LL:ART: All the News That Fits - February 18-24
Call centre company TeleTech has rejected a claim by a Sydney employee for leave following the death of his grandmother. The company refused to let him use either accumulated sick pay, leave without pay or annual leave, to allow him to observe a traditional Jewish seven day mourning period. The company refused a similar request from another employee in Victoria. TeleTech workers in New South Wales and Victoria stopped work on Monday February 16 over the company's refusal to negotiate with the USU and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU). Paul Morris from the USU said these are young workers aged 20 to 25 who up until 6 months ago didn't even know a union existed...the statement that young people think unions are dinosaurs is simply not the case. (Source: Workers Online website) Melbourne Nazis may be behind an arson attack which gutted a suburban home on the weekend. Robert Cecala's house in Greensborough was broken into and set alight at about 11.15pm on Saturday. Mr Cecala and his family were out. The words back off and or die were spraypainted on his garage and car. The attack might have been motivated by comments Mr Cecala made on a community radio program. He was commenting on a series of arson attacks in Perth against Chinese shops, where swastikas were painted on the scene. Mr Cecala said that left wing people had run Nazis out of town in the 1970s, and may do so again. (Source: news.com.au) A chief inspector and two other officers have been removed from their positions at the Victoria Police Academy after an enquiy into allegations of widespread bullying. A staff member reported a series of incidents to Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon, and was victimised afterwards. The enquiry investigated allegations of bullying of a policeman's son, apparently as payback for going over his immediate superior's head in order to get time off to visit a critically ill family friend in hospital; the bullying of a gay recruit and another Greek-Australian recruit; and a recruit being intimidated over needing to take time off due to an illness. The enquiry was based on six months of research, using interviews and submissions from more than 100 staff and former recruits, including recruits who had resigned before completing the course. It referred to managers who had been party to inappropriate behaviour and to fostering cultural norms that reinforce bullying and discriminatory modes of behaviour. The report also noted the existence of cronyism, with friendships unduly affecting management style and decision-making. (Source: The Age) The cost of paying private operators to run Melbourne's trains and trams for the next five years has almost doubled to $2.3 billion under new public transport deals announced by the State government. Train company Connex will be receive an average of $345 million of public money per year for five years to run Melbourne's train system. This is an increase of $165 million a year. Yarra Trams will be paid an average of $112 million a year for five years to run Melbourne's trams - a $36 million a year rise. No competitive bidding was allowed for the contracts. The Government has also released Connex from its obligation to redevelop Flinders Street Station. (Source: The Age) More than 60 of the United States' leading scientists have accused the United States government of systematically distorting scientific facts to fit policies on everything from climate change to whether Iraq had been trying to make nuclear weapons. In an open letter, the independent Union of Concerned Scientists said: When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the Administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions. This has been done by placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; by disbanding existing advisory committees; by censoring and suppressing reports by the Government's own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice. According to a 38-page report detailing its accusations, the government has misrepresented scientific consensus on global warming, censored at least one report on climate change, manipulated scientific findings on the emissions of mercury from power plants and suppressed information on condom use. Quote of the Moment: There is no need for the threats of punitive punishment. (A recruit to the Victoria Police Academy complains about the culture of bullying that exists there, and also sums up the anarchist case against having a police force...) All the News that Fits weekly anarchist news service visit us on the web - www.apolitical.info email us ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) to subscribe to our email list. -- Visit the proposed Leftlink web site at http://www.leftlink.net/ -- Leftlink
LL:ART: All the News That Fits - February 10 - 16
An enquiry into the Australian Defence Force has found a culture of suicides and abuse, including gang rapes. One 19 year old soldier, John Satatas, was found dead at Holsworthy Army Base in an apparent suicide. The Portugese-Australian soldier had 'Spiros' scrawled in black pen over his face and body. His family say he killed himself after episodes of physical and verbal abuse from other soldiers including some officers. His family were promised the army would cover costs associated with the funeral, but ended up with a $1300 invoice from the funeral home. His mother Rosa said Defence did not investigate John's death properly, and we were offered no assistance afterwards. Mark Drummond, a former cadet and teacher at the Australian Defence Force Academy, said there had been as many as 100 gang rapes since the institution was formed in 1986. Though reforms had helped clean up ADF, many culprits had not been dealt with. I'd guess many gang rapists must still be serving within the ADF he said. Matthew Liddell, a survivor of the HMAS Westralia fire in 1998, was in severe shock from the death of his friend. He was sent straight back to the scene of the fire, and later killed himself. Matthew did not want to go back to the Westralia, his mother, Dulcie, wrote. It did a lot of damage to his mind, like sending someone back into the lion's den after they've already been attacked and mauled. (Source: Herald Sun) The governments of the United States and Australia have decided on a 'free trade' agreement between the two countries. Under the deal, any US investment in new businesses will be exempted from Foreign Investment Review Board screening. The threshhold for screening US acquisitions of existing businesses has been raised from $50 million to $800 million. This would have exempted 90 percent of all US takeovers in the past three years from scrutiny by the board. US Trade Representative Bob Zoellick also said that the agreement contains important and unprecedented provisions to improve market access for US films and television. US pharmaceutical companies won significant changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, including the right for an review of decisions excluding their drugs from the scheme, extended patent periods, and 'consultations' when makers of generic drugs apply for approval. (Source: The Age) A letter captured from an al-Qaida courier says that the organisation is failing to attract support from significant numbers of Iraqis, undermining claims by the US government that attacks on American troops are organised by al-Qaida, or that Iraq has ever been a significant base for terrorists. The letter says that many Iraqis will give you refuge...however, they will not allow you to make their home a base for operations or a safe house. Several US commanders have said that the Iraqi resistance generally sees al-Qaida as an unwelcome presence. Having failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the US government has changed the emphasis of its reasons for going to war, towards ousting Saddam Hussein and the 'war on terror'. (Source: Associated Press) All the News that Fits weekly anarchist news service visit us on the web - www.apolitical.info email us ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) to subscribe to our email list. 5th annual Australian anarchist conference - Australia Day weekend 2005 - more details soon... -- Visit the proposed Leftlink web site at http://www.leftlink.net/ -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
LL:ART: All the News That Fits - January 24 to February 3
A woman who started a six-month job contract with the Australian Taxation Office was fired 4 hours into her first day through no fault of her own, and was then given three different reasons why. Celeste Pridmore got a job with the ATO through the private employment agency Skilled Engineering. She was first told that she had filled out the wrong police background check and that her employment would start again in two weeks. Two days later she was told she did not meet the training requirements for the role and her contract would be terminated. When she asked what the requirements were, a representative of Skilled Engineering said he was not at liberty to discuss that information. Later that afternoon, an ATO representative told her that her contract would be terminated because of 'budget restraints'. Ms Pridmore gave up two other jobs to take up the ATO position, and says that now I'm left basically destitute, I don't have a job and I'm looking for work again. Skilled Engineering secretary Ken Bieg refused to discuss the case, but said that casual workers can legally be sacked with an hour's notice. (Source: Hobart Mercury) Approximately 34 members of Victoria Police are facing criminal charges, including rape, assaults, and attempting to pervert the course of justice, but will suffer no cuts to their superannuation if found guilty. At most, one third of the money will have been contributed by the officers themselves, with the remainder being public money paid from the police's budget. (Source: Herald Sun) A child is killed on a farm in Australia every 10 days on average, according to a new report. The report by Farmsafe Australia said that nore than 570 children were admitted to hospital in 2002 with injuries suffered on a farm. Tractor accidents, dam drownings, toxic poisoning and electrocutions were among the main hazards. Farming makes up about 4 per cent of the total work force, but accounts for 20 per cent of work-related injuries. (Source: Herald Sun) National Australia Bank head Frank Cicutto will receive a lump sum of approximately $7.3 million upon his resignation. Mr Cicutto also has $2 million in superannuation which he will be able to access next year. He also has share options, presently worth a further $4.5 million. Mr Cicutto resigned over the recent 'rogue trading' scandal. Bank chairman Charles Allen suggested that the final straw for Mr Cicutto departure was publication of photographs of his new home, which will be worth an estimated $8 million when it is complete. Mr Allen said that the photographs were very upsetting to Mr Cicutto. (Source: Herald Sun) A woman who exposed the US and British governments' email surveillance and tapping of home and office phones has lost her job and faces a jail sentence as a result. Katharine Gun was working in Britain's Government Communications Headquarters last year when she learned of a plan by the US government to spy on at least half a dozen UN delegations as part of the US's failed efforts to win Security Council support for the invasion of Iraq. Ms Gun leaked the memo from the US National Security Agency to the London Observer, in the mistaken belief that Britain and the US might not invade Iraq if they could not get United Nations approval. As well as losing her job, she faces up to two years jail for violating the Official Secrets Act. (Source: The Guardian [UK]) Successful business people have similar psychological problems to juvenile delinquents, according to a new report. Abraham Zaleznik is a psychoanalyst and professor at Harvard Business School. He says that entrepreneurs typically do not feel risk or weigh up consequences in the same way as normal people. He says that they lack 'signal anxiety' - the normal internal signal which tells people to not always act on their impulses, because of possible bad consequences. Professor Zaleznik also talks about delinquent communities forming in business circles, and causing scandals such as the false accounting in Enron. He says that if individuals who are invited to become part of the delinquent community have a fully functioning conscience, they will not engage - however people who lack signal anxiety can allow a leader to take over the functions of conscience and in effect give people permission to join in the illicit activity. (Source: The Age) Labor leader Mark Latham has said in a speech that Australians should work harder. Mr Latham told the ALP national conference that when I was young, Mum used to tell me there were two types of people in our street - the slackers and the hard workers. The original draft of Mr Latham's speech used the term no-hopers. (Source: Herald Sun) Victorians with long-term illness are often forced to wait more than a year for a public hospital bed, according to a new report. The report by the Productivity Commission found that more than 40 percent of Victorians who
LL:ART: All the News That Fits - January 20-27.
