominent anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan.

The mass rally was organised by a broad coalition of groups representing veterans, trade unions, military families, environmentalists and civil rights activists.

The left-wing leaders of Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela have signed a three-way trade agreement aimed at countering US influence in Latin America.
The pact was signed in Cuba by Bolivian President Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and their host Fidel Castro.

The initiative, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, was drawn up by Cuba and Venezuela.

Your article in The Guardian (April 5) “Bosses prepare for class war” and the OPTUS Human Resources Manager’s comments to a right wing-think tank seminar, clearly hit the nail on the head.

Up to 70 OPTUS field technicians from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane have just been sacked in what we believe to be the first example of big business using the new workplace laws for sham redundancies.

For six days, the government was able to maintain this fictitious portrait of Kovco and the manner of his death. Its real attitude toward the young soldier was exposed, however, by the manner in which his remains were treated.

The Howard government’s dishonesty and arrogance has been epitomised by its treatment of Private Jacob Kovco, the first Australian soldier to be killed while serving in Iraq.

That’ s a very big, very serious dimension to the whole database and ID card issue here in Australia. With a government of such dubious credentials on their commitment to human rights playing footsies with rendition to torture countries, blanket opposition to a bill of rights, denial of the refugee convention word and spirit, denial of fundamental but inconvenient property rights like native title, and likely lots more, why trust this government on the ID lite card proposal?

In a country without a decent bill of rights regime to protect fundamental human rights, and deep concerns of lack of trustworthiness in this federal govt, one wonders how this so called ID lite card proposal, which sounds a bit like an opt in but suffer if you don’t, situation, will hurt people with a real valid reason to stay out of the spotlight?

As a a lawyer it worries me that naive media might uncritically boost a govt proposal with huge implications for individual freedom, or at the least not fully analyse the situation.

What about those involved in Royal Commissions as witnesses with very real, very lethal enemies.

Incarcerated for over 4 years in America’s notorious Guantanamo military prison in Cuba, much of that time in solitary confinement, and without charges being laid, David Hicks is one of the first detainees to face trial by military commission. The military commission process itself is currently being challenged in the US Court system, as its legality and capacity to offer defendants the right to a fair trial is seriously under question. His legal team explains why…
12 April 2006.

The powers that be want us to adopt Anzac Day as our main day of country-wide reflection. Bah! Eureka Day (December 3rd) is where it’s at!

Anzac Day celebrates our right to die in a ditch whilst invading a distant country in the service of an ungrateful, murderous foreign empire.

Eureka Day is about standing truly by each other and fighting for rights and liberties.

“The price of the Chernobyl catastrophe was overwhelming, not only in human terms, but also economically. … Chernobyl opened my eyes like nothing else: it showed the horrible consequences of nuclear power, even when it is used for non-military purposes.”
Mikhail Gorbachev, 17 April, 2006.

Saturday morning in Kathmandu and Nepal’s capital city bustles with activity before a daytime curfew is imposed from noon.

People queue up outside shops stocking up on food – bread, milk and vegetables and other essential provisions.

But already there are signs that the protests we have witnessed for the past two days are far from over.

In 1856, construction workers working on Melbourne University layed down their tools and joined their fellow stonemasons and went on strike and marched through Melbourne City to Parliament House in demand of the 8 hour day.

150 Years on, Melbournites commerated the 150th aniversary of the 8 Hour Day victory of April 21, 1856 recreating a march from Melbourne University to the Victorian Parliament as construction workers did in 1856 which forever enshrined “8 hours work, 8 hours rest, 8 hours what we will” into the history books and the heart of the trade union movement that grew out of the Eureaka Stockade in 1984 that still lives on today.

Yet there was one thing clear about the commeration, and this was the understanding that the rights and liberties that we enjoy today are rights that our ancestors had to fight for, and learning from such historical victories and defeats in their fight is the task that the union movement in Australia and throughout the world faces today.