The Wal-Mart chain of supermarkets in the United States is under fire for reportedly locking in overnight workers at many of its stores, sometimes to the detriment of their own safety. The New York Times reported a number of cases in which employees were allegedly prevented from leaving a store when they were injured, unwell or, as in one case in Florida, when a hurricane struck the area. Michael Rodriguez, who works at a Wal-Mart store in Texas and waited an hour for colleagues to free him from beneath fallen machinery as they searched for a key, said: It isn't right. You could have been bleeding to death and they'll have you locked in. Wal-Mart officials said a lock-in policy operated in some stores and had done for up to 15 years. But they said the stores were either in high crime areas or at risk of shrinkage, a euphemism for theft by employees. (Source: The Independent [UK]) Trinity Grammar in Sydney has received an increase in federal funding of 220 per cent over a four year period. Government schools have received an increase of about 20 per cent over the same four-year period. (Source: ABC News website) Prime Minister John Howard has said that public school attendance is falling because public schools are too politically correct, rather than because of lack of funding. Mr Howard added that some public schools were hostile or apathetic to Australian heritage and values. Non-government schools, with 30 percent of secondary school students, will receive $4.7 billion in federal funding in 2004, beating universities which will receive $4.5 billion. Rob Durbridge from the Austrailan Education Union said that many elite private schools had had increases of over 200 per cent in federal government funding in the last few years. (Source: Herald Sun, ABC News website) All the News that Fits weekly anarchist news service visit us on the web - www.apolitical.info email us ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) to subscribe to our email list. -- Visit the proposed Leftlink web site at http://www.leftlink.net/ -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
LL:ART: All the News That Fits - January 14 to 19.
Australian troops secretly attacked Iraqi forces a day before war was announced by either the US or Australian governments. SAS units attacked Iraqi positions on the evening of March 18 (Iraq time). This was 16 hours after President Bush had given Saddam Hussein a 48 hour ultimatum to leave Iraq or be attacked. The troops had secretly entered Iraq before the attack. (Source: The Age) The Iraqi Governing Council appointed by the United States has decided that family laws should be cancelled and issues such as divorce placed under strict religious law. The status of Iraqi women was much better than in other Middle Eastern countries, with laws prohibiting child marriage, arbitrary divorce (in some countries men can divorce their wives instantly just by announcing the fact), or official sexism in child custody or property disputes. The chief US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, has dictatorial powers and is expected to veto the decision. However the US government is planning to hand over power (without direct elections) in June. (Source: The Age) Victorian taxpayers are paying about $18,000 a week to prop up the Mount Buffalo Chalet tourist resort, whose private operator has been accused of financial mismanagement. Parks Victoria chief executive Mark Stone said payments had been made since November last year. Mr Stone said that whether the chalet is occupied or not we still have to run the sewerage and water systems up there. Chalet operator Robert Arnold is at the centre of allegations including an Australian Securities and Investments Commission complaint, claims that staff superannuation has not been paid, failure to comply with payroll tax requirements and failure to pay creditors. A source told The Sunday Age that employees' superannuation had not been paid since December 2002, with staff voluntary contributions not being included in the fund. The source also said that the Australian Tax Office was owed more than $1 million in unpaid payroll tax. A former employee of the chalet said that she had received no superannuation payments since June 30, 2002, and the voluntary contributions being set aside by staff were not entering the fund. She said former employees had contacted the Tax Office to check the state of their superannuation funds. She said there had also been delays of up to three weeks in the payment of staff wages. One employee says he is owed more than $10,000 in unpaid leave and other entitlements. I don't believe I'll see any of my money, he said. (Source: The Age) The suicide rate among US soldiers occupying Iraq is rising, and is now 30 percent higher than the rate in peacetime. The 21 military suicides so far represent 4.2 per cent of the 496 American deaths in Iraq. William Winkenwerder, US assistant secretary of defence for health affairs, said we don't see a trend there in looking at these cases that tells us there is more we might be doing. (Source: Hearst Newspapers, The New York Times) A mentally ill man who was shot dead by police after attacking someone, had been trying to get help for days but was ignored by the health system. Awale Mohamed had been telling people that he was ready to kill himself. A GP diagnosed Mr Mohamed as schitzophrenic, and wrote an urgent referral to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist said he could see Mr Mohamed in six weeks. St George public hospital in Sydney said they could not assess him until the next afternoon. When he finally reached the hospital's mental health unit, he was sent home after an hour's assessment by a nurse with an assurance that he would be OK, despite relatives telling the nurse that Mr Mohamed was planning to kill himself and could hurt other people. The nurse refused to let Mr Mohamed be assessed by a doctor. Twenty-four hours later, Mr Mohamed was taken back to St George in an ambulance, having been shot dead in the street by police. Mr Mohamed's cousin Sugule said that he should have got the help that was asked for, and he should not have died. (Source: Sydney Morning Herald) Contracts signed under the government's information technology outsourcing program are running at least $750 million over budget. Under the program, government departments paid private companies to do computer work which would previously have been done inside the department. Advocates of the free market said that this would be cheaper and more efficient. The government has abandoned the program, but contracts that are already signed are still in effect. (Source: Financial Review) Quotes of the Week: My time in Iraq has always involved finding things to convince myself that I can be proud of my actions; that I was a part of something just. But no matter what pro-war argument I came up with, I pictured my smirking commander-in-chief, thinking he was fooling a nation. (Mike Prysner, a US soldier in Iraq) You'd be surprised at how many of the guys I talked to in my
LL:ART: All the News That Fits - December 30 - January 13
A quarter of all land animals, more than a million species, could be extinct by 2050 due to climate change. The research by an international group of scientists found that 24 percent of species would go extinct using 'middle of the road' predictions on the amount of global warming. Land clearing and the burning of fossil fuels are among the worst contributors to climate change. The governments of the United States and Australia are almost alone in refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gases. (Source: The Age) Victoria's childcare system is in crisis, with parents facing waiting lists of up to 1150 children in community and council-run childcare centres. Parents are also facing extra costs for childcare, of up to $1820 per year. The lack of facilities in regional areas means some parents have to travel 100km for childcare. The co-ordinator of one childcare centre said that waiting lists there were between eighteen months and two years. (Source: Herald Sun) Most people now get 500 less hours of sleep per year than they need. A spokesman for the British Sleep Society said that longer working hours were parrtly to blame. Suddenly we don't have time to ourselves and sleep seems like a luxury he said. In the past 100 years, average sleeping hours have dropped by a fifth. The health risks of sleep deprivation include obesity, diabetes, stress, and even brain damage; a Canadian study has found that the brains of sleep-deprived people shrink. (Source: MX newspaper) Indonesian paramilitary police have killed at least one protestor while guarding a mine owned by an Australian mining company. Local people are angry about the $100 million gold mining development in eastern Indonesia. They say that profits from the mine are not benefitting local people. They also say the mine was opened in protected forest without government approval. Indonesian Mining Advocacy Network spokesman Igor O'Neill said that neither the Indonesian Parliament or the Department of Forestry had yet decided whether to overturn a ban on open cut mining in forest areas, yet Newcrest went ahead and clear-felled the area anyway. Human rights groups said that another man was shot in the leg during the clash and severely beaten - some reports say he was beaten to death. Australian mining company Newcrest said while we regret that has occurred, it was not the company's responsibility. (Source: Ninemsn website, Sydney Morning Herald) Families of 17 year olds in adult prisons in Victoria are considering legal action against the State government, saying that juveniles are victimised by other prisoners. Victoria allows 17 year olds to be tried as adults and sentenced to adult prisons. Father Peter Nordern, a former prison chaplain and convenor of the Victorian Criminal Justice Coalition, said that young people were subjected to physical and sexual assault in the prison system. The only thing that will make the government act quickly on this matter is the loss of a life, he said. The longer we wait, the more likely it is that that will happen. One 17 year old was remanded to an adult prison despite being delusional and depressed. When released, his body was covered in cigarette burns. Another 17 year old was homeless, and in prison for car theft charges. His only possessions of value were sneakers given to him by a social worker. On his first night in prison he was severely bashed and his sneakers stolen. A third juvenile was arrested for trespass and stealing a bicycle two days after his 17th birthday. Despite being intellectually disabled he was remanded and spent eight days in police cells with adult prisoners. Social workers say his mental state has deteriorated rapidly since his release. (Source: The Age) Nurses in public hospitals face constant violence from staff, according to a new study. in 2003, staff at St Vincents Hospital had approximately 1000 'code grey' and 90 'code black' alerts. Code grey indicates a threat to the safety of staff or other patients. Code black indicates an armed threat. Researcher Marie Gerdtz said that nurses would be hearing code grey called at least once a shift, and sometimes three or four times. Susan Cowling from St Vincents said that the rising number of violent incidents in hospitals reflected an increasingly aggressive society. Dr Gerdtz said that while most incidents were caused by patients, some were caused by relatives frustrated by long waiting times. The study was conducted by the Victorian Centre for Nursing Practice Research, in conjunction with St Vincents, Royal Melbourne, Alfred, and Ballarat public hospitals. (Source: The Age) The United States army raided a school in Iraq with tanks, assault vehicles and helicopters, in order to arrest a group of 14 to 18 year olds who had thrown stones at US troops. The First Armored Division raided the Adnan Kheiralla Boy's School and surrounded the
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Prime Minister's Office Fabricated Evidence on Iraq...This Fine Australian Gets Away With It...Police Corruption Privatised...But I Had To Feed My Starving BMW...US Environmental Report Doesn't Mention Global Warming, Pollution From Cars...Howard Makes Unjustified Ratbag Lefty Attack On Himself...Quote of the Week. John Howard's office fabricated evidence and deliberately deceived the public in order to justify sending troops to Iraq, according to a former senior intelligence analyst. Andrew Wilkie, a former analyst at the Office of National Assessments, told a parliamentary enquiry that sometimes the exaggeration was so great it was clear dishonesty. Mr Howard told Parliament in February that Iraq was re-starting its nuclear weapons program and there was evidence that it had tried to buy uranium from Africa. This claim had been discredited by a United States official who visited Africa to investigate almost a year earlier. Mr Wilkie is a former member of the Liberal Party. (The Age, August 23). Wilson Tuckey will remain a Federal Minister despite using his position to try and get his 45 year old son out of paying a traffic fine. Mr Tuckey wrote several letters on Ministerial letterhead to the South Australian Police Minister. Tony Abbott told Parliament that Mr Tuckey is a man who quite rightly fights for the things he believes in and if from time to time, this minister goes over the top in a cause in which he believes, that is his nature, that is the nature of the man, that is the way this fine Australian operates. Mr Tuckey's nickname is 'Iron Bar', from an incident where he was said to have beaten an Aboriginal man with an iron bar while another man held him down. (The Age, August 23). A US company accused of human rights violations, who fired an employee for exposing a prostitution ring, is handling the policing of Iraq. DynCorp, who has made substantial donations to the Republican Party, was given the contract by the US State Department. DynCorp personnel contracted to the United Nations police service in Bosnia were implicated in buying and selling prostitutes, including a girl as young as 12. Several DynCorp employees were also accused of videotaping the rape of one of the women. When Dyncorp employee Kathy Bolkovac exposed the ring she was dismissed by the company for drawing attention to their misbehaviour, according to the ruling of a British employment tribunal in November 2002. DynCorp has also been heavily criticised over its involvement in Plan Colombia, instigated by Bill Clinton, that involves spraying vast quantities of herbicides over Colombia to kill the cocaine crop. A group of Ecuadorean peasants have filed a class action against the company alleging that herbicides spread by DynCorp in Colombia were drifting across the border, killing legitimate crops, causing illness, and killing children. (originally reported in the Observer (UK), April 13). Welfare fraud costs a maximum of $15 million a year. Tax avoidance through trusts costs an estimated $700 million a year. (The Age, August 23). The White House has removed negative references to global warming from a US government report on the environment. References to health threats posed by exhaust emissions that were part of the draft report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have also been removed, according to leaked versions of the report. The EPA head, Christie Whitman, said on Thursday that she had decided to omit a section on climate change because the only language the Administration could agree on amounted to Pablum - a popular bland cereal for infants. The New York Times, to whom the draft documents were leaked, said White House officials had cut details about the sudden increase in global warming over the past decade compared with the past 1000 years and inserted information from a report that questions this conclusion and which was partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute. A memo circulated among EPA staff said the report no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change. One of the most striking changes comes in the report's global issues section. In the draft the introduction reads: Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment. This has been replaced with: The complexity of the Earth system and the interconnections among its components make it a scientific challenge to document change, diagnose its causes and develop useful projections of how natural variability and human actions may affect the global environment in the future. (The Guardian, Los Angeles Times) John Howard has described Pauline Hanson as a champion of those who felt left out of the political process. Mr Howard added that I lead a mainstream political party which I think which I think has identified many concerns of people who felt a bit shut out of the political process. (The Age, August 23).
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
(apologies for ATNTF not going out last week - I was away from work) This weeks stories: Blood Is Thicker Than George Bush...Weapons of Mass Destruction Found In Iraq... An American writer in the London Times has described the Iraq war as almost bloodless. The civilan death toll from the war is estimated at at least 6000 - more than twice the amount of people that died in the bombing of the World Trade Centre. Job seekers are being instructed to take jobs as prostitutes by the government's Job Network. The Brisbane branch of the Job Network is also making job seekers fill out a questionnaire, showing pictures of four men including one hippie and one with darker skin. Job seekers are asked who would be more likely to use drugs and who they wouldn't like their sister to marry among other questions. The service recently offered a 56 year old woman with bad eyesight and arthritis a job as an Army combat medic, a 62 year old a job as a junior, and a 27 year old man a job as a female prostitute. (Herald Sun, August 15). American pilots dropped napalm on Iraqi troops during the war. Marine pilots and commanders confirmed that they used an upgraded version of the weapon. They said napalm was used because of its psychological effect on an enemy. A 1980 United Nations convention banned the use against civilian targets of napalm, a mixture of jet fuel and polystyrene that sticks to skin as it burns. The US, which did not sign the treaty, is one of the few countries that makes use of the weapon. The upgraded weapon, which uses kerosene rather than petrol, was used in March and April, when dozens of napalm bombs were dropped near bridges south of Baghdad. We napalmed both those [bridge] approaches, said Colonel James Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11. Unfortunately there were people there...you could see them in the [cockpit] video. They were Iraqi soldiers. It's no great way to die. The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect. A reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald who witnessed another napalm attack on March 21 on an Iraqi observation post at Safwan Hill, close to the Kuwaiti border, wrote the following day: Safwan Hill went up in a huge fireball and the observation post was obliterated. 'I pity anyone who is in there, a Marine sergeant said. We told them to surrender.' At the time, the Pentagon insisted the report was untrue. We completed destruction of our last batch of napalm on April 4, 2001, it said. The Pentagon denied lying. It drew a distinction between traditional napalm, first invented in 1942, and the weapons dropped in Iraq, which it calls Mark 77 firebombs. (New Zealand Herald, August 11). The Victorian Ombudsman will investigate a number of complaints, some of them serious, about the behaviour of tram inspectors on Victoria's privatised transport system. Despite having the power to arrest travellers, inspectors receive only one week's training from the government, as well as some training by their employers. Chris Field from the Consumer Law Centre said that inspectors routinely break the law, for example by forcing travellers to show identification and demanding proof of ability to pay. Union secretary Lou Di Gregorio said that private transport companies pressure inspectors into treating the public like criminals. Mr Di Gregorio said that inspectors had no incentive to help the public, and inspectors who failed to issue enough infringement notices were asked what have you been doing all day?. (Melbourne Times, August 13). A former Liberal Party branch president has described Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock's fundraising capacity as a loaves and fishes phenomenon. Clive Troy has made a submission to the Senate committee investigating the Minister's use of his discretion in migration matters. Mr Troy was president of the Liberal Party's Normanhurst branch, covering Mr Ruddock's seat of Berowra. He says Mr Ruddock boasted about being a very effective fundraiser and while the branch was always short of money, at election time Mr Ruddock had enough to spare to support other electorates. Mr Troy says he attempted to understand those unexplained funds by asking to see the relevant financial records but they were never available. He has told the committee he understands some sizeable donations collected more recently did not go through the local books but went to an account called the Millennium Fund, which raised more than $100,000 for each of the last three federal elections. (ABC news website, August 20). Indonesia's special forces, Kopassus, will receive training from the Australian military. Kopassus has been linked to several human rights abuses. Alan Dupont from the Australian National University justified the links with Kopassus on the grounds that no one denies Kopassus' record, but the [Indonesian] police are hardly paragons of virtue. (The Age, August 16). Quotes of the Week: We make