Two days after several thousand rioters looted and burned down shops, hotels and other buildings in the Solomon Islands capital of Honiara on April 18, Australian PM John Howard dispatched 110 troops and 80 police officers to join the 250 police officers and 120 government “advisers” making up the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI).

“The immediate catalyst for Tuesday’s rioting was the election of former deputy prime minister Snyder Rini, 46, as the country’s new prime minister following a vote of the 50-member parliament earlier in the day”, the April 20 Australian reported. “Rini’s elevation came as a shock to the crowd gathered outside the parliament.

Melbourne company owner denies he sacked a worker for smirking, but says the new industrial relations laws have made it easier to “control the workforce”.

Jim Sutton, who owns Finlay Engineering in Heidelberg West, told theage.com.

“It confirms our view that the Attorney-General needs to establish an independent inquiry into the state’s prisons,” he said.

THE professional conduct of Risdon Prison’s acting head has been questioned in two coronial inquests in two different states.

Assistant director of prisons Greg Partridge is the man in charge of the state’s prisons while director Graeme Barber is on leave.

The noted American writer Mary McCarthy once famously observed of the equally noted but politically discredited playwright Lillian Hellman: “every word she utters is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘but’ “. As we have seen over the past 10 years, the same can be said of the Howard Government from the children-overboard scandal to “there will never be a GST” to “yes, there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq”. Now – joined by misguided and misinformed members of the ALP and a few scientists who should know better – the Government is embarked on another mendacious, ill-advised, and downright dangerous enterprise: transforming Australia into a nuclear-powered, uranium-exporting nation, deploying as a rhetorical fig leaf the spurious message that nuclear power is emissions-free, green, and safe and will save Australia – and indeed the world – from the effects of global warming.

Hope for development not to repeat Hindmarsh litigation

The Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement says it wants to ensure there is not a repeat of the litigation over a development on Hindmarsh Island in negotiations for a development at Port Wakefield in South Australia.

If the development goes ahead, it will include a marina and more than 2,000 houses.

Some local Aboriginal groups have expressed concern that the marina development will cover sensitive areas.

The Australian Wheat Board Scandal or
What did Lord Downer know and when?

It’s all a tried and true business plan really: you want to sell your product (guns and/or butter) to someone who’s definitely not on the ‘who’s hot’ global watch list. So you team up with other good corporate cits to try to find out the best way to make your kickback buck get the most kick with the greatest invisibility. So how’s about we pseudo inflate transport costs of our product as a first step starting rort? Do anything we can not to apply with U.

It’s that time of year again when Australia comes as close to getting religion as collectively possible. With Jesus dead, buried and resurrected, the collective Ozzie mind turns from chocolate eggs to ANZACs.

Our current leadership sees itself as a military one.

Anti-war grandmothers in US court

Cindy Sheehan was among the grandmothers’ supporters
A group of women who call themselves the “Granny Peace Brigade” have gone on trial in New York for their protest against the Iraq war.
The women, aged between 50 and 91, were charged with disorderly conduct after demonstrating outside a military recruitment centre.

Their supporters outside the courthouse included leading anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, whose son died in Iraq.

The events of 11th September 2001 changed the world. That is an unequivocal fact, whether or not you to subscribe to the conspiracy theory that the US planned, executed and facilitated the assault on the Pentagon and Twin Towers in order to justify their intended actions overseas. For, not long after the dust had settled at Ground Zero, US forces and their allies were pounding away at Afghanistan, the assumed home of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.

The Health Services Union said today every aged care facility should get an unannounced spot check each year as recommended by the Senate Inquiry into Aged Care last year.

Mr Thomson said on average only one in ten facilities currently received a spot check a situation described by the bi-partisan Senate committee report as “grossly inadequate”.

“Unless the government commits to a spot check for each facility each year and stops trying to fudge the details the safety of residents and staff will remain an issue,” he said.