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This weeks stories: Government Implicated in Siev-X Sinking...Telstra's Family Friendly Policy Copied From Government...Branch Stacking Still Common In ALP...But Drugs Are Better For The Economy...Quote of the Week - Bill Gates Is Reading My Mail. Last week's All the News That Fits reported that four people had been charged with slavery in connection with running a brothel (Club 417 in Fitzroy). This story was taken from the Melbourne Times. The same issue of the Melbourne Times carried an ad for Club 417. A former diplomat says that the Australian government may be implicated in the sinking of the SIEV-X boat which resulted in 353 deaths. Tony Kevin, former ambassador to Cambodia, told the ABC about information he had received from Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty, about a 'disruption program' involving Australian and Indonesian police. The point of the matter is that Mr Keelty's organisation trained the Indonesian police and set up the disruption teams selected by the AFP out of the Indonesian police, Mr Kevin said. I believe that there is substantial evidence leading towards the likely conclusion that SIEV-X was sunk as part of an Australian government disruption program to disrupt people smuggling in Indonesia. (The Age, July 30). A woman who stayed at work up until an hour before she gave birth, was still sacked on her first day back after taking maternity leave. Anne-Marie (who did not want her last name used) had worked for Telstra for nine years before being made redundant. Stephen Jones from the Community and Public Sector Union said that Telstra's Human Resources policy talks at length about valuing staff and their families. (Herald Sun, August 1). Ordered to leave Australia without her baby, a Russian mother said she was prepared to spend the rest of her days in the Villawood detention centre if it was her only chance to see her son grow up. The 30-year-old woman, who has an 18-month-old son to an Australian father, made the declaration after the full bench of the Family Court upheld the Federal Government's right to deport her without her child. The unanimous decision, by Chief Justice Alastair Nicholson and Justices John Ellis and Stephen O'Ryan, found that the Migration Act overrode the child's right to know and have regular contact with both its parents. Acknowledging it might be 'difficult' for her to get a court order for contact with her son if she was sent back to Russia, the judges said she may well be able to do so from a country like New Zealand. At least two other foreigners in the centre have Australian children and are fighting deportation orders. One is a Malaysian mother of two who has not seen one of her children in three years. The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she fled Russia after witnessing a murder in a nightclub and after being raped by casino security guards and police. (Sydney Morning Herald, July 30). Branch stacking is still very common in the Labor Party, according to ALP national President Greg Sword - including Opposition Leader Simon Crean's electorate. More than one in ten of the ALP's members in Victoria is not on the electoral roll. Most of these 1320 members are not Australian citizens. Mr Sword said that the ALP could not verify a member's stated address if they were not on the electoral roll. In Mr Crean's seat of Hotham, 43 ALP members are not on the electoral roll. Mr Crean's supporters say that the right-wing Labor Unity faction has begun stacking the branch in order to gain control of it once Mr Crean leaves politics. Mr Sword accused Labor Unity of undermining Mr Crean's attempts to clean up the ALP. They are continuing to do everything they can to subvert the rules so people they have stacked into those electorates can vote [in internal elections], he said. (The Age, July 29). A vegetarian diet is roughly as good at fighting cholesterol as an established cholesterol-lowering drug, according to a new study. A study had one group of people take the drug lovastatin. Another group adopted the so-called 'ape diet' - based on the diet of gorillas and orangutans in the wild, but actually a fairly typical vegetarian diet including meals such as ratatouille and vegetables. After four weeks, levels of the harmful LDL-cholesterol were lowered by roughly 30 percent for people in both groups. (New Scientist magazine). Quote of the Week: By posting messages, uploading files, inputting data, submitting any feedback or suggestions, or engaging in any other form of communication with or through the Passport Web Site [Passport is the system that you use to log on to the Microsoft network, including hotmail and MSN Messenger]...you are granting Microsoft and its affiliated companies permission to: 1. Use, modify, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, publish, sublicense, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any such
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This weeks stories: Government Soft On Immigration Slavery...Trying To Kill Yourself Is A Sane Response To Refugee Detention...No Cash Discount...Government Doesn't Know Why People Won't Take Public Transport...Quotes of the Week. Four people have been charged with slavery in Melbourne. They are accused of bringing in Thai women and forcing them to work as prostitutes. Kathleen Maltzahn from Project Respect says that at any one time there are roughly 1000 women working as slaves in Australian brothels. The traffickers are laregely protected by Australia's restrictive immigration system. Ms Maltzahn said that the government generally dealt with slaves by deporting them, rather than charging the traffickers. The traffickers themselves often inform on the women to the Department of Immigration. In 2001 Puongtong Simplee died days after being arrested and sent to Villawood Detention Centre. She said that she had been brought to Australia and sold into prostitution when she was 12. No one was charged. The women are also often deprived of food and water and beaten if they try and escape. (Melbourne Times, July 23). A 14 year old boy who tried to kill himself in a refugee detention centre hadn't seen a psychiatrist because he didn't need one, according to lawyers for the government. The boy tried to hang himself in July last year. (AAP, July 28). Despite claims that the GST would end the 'cash economy', Australians are evading tax on a total of about $100 billion income per year. A report by economics lecturer Christopher Bajada found that the GST doesn't seem to have changed behaviour significantly. Cynthia Cole, an associate professor in taxation law, said that there is not a country in the world where a tax like the GST has reduced the cash economy. (The Age, July 26). An investigation of Melbourne's rail system has found at least 30 sites where trains could potentially crash into each other, in the same way as a crash at Epping last year. (The Age, July 26). Quotes of the week: We should not succumb to democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests. Harold Lasswell, writing in the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, 1933. Alamdar said he lived with his father and about 40 other men and three boys in White 3, in virtual isolation from other compounds. (White 3 houses 33 males.) He said he cannot play with other children without first obtaining permission, which is not always given. Interview by the Age newspaper with a 15 year old boy in Baxter refugee detention centre. If the US government concludes that torturing Mohammed is necessary for the protection of lives, it should add a reservation to its treaty obligations with regard to torture. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, arguing that torture should be legalised in cases similar to that of Al Qaeda suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Mohammed is said to be suffering what intelligence sources call 'torture lite' involving techniques such as sleep deprivation. Actually, there is another article in the New York Times that describes how the professors are antiwar activists, but the students aren't. Not like it used to be, when the students were antiwar activists. What the reporter is talking about is that around 1970 - and it's true - by 1970 students were active antiwar protesters. But that's after eight years of a U.S. war against South Vietnam, which by then had extended to all of Indochina, which had practically wiped the place out. In the early years of the war-it was announced in 1962-U.S. planes are bombing South Vietnam, napalm was authorized, chemical warfare to destroy food crops, and programs to drive millions of people into strategic hamlets, which are essentially concentration camps. All public. No protest. Impossible to get anybody to talk about it. For years, even in a place like Boston, a liberal city, you couldn't have public meetings against the war because they would be broken up by students, with the support of the media. You would have to have hundreds of state police around to allow the speakers like me to escape unscathed. The protests came after years and years of war. By then, hundreds of thousands of people had been killed, much of Vietnam had been destroyed. Then you started getting protests. But all of that is wiped out of history, because it tells too much of the truth. It involved years and years of hard work of plenty of people, mostly young, which finally ended up getting a protest movement. Now it's far beyond that. But the New York Times reporter can't understand that. I'm sure the reporter is being very honest. The reporter is saying exactly what I think she was taught - that there was a huge antiwar movement - because the actual history has to be wiped out of people's consciousness. You can't learn that dedicated, committed effort can bring about significant changes of consciousness and understanding. That's a
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Government Outsources Fraud...Union Demands 8 Minutes Rest...Majority Disbelieves Official Story on Iraq...Up In Smoke. Crime syndicates are making millions of dollars from false GST claims. Some investigators estimate as much as 10 per cent of GST revenue is lost through false and fraudulent claims. The Sydney Morning Herald says that some staff at the Australian Tax Office privately refer to the ATO as the ATM because of the ease of making electronic claims. During 2001-02 the Tax Office registered 476,785 Australian Business Numbers. As at June 30 last year there were 3,892,756 active ABNs. In 2000 a House of Representatives economics committee report found there were 5.3 million excess tax file numbers, many of which were used to commit fraud. ABNs can be registered over the internet. A Tax Office spokesman said that in 2001-02, the office's audit program targeted 9 per cent of GST-registered businesses which resulted in $363 million in additional GST being paid. The government claimed that the GST would stop the 'black economy'. (Sydney Morning Herald, July 21). Some linesman are putting in working days of more than 16 hours, doing dangerous work repairing electrical equipment. The Electrical Trades Union says some workers in the country can spend a standard working day just driving to a site to repair damaged power lines. The ETU has put in a claim for 1000 percent penalty rates. The union says that they don't really want these rates, they are just trying to achieve a complete ban on dangerously excessive hours. (Sydney Morning Herald). Roughly two thirds of Australians believe that the government misled the public about war on Iraq. 36 per cent believe they were knowingly misled by the Howard government, 31 per cent believe they were unknowingly misled, and 25 per cent believe they were not misled at all. (The Australian, July 22). A senior tobacco company employee says that his company sanitised documents which contained damaging information on the health risks of smoking. Frederick Gulson was secretary and legal counsel of WD and HO Wills Pty Ltd in 1989-90. He was responsible for preparing the company for an expected wave of legal action. The company, now called British American Tobacco Services has denied selectively destroying documents. Mr Gulson said in an affadavit that it was obvious to everyone in the know that the company's strategy was to get rid of all the sensitive documents but to do so under the guise of an innocent housekeeping arrangement. The documents included information on what the group of companies knew about about addiction and the disease risks of smoking, including reports on the companies' efforts to make cigarettes more addictive. It also included information on marketing directed at all age groups. (The Age, July 19). anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on to people or lists who might be interested in it, or post it on your local Indymedia: http://www.indymedia.org. Some other Australian anarchist contacts: Love and Rage is an anarchist, non-profit record label. Our CD is available by mail order. 20 songs for $10 within Australia, $15 in New Zealand, $10 in the USA, $10 in Canada, 5 pounds in Britain, or 10 euros in the rest of Europe. Other countries, or enquiries from shops and distroes, email us and ask. Address for orders is PO Box 1191, Richmond North VIC 3121 (Australia). Please make cheques or money orders out to J. Hutchings. http://www.loveandrage.rocks.it http://www.angry.at/thegovernment - anarchist website with fliers for download, contacts etc. http://www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, internet radio, band interviews etc. Also includes the text of 'Escape', an anarchist novel - http://www.geocities.com/skipnewborn/novel.doc http://www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. http://www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review (http://www.vicnet.net.au/~anarch - PO Box 20 Parkville VIC 3052) and The Ham (http://www.theham.cat.org.au). Media outlets mentioned in All the News That Fits are sources - items are not direct quotes from news media. Background information may have been gathered from sources in addition to media outlets cited. Where no source is cited, the information has been gathered from direct sources. .. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Ill, Legal Substances...Foreigners Bring Foot In Mouth Disease...That Showed Em...Government To Build Radioactive Dump...Outsourcing Works, Say Companies...Quotes of the Week. The full bench of the Industrial Relations Commission has upheld Qantas' decision to sack an employee for using the internet for illegal purposes. The employee had tried to buy amyl nitrate via email. Amyl nitrate is not illegal. (Financial Review, July 10). A 17 year old girl is set to be deported back to the country she fled after being kidnapped at 14 by a gang that tried to force her to run drugs. Ruth Cruz has appealed to the Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock. Mr Ruddock has criticised Ms Cruz's supporters for making her case public. He said that I don't make these decisions other than with a full brief of all the facts, he said. This seems to contradict a statement Mr Ruddock made which was reported by the Sydney Morning Herald on June 19. Mr Ruddock said on that occasion that it was naive to expect him to read the files of every person that he allowed to stay in Australia. The people Mr Ruddock helped in that case had made large donations to the Liberal Party. (The Age, July 13, Sydney Morning Herald, June 19). The 53 Vietnamese boat people detained on Christmas Island two weeks ago have been cleared to appeal for temporary protection visas. This contradicts claims by Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock that they could be economic migrants. John Howard stated that he was prepared to spend whatever was necessary to stop the boat people setting foot on the Australian mainland. Some reports put the cost as high as $10 million. Because the boat people managed to enter the 'migration zone' and are therefore eligible to access Australia's Refugee Review Tribunal and court system, the same rights they would have received had they been processed on the mainland. (The Australian, July 15, Herald Sun, July 9). The Federal Government says construction of a national radioactive waste dump could begin within 12 months, after it 'compulsorily acquired' land in Woomera. (ABC News Online, July 7). The Australian Tax Office spent $860 million over 5 years outsourcing their IT needs to the EDS company, compared to the original budget of $480 million. Outsourcing is promoted as cheaper and more efficient than having work done in-house. Opponents say it is a form of 'corporate welfare' and is used to undercut wages and conditions. (The Australian, June 5). Quotes of the Week: To initiate a war of aggression...is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole. The Nuremberg Tribunal (trial of Nazi war criminals after World War II). Military industrial corporations like General Dynamics, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin experienced a sharp rise in their stock prices in the immediate wake of the September 11th. attacks. They were to be the prime benficiaries of the immediate increase of $48 billion dollars and the five-year increase of $120 billion in the military budget proposed by the Bush administration with the crisis mentality created by September 11. ( From Making War at Home in the United States: Militarisation and the Current Crisis, by Catherine Lutz, 'American Anthropologist' Issue 104 (3) 2002). anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on to people or lists who might be interested in it, or post it on your local Indymedia: http://www.indymedia.org. Some other Australian anarchist contacts: Love and Rage is an anarchist, non-profit record label. Our CD is available by mail order. 20 songs for $10 within Australia, $15 in New Zealand, $10 in the USA, $10 in Canada, 5 pounds in Britain, or 10 euros in the rest of Europe. Other countries, or enquiries from shops and distroes, email us and ask. Address for orders is PO Box 1191, Richmond North VIC 3121 (Australia). Please make cheques or money orders out to J. Hutchings. http://www.loveandrage.rocks.it http://www.angry.at/thegovernment - anarchist website with fliers for download, contacts etc. http://www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, internet radio, band interviews etc. Also includes the text of 'Escape', an anarchist novel - http://www.geocities.com/skipnewborn/novel.doc http://www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. http://www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review (http://www.vicnet.net.au/~anarch - PO Box 20 Parkville VIC 3052) and The Ham (http://www.theham.cat.org.au). Media outlets mentioned in All the News That Fits are sources - items are not
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Eight Deaths Since Beginning of Mandatory Detention...Guess They Were Right Then...Maybe He Couldn't Tell Them Apart...Refugee Children Riot and Try To Escape For No Reason Whatsoever...It's All Under Control...Quotes of the Week. Federal government records show eight people have died in Australian immigration detention in the past five years, including one confirmed suicide. Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said five men and three women had died since the introduction of mandatory detention in 1989. Four of the cases involved detainees at the Villawood Detention Centre, of which two died at the Liverpool Hospital. One person was held and died at the Maribyrnong immigration detention centre. Two detainees died in Perth hospitals after being transferred from the Port Hedland and Christmas Island detention facilities. One detainee been held at Port Phillip prison before dying in hospital. The figures do not include any deaths of former detainees after their release. Prime Minister John Howard justified the government's policies on the grounds that we do provide proper food and medical attention and we provide more recreation facilities than we are given credit for. (The Age, June 27). Two brothers who sought asylum in Australia but failed, have disappeared after being returned to Iran. Amnesty International and the Maritime Union of Australia have both investigated Nadar and Nasser Sayadi-Estahbanati's whereabouts, but found no trace of them. Dr Amir Ahmadi from Sydney University said two other Iranian asylum seekers, forcibly returned to Iran from Turkey, had been executed recently. There are 259 Iranians in detention in Australian, 102 of whom are awaiting removal. Another 425 are on temporary protection visas granted since November 1999. An Iranian living in Melbourne on a temporary protection visa, said the last contact with Nadar Sayadi-Estahbanati had been by phone after he had been interrogated for several days on his return. A spokesperson for Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said the Government's advice was that people sent back to Iran or who returned voluntarily were not targeted. She did not say where this advice came from. An Amnesty International alert was issued on June 19 over the imprisonment and torture of two British-based Iranian political refugees handed to Iran by Syria. (The Age, June 28). Dante Tan, the Philippines' most wanted fugitive who was allowed to stay in Australia after donating money to the Liberal Party, also gave $10,000 to former Labor immigration minister Nick Bolkus before the 2001 federal election. (The Age, June 28). A survey of children in refugee detention centres has found: 100 percent had seen people self-harm and make suicide attempts. 95 percent had seen a physical assault. Nearly 40 percent claimed to have been assaulted by camp officers. One quarter were kept in solitary confinement. Around 10 per cent alleged sexual harassment. (ABC, 12 May). The deforestation rate in the Amazon has jumped 40 percent last year, the largest increase since 1995. (The Age, June 28). Quotes of the Week: For public policy reasons we need to have family groups, including children, available for processing and available for removal. Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock. The Palestinians are of a lower order. Israeli settler Karmi Grabovsky. The Americans defeated Saddam, but not the Iraqi people. Retired American army officer, quoted in the Age, summing up the attitude of Iraqis to American troops in 'liberated' Iraq. anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on to people or lists who might be interested in it, or post it on your local Indymedia http://www.indymedia.org. Some other Australian anarchist contacts: Love and Rage is an anarchist, non-profit record label. Our CD is available by mail order. 20 songs for $10 within Australia, $15 in New Zealand, $10 in the USA, $10 in Canada, 5 pounds in Britain, or 10 euros in the rest of Europe. Other countries, or enquiries from shops and distroes, email us and ask. Address for orders is PO Box 1191, Richmond North VIC 3121 (Australia). Please make cheques or money orders out to J. Hutchings. http://www.loveandrage.rocks.it http://www.angry.at/thegovernment - anarchist website with fliers for download, contacts etc. http://www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, internet radio, band interviews etc. Also includes the text of 'Escape', an anarchist novel - http://www.geocities.com/skipnewborn/novel.doc http://www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. http://www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review (http://www.vicnet.net.au/~anarch - PO Box
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: CNN Rules!...Absolutely Fascist...Telstra Getting Better And Better, From Some Points of View... I Don't Read Files, But I Do Read Bank Statements...Thanks Losers...Not-Wanting-To-Be-A-Mormon Disease Spreads...Quote of the Week. A poll has found that a third of people in the United States believe that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. 22 per cent believe the Iraqi government used them during the war. Before the war, roughly half of those polled said the Iraq regime was responsible for the bombing of the World Trade Centre. (SchNews news report, June 20) Gay activist Nick Toonen has been awarded an Order of Australia, in recognition of his work in fostering a greater understanding of gay and lesbian rights. He will be travelling to Australia from New Zealand to accept the award. His partner will be unable to accompany him because Australian law discriminates against gay couples. Telstra has shed 11,423 jobs in the 3 years to April 2003. Over the last decade they have cut close to 50,000. Telstra concedes that it may get rid of a further 3000 jobs in the coming financial year. Telstra spent $100,000 on Christmas lunches for its customers, $30 million on corporate sponsorship deals in the last financial year, and $58 million on corporate entertainment since 1998 including $10.7 million in the last financial year. Telstra also made a $3.6 billion profit last financial year. (Community and Public Sector Union). The Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, says it is naive to expect him to read visa applicants' complete files before deciding whether to intervene in their cases. The comments followed an admission by Mr Ruddock on Tuesday that he had overturned five rejections and granted a protection visa to a Lebanese man, Bedweny Hbeiche, without reading his file. Mr Ruddock intervened soon after Mr Hbeiche donated $3000 at a Liberal Party fundraising dinner. (Sydney Morning Herald, June 19). Productivity has risen so greatly in the last 10 years in Australia that it would have funded an extra month's leave for workers, according to Barbara Pocock, from the Centre for Labour Research at Adelaide University. Instead, most employees surveyed reported that work was having an increased - largely negative impact on their personal lives. (Sydney Morning Herald, January 31 and March 10, quoted in Shorter Work Week News report, May/June edition). An American anarchist has been held in a 'boot camp' run by the Mormon church since he was 16, diagnosed with a pyschological disorder that seems to be little more than disagreeing with his parents. Alex Asch had been prescribed sedatives, sent to psychiatrists and put in special programs, all against his will, because of an ongoing conflict with his parents based around his political beliefs. In August 2002 they had him taken by force to a Mormon-run 'juvenile rehabilitation program', where he will be held until his 18th birthday. Alex has been diagnosed with Oppositional Defiance Disorder, whose 'symptoms' include arguing with adults and refusing to comply with adults' requests. (www.wiretapmag.org via Ainfos news report, June 19). Quote of the Week: Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business. Michael Ledden, holder of the 'Freedom Chair' at the American Enterprise Institute. anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on to people or lists who might be interested in it, or post it on your local Indymedia http://www.indymedia.org. Some other Australian anarchist contacts: Love and Rage is an anarchist, non-profit record label. Our CD is available by mail order. 20 songs for $10 within Australia, $15 in New Zealand, $10 in the USA, $10 in Canada, 5 pounds in Britain, or 10 euros in the rest of Europe. Other countries, or enquiries from shops and distroes, email us and ask. Address for orders is PO Box 1191, Richmond North VIC 3121 (Australia). Please make cheques or money orders out to J. Hutchings. http://www.loveandrage.rocks.it http://www.angry.at/thegovernment - anarchist website with fliers for download, contacts etc. http://www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, internet radio, band interviews etc. Also includes the text of 'Escape', an anarchist novel - http://www.geocities.com/skipnewborn/novel.doc http://www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. http://www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review (http://www.vicnet.net.au/~anarch - PO Box 20 Parkville VIC 3052) and The Ham (http://www.theham.cat.org.au). Media outlets mentioned in
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Only one in five year 12 students who go to university next year will receive the Federal Government's youth allowance, forcing many to forgo the opportunity, a new report reveals. Using previously unpublished Centrelink figures, the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University found that in 2001 only 21 per cent of full-time students under the age of 19 received the youth allowance, down from 33 per cent in 1998. The centre's director, Bob Birrell, said yesterday they were the most recent figures available, but it was likely that the situation was getting worse. The situation could worsen if the Federal Government went ahead with reported plans to allow universities to set higher fees as part of its restructure of the higher education sector. In some countries where fees have been deregulated student costs have spiralled - in some cases by 14 times the rate of inflation. (The Age, May 7). George Bush's surprise announcement of $15 billion in funds over the next five years may have been misleading, and intended to extend America's policy of withholding aid from countries that have liberal policies on abortion. Director of the Africa Action aid agency, Salih Booker, told the Nation magazine that the package was a triumph of Arthur Andersen-style accounting. On Mr Bush's first day in office, he reinstated the global gag rule, which forbids any foreign recipient of family planning funds from even using the word 'abortion', regardless of the law on abortion in that country and even when they use their own money. A message in early 2003 sent to USAID fund managers worldwide regarding AIDS prevention emphasised abstinence and directs that, All operating units should review their own websites and any websites fully or partially funded by USAID to ensure the appropriateness of the material. In the US, the National Cancer Institute put out a fact sheet that referred to a rumour, believed to have been deliberately started by anti-abortion groups, that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. The original version of the fact sheet said that there was no evidence, a revised version said that research was inconclusive. A television commercial funded by a local government shows a dad telling his son to use condoms followed by a voiceover warning, Condoms will not protect people from many sexually transmitted diseases, and you could be spreading lies to your children. Counselors and teachers say that some teenagers, including one who was an active intravenous drug user, said they no longer bothered using condoms because they'd heard on TV they didn't work. Teachers are being directed to adhere to the Federal Definition of Abstinence-Only Education, which requires that a program teach, among other things, that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity and that any other sexual activity is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects. By law, teachers cannot promote or endorse condoms or show adolescents how to use them, nor can they recognize any relationship outside of heterosexual marriage. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) fact sheet on condoms was removed from the website in July 2001 and replaced with a new version in December 2002. Pre-Bush, the fact sheet had pointed out that the primary reason that condoms sometimes fail, read the original fact sheet, is incorrect or inconsistent use, not failure of the condoms itself. The factsheet had a guide on using condoms, which has been removed. Also removed was a summary of several large studies of teenagers that found no increase or hastening of sexual activity among those who were taught about condoms. A study has found unprecedented rates of mental illness among young asylum seekers. The study of 10 families found that just one child out of a total of 22 children and 14 adults was not suffering a major depression. Some were suicidal, and had harmed themselves. Some were also suffering from post traumatic stress disorders, which started, or worsened, during their detention. There isn't a cohort of children as distressed as this group that we have been able to find anywhere in the medical literature in the world, said clinical pyshologist Zachary Steel. A spokeswoman for the Immigration Department said that as of May 8, there were still 108 children in immigration detention centres in Australia, and 111 in detention on Nauru. Researchers were unable to interview detainees face-to-face but conducted interviews by telephone from last September to February this year. While in detention the group reported having seen riots, fighting, fire, suicide attempts and incidences of self-harm, the report said. Every adult was diagnosed with a major depressive disorder, and the majority were also diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorders, said Mr Steel.
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Drug Squad Misunderstood Why It Was Called That...It's Not The Colour of Your Skin, It's the Colour of Your Money...Why They Always Stuff Your Bill Up. (Last week's All the News That Fits reported that Peter Hollingworth received a $310,000 salary while he was Governor-General. We neglected to report that this salary was also tax-free). Prison authorities have set up a new protection unit, because of the large number of police officers in the drug squad who have been charged with selling heroin or other forms of corruption. (The Age, May 31). A man charged with insider trading in the Philippines was allowed to settle in Australia on the personal intervention of the Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock, after he made a $10,000 donation to the Liberal Party. Dante Tan sent the donation directly to Mr Ruddock's postal address. Refugee advocates have compared the treatment of Mr Tan with that of other immigrants. The government has only recently abandoned plans to deport roughly 1500 East Timorese asylum seekers, some of whom have been living in Australia for over 10 years. (Sydney Morning Herald, June 4). Wollongong call centre employees are losing bonuses of up to $5000 for taking unauthorised toilet breaks, or for using their sick leave, according to the Community and Public Sector Union. The employees of Stellar call centres earn only $25,000 a year - workers in the same jobs earned $35,000 before the jobs were outsourced from Telstra. Employees also say that some managers require employees to be at work before their official start time. Stellar is the largest outsourced call centre company in Australia. Late last year they became the first such company to negotiate an award with a union - but the CPSU says they aren't telling their employees that they have a right to go on the award. (Workers Online website, May 4, Australian Financial Review, April 28). anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on to people or lists who might be interested in it, or post it on your local Indymedia http://www.indymedia.org. Some other Australian anarchist contacts: Love and Rage is an anarchist, non-profit record label. Our CD is available by mail order. 20 songs for $10 within Australia, $15 in New Zealand, $10 in the USA, $10 in Canada, 5 pounds in Britain, or 10 euros in the rest of Europe. Other countries, or enquiries from shops and distroes, email us and ask. Address for orders is PO Box 1191, Richmond North VIC 3121 (Australia). Please make cheques or money orders out to J. Hutchings. http://www.loveandrage.rocks.it http://www.angry.at/thegovernment - anarchist website with fliers for download, contacts etc. http://www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, internet radio, band interviews etc. Also includes the text of 'Escape', an anarchist novel - http://www.geocities.com/skipnewborn/novel.doc http://www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. http://www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review (http://www.vicnet.net.au/~anarch - PO Box 20 Parkville VIC 3052) and The Ham (http://www.theham.cat.org.au). Media outlets mentioned in All the News That Fits are sources - items are not direct quotes from news media. Background information may have been gathered from sources in addition to media outlets cited. Where no source is cited, the information has been gathered from direct sources. .. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: But The Taxpayers Probably Asked For It...Dramatic Rescue...Government Believes It Is Losing to Public Sector Unions...Weapons of Mass Destruction Found...Quotes of the Week. Former Governor-General Peter Hollingworth will get a lifetime government pension worth at least $184,000 a year. He will also get a taxpayer-funded office, a permanent staff member, and free business-class travel for him and his wife on official business. Dr Hollingworth also gets a pension from the Anglican church. For the 23 months that he served as Governor-General, before resigning over allegations that he helped cover up sexual abuse while an Anglican Archbishop, Dr Hollingworth was paid an annual salary of $310,000 per year. (The Age, May 27). The rescue of Private Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital during the invasion of Iraq was faked, according to local medical staff. The Times of India reports that the Iraqis had actually withdrawn from the area two days before the 'rescue'. Hospital staff drove Pvt Lynch to a US checkpoint in an ambulance a day earlier but were fired on by American troops. Dr Harith Houssana told the Toronto Star that American troops faked a rescue operation for the cameras. It was like a Hollywood film he said. They cried 'go, go, go', with guns and blanks without bullets and the sound of explosives. They made a show. (The Times of India). Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott says that unions have largely frustrated the government's attempts to get public servants on to individual, non-union agreements. A document by Mr Abbott says that non-union agreements are declining, the government's favoured Australian Workplace Agreements remain unpopular, and public service agreements continue to be higher than equivalent pay rises in the private sector. The document recommends that the government make AWA's compulsory for all new public servants. (Workers Online website, May 23). ['[EMAIL PROTECTED]' is mis-spelled deliberately because the censorship software at my work would block it otherwise] Investigators at a US Army base have found more than 2,000 tons of hazardous waste including 100 vials of [EMAIL PROTECTED] and other dangerous bacteria. They are believed to be left over from a US germ warfare program that was ended in 1969. The Pentagon said it had no record of the biological agents dumped at the US site, which is being excavated as part of a $US15 million ($A22.94 million) clean-up of the area. The documentation for where this came from doesn't exist, Lieutenant Colonel Donald Archibald, Fort Detrick's director of safety, told the Washington Post newspaper. The Army expected to find mostly laboratory chemicals, debris and incinerator ash when they started digging at the site two years ago. Instead, they uncovered vials of live bacteria like Brucella melitensis, which causes the flu-like disease brucellosis and Klebsiella pneumoniae, a cause of pneumonia. They also found a nonvirulent form of [EMAIL PROTECTED] The potent form of the disease was brewed by the gallon at Fort Detrick until the weapons program was shut down. Another 50 pressurised cylinders of gases and liquids found at the site are still awaiting analysis. You never know what's there until you start digging, said Colonel John Ball, the Fort Detrick garrison commander. We've generally ruled out finding a nuclear weapon. (Australian Associated Press, May 28). Quotes of the Week: I'm ready to meet my Maker and answer for those who have died or who have been horribly maimed as a result of my decisions. Tony Blair, in the Times, May 27. In Iraq, there was a government holding valuable resources the U.S. could not control. So the U.S. took action. In the Congo, the U.S. controls the government and the resources, so it doesn't really matter that millions of Congolese are dying. Prof. Didier Gondola, author of The History of Congo (Greenwood Press 2002). The United States cannot afford to write off any potential new export market. A vast and growing market of 700 million consumers, Africa is in many ways the last frontier for U.S. exporters and investors. We cannot stand idly by waiting for Africa to achieve perfection before we engage actively in helping to shape its future. If we temper our engagement, or hold back until the whole of Africa is on even footing, we will concede important opportunities to our competitors and worse still, leave doors open to our adversaries...A visionary economic policy toward Africa is in our own long-term interest. Susan E. Rice, former US Govt. Assistant Secretary for African Affairs. Since 1998, civil war in the Congo has killed three and a half million civilians. Less than 25% of its 55 million population have access to clean water, and three out of every four children born during the war have already died or will die before their second birthday. Last October, an independent panel of experts reported to the
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
Tim Collins, one of the people accused of helping refugees escape from Woomera, is now out on bail. This week's stories: US Liberates More Iraqis...To the Joy of the Australian People...All The News That Fits Editor Blows Own Trumpet...Quotes of the Week. US troops killed seven Iraqi women and children at a checkpoint when their van would not stop as ordered, a US military official said. (Australian Associated Press, April 1). Claims that a majority of people now support the government's decision to go to war without UN backing are wrong, according to a Sydney Morning Herald survey. The survey found that, while support for the war had risen, more people oppose the war than support it. (Australian Associated Press, April 1). The Community and Public Sector Union has agreed to only buy tshirts from suppliers who are accredited as not using sweatshop labour. Previously the CPSU bought tshirts from China and Australia, any of which could have been made in sweatshop conditions. This follows a campaign initiated by me. Quotes of the week: The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy...I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin' Iraqi. No, I won't get hold of one. I'll just kill him. US Corporal Ryan Dupre. Reported in Frontlines (US), March 31. Chemical warfare suits had to be worn because of the threat from the depleted uranium used in the American weapons The Guardian (UK). The media and US government generally insist that depleted uranium is not a health hazard. The United Nations has passed two resolutions which include depleted uranium weapons among weapons of mass or indiscriminate destruction. Professor Doug Rokke, a former US Army physicist, sees it as a form of nuclear weapon that contaminates everything and everyone. I've invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us. They are here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time when we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons, whether it is the fiction of duct tape or the fiction of orange alerts. We are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush. Shame on you. Mike Moore, accepting the Oscar for his documentry Bowling for Columbine. Most newspapers reported that Moore received cheers and boos in equal numbers. Moore says that in fact he got a standing ovation, but five stagehands who were near the microphones all booed loudly, making it appear to the TV audience that the reaction was mixed. I'm fed up with this war in Iraq!!! I wanna go back home!!! I don't wanna stay here no more!!! I don't wanna die in this war!!! PLZ make that motherfu--er called Bush to set us free!!! We don't need this war!!! If I keep stayin' here in Iraq I'm sure very soon I'll be dead! I don't wanna die!! I wanna live!!! I'm so young yet! FU-- BUSH!!! Please do something to help me and my friends here in Iraq. We wanna come back home! Bush is a big bastar-, he drinks our blood. Anonymous US soldier, in an email. The mother held one child after another. Her eight-year-old daughter had been killed. A small girl, half naked, was cradled in one of the woman's arms, emitting tearing screams whenever she was moved -- into the X-ray room, out again, into the treatment room. Her face was ripped by shrapnel. Another child was in a bed. The doctor lifted the blankets to reveal a bloody mess of open leg. She howled and screamed as they tried to clean it, called out to Allah while her mother and aunt held her. Her head was heavily bandaged and one eye closed and swollen. 'The skull is also open,' the doctor said. - Jo Wilding, activist staying in Baghdad. anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on. Some other Australian anarchist contacts: Love and Rage is a new anarchist, non-profit record label. The first CD is currently being mastered. 20 songs for $10 within Australia (overseas prices available soon). Address for orders is PO Box 1191, Richmond North VIC 3121. Please make cheques or money orders out to J. Hutchings. www.angry.at/thegovernment - anarchist website with fliers for download, contacts etc. Please note, this is the same website that was at the address www.angry.at/politicians. www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, internet radio, band interviews etc. Also includes the text of 'Escape', an anarchist novel - www.geocities.com/skipnewborn/novel.doc www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
One of the people accused of helping refugees escape from Woomera is asking for letters of support. Please write to: timothy daniel collins port augusta prison po box 6 port augusta SA 5700 (Tim can't receive any books or papers but can receive cash and money orders). This week's stories: People of Iraq to Be Liberated...To Create A New World Free From Terrorism...Free From Fear...And Based on Democracy..Quotes of the Week. A UN report prepared before the war on Iraq estimated that it will create 900,000 refugees. The report also says that as many as 500,000 Iraqis may require treatment: 100,000 for injuries, 400,000 for disease. The report says that 3.03 million people will require 'therapeutic feeding' - 2.03 million severely and moderately malnourished children under five and one million pregnant and lactating women. London Times. The American government is planning a secret meeting to discuss the construction of a new generation of nuclear weapons, according to a leaked Pentagon document. A meeting of military officials and nuclear scientists in August would also decide whether to restart nuclear testing and how to convince the public new weapons are necessary. The National Nuclear Security Administration, which is responsible for designing, building and maintaining nuclear weapons, has confirmed that the document is real. A policy paper by Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld identified seven countries as potential targets for US nuclear weapons. The American government has adopted the policy of 'pre-emptive strikes' - attacking other countries that they feel might pose a threat in the future. The Guardian (UK), Washington Post. More than half of the San Francisco police department's leadership face prosecution for allegedly trying to cover up a street brawl involving off-duty police officers. Four of the city's senior police officers, including its police chief Earl Sanders, were among 10 officers indicted on criminal charges in connection with the fight reportedly sparked over a bag of Mexican take-away food. Three junior officers are accused of beating two civilians who refused to hand over their bag of steak Fajitas. ABC news website. The Australian government has established an email address where people can pass messages on to troops in Iraq. However the Defence Department says that 'negative' messages, presumably meaning messages critical of the war, will not be passed on. Quotes of the week: If the U.S. unilaterally goes to war, and it is anything short of a quick surgical strike (lasting less than 30 days), the economists were all predicting extreme economic gloom: falling dollar value, rising spot market oil prices, the Fed pushing interest rates down towards zero with resulting increase in national debt, severe trouble in all countries whose currency is guaranteed agains the dollar (which is just about everybody except the EU), a near cessation of all development and humanitarian programs for poor countries. Very few economists or ministers of finance predicted the world getting out of that economic funk for minimally five-10 years, once the downward spiral ensues. Science journalist Laurie Garrett, in a leaked private email sent from the World Economic Forum. [The world is] run by about 5,000 bickering, sometimes charming, usually arrogant, mostly male people who are accustomed to living in either phenomenal wealth, or great personal power. Laurie Garrett. ...this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo? John Brady Kiesling, an American diplomat for twenty years, in his letter of resignation. We have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of the American people, since the war in Vietnam. John Brady Kiesling. We back democracy all the way. All the way, that is, up to the point where they disagree with us. Former US senior State Dept. Official, quoted in SchNews news report. anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on. Some other Australian anarchist contacts: Love and Rage is a new anarchist, non-profit
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
One of the people accused of helping refugees escape from Woomera is asking for letters of support. Please write to: timothy daniel collins port augusta prison po box 6 port augusta SA 5700 (Tim can't receive any books or papers but can receive cash and money orders). This week's stories: It's Not Just Oil...We Know They've Got Weapons Of Mass Destruction, We Kept the Receipts...Western Australia Invents New Form Of Bigotry...Salvation Army Competes With Anglicans And Catholics. The Bush government has invited selected companies to bid for government contracts to 'rebuild Iraq' after the US invasion. The companies chosen to bid are all American companies, who have donated money to the Republican Party. (www.ariannaonline.com). The germ samples that Iraq used for its biological weapons program (which it says it has now abandoned), came entirely from an American company and a French scientific institute. (New York Times). AMP has taken what the Age described as a really tough stand on [former CEO] Paul Batchelor's termination entitlements. Mr Batchelor was given a cheque for $1.4 million, after tax. (The Age, March 15). Four of the 11 people who were refused permission to adopt children in Western Australia last year, were refused because they were 'too fat'. Jodie Gaywood, 21, was refused permission to adopt because she was overweight, due to a condition called polycystic ovary syndrome. This condition is also the reason she's unable to have children. (The Age, March 15). The Salvation Army kept a sex abuse case secret and paid for the offender to be counselled, but not the 14 year old victim, a Queensland court was told yesterday. (The Age, March 15). anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on. Some other Australian anarchist contacts: Love and Rage is a new anarchist, non-profit record label. The first CD will be out in a few weeks - 20 songs for $10 within Australia (overseas prices available soon). Address is PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042. www.angry.at/thegovernment - anarchist website with fliers for download, contacts etc. Please note, this is the same website that was at the address www.angry.at/politicians. www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, internet radio, band interviews etc. Also includes the text of 'Escape', an anarchist novel - www.geocities.com/skipnewborn/novel.doc www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review (www.vicnet.net.au/~anarchist - PO Box 20 Parkville VIC 3052) and The Ham (www.theham.cat.org.au), as well as Melbourne Indymedia (www.melbourne.indymedia.org). Media outlets mentioned in All the News That Fits are sources - items are not direct quotes from news media. Background information may have been gathered from sources in addition to media outlets cited. Where no source is cited, the information has been gathered from direct sources. .. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
One of the people accused of helping refugees escape from Woomera is asking for letters of support. Please write to: timothy daniel collins port augusta prison po box 6 port augusta SA 5700 (Tim can't receive any books or papers but can receive cash and money orders). This week's stories: Politicians Are Bastards...Yes, All Of Them... Victorians see politicians as liars and believe they arrange 'jobs for the boys' and don't act in the community's best interest, according to a new study by Monash University. One person who took part in the study said I think we should turn it into 'Big Brother' and vote them out week by week. Another said that if you worked in politics you probably wouldn't advertise the fact, and that state leaders are just chosen for presentation and selling skills. Other comments included I can't have access to my super, why should they? and that politicians' behaviour in Parliament is ridiculous. I'd rather watch 'Beauty and the Beast'. (The Age, March 6). A high-profile unionist who left the Labor Party and joined the Greens, saying that the Labor Party was too right wing, says that the Greens may be just as bad. Dean Mighell says that he found it really hard to reconcile that some of the Greens' candidates couldn't care less about kids being able to afford to go to school or the public health system. People call them middle-class tree huggers and they did everything in regional areas to reinforce that that was the case. Mr Mighell said that with the Greens had good social policies in inner-city Melbourne, but they tend to be optional everywhere else. (Melbourne Times, March 5). Wealth inequality in Australia has gotten worse since 1992, according to a new statement by the Catholic Church. Dr Bruce Duncan from the Yarra Theological Union said that poverty in Australia has started to disproportionately affect children. Dr Duncan said that in 2000, more than 300,000 families with children under 15 had no one in full time paid work. The report also notes that there has been an explosion of executive remuneration levels. (The Age, March 8). New figures on refugee children in detention show that the government has broken its promise to improve conditions and made only cosmetic changes, according to refugee advocates. Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock released guidelines saying that unaccompanied children would be placed in foster care and women and children would be offered an alternative to high-security detention centres. Immigration Department figures show that the proportion of children in detention has decreased by 0.4 of 1 percent. A study by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists found epidemic levels of self-harm and suicide in detention centres. Dr Louise Newman, who helped put the study together, said that chidren could be re-traumatised by the things that they witness or experience in detention. Dr Newman said that unaccompanied children were particularly at risk. (The Age, March 9). A new enquiry into the abuse of children in orphanages and foster homes from the 1920s to the 70s is expected to expose governments and churches. Children in institutions were often seperated from their siblings and subject to corporal punishment and 'penal routines'. Sexual abuse was also rife in many homes. (The Age, March 8). Two prisoners died at a US military base, apparently after being beaten. Former prisoners at the base say that detainees are chained to the ceiling, shackled so tightly that blood flow stops, kept naked and hooded, and kicked to keep them awake. The autopsy of the two prisoners says that they suffered from blunt force injuries and classified the deaths as homicides. A captured Al-Qaeda leader is believed to be being held at the same base. United States officials say that the CIA is applying the full range of permissable techniques. Reports say that he probably does not know what country he is in or even what day it is. The CIA says he is being held outside of the US so that he is not subject to constitutional protections. Cofer Black, head of the CIA Counterterrorism Centre, is said to have declared that interrogators had been given 'greater leeway in interpreting the law'. One Al-Qaeda member is said to have had his painkillers withheld, which he needed after being shot in the groin. Former CIA officer Larry Johnson said a sleep deprivation and reward system would be used. He added that I don't see a constitutional right to have eight hours of sleep. In fact the US Constitution forbids 'cruel and unusual punishment' even for convicted criminals, let alone suspects. (The Age, March 6 and 8). The seas may rise faster than predicted due to global warming, according to a study published in the US magazine 'Science'. The study suggests that sea levels might rise up to several metres. (The Age, March 8). The government has not released a report on the health of veterans of
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
One of the people accused of helping refugees escape from Woomera is asking for letters of support. Please write to: timothy daniel collins port augusta prison po box 6 port augusta SA 5700 (Tim can't receive any books or papers). This week's stories: Alcohol Industry Relies on Binge Drinkers and Children...Public Housing List Grows...Government Plays Favourites...Overworked And Not Paid...Poor People Are Funny...Public Hospital Crisis...By 3000, No Child Will Live In Poverty...Quotes of the Week. A report from America has concluded that the alcohol industry relies on underage drinkers and alcohol abusers for about half its sales. (MX, February 26). The public housing waiting list grew by 13 percent in the last financial year. (The Age, February 28). The Victorian government gave unfair preferential treatment to one of the bidders for the $110 million Docklands Film Studio, according to a report by the Victorian Auditor-General Wayne Cameron. The report said that Central City Studios were allowed to negotiate with the government for nine months over design changes and finance arrangements, unlike their two competitors. The company was also allowed to add $5.9 million to the cost of the studio. The project cost a total of $6.9 million more than the government's initial $40 million commitment. The government has refused to release a report by the auditor assigned to the project, despite promising to do so. (The Age, February 28). 44 percent of workers in Australia say they work unpaid overtime most weeks. Of these workers, the average amount of unpaid overtime worked is 8.4 hours a week. (The Age Good Weekend supplement, March 1). American television network CBS has ignored protests and says it intends to continue with its idea for a reality TV show, in which a poor rural family will be given a home in Beverley Hills. The show is designed to capitalise on the fish-out-of-water dynamics between the family and their affluent new neighbours according to the MX newspaper. Critics say it is an exercise in ridiculing poor people. Bigotry against poor whites is far more acceptable than other kinds of bigotry, in America and Australia. Shows such as 'the Simpsons' feature stereotypes of poor whites which originated at the same time as racial stereotypes, and were based on the same pseudo-scientific ideas. Slurs such as 'white trash' are treated far more lightly than racial slurs. (MX, February 26). The financial position of Victorian public hospitals has deteriorated in the last year, with nine judged to be in financial difficulties and 15 others reporting 'poor results'. (The Age, February 28). 26 percent of children born worldwide will not be immunised against any disease. 30 percent will suffer from malnutrition in the first five years of their life. (The Age Good Weekend supplement, March 1). Quote of the Week: I wrote the Republican Party's foreign policy platform. Bruce Jackson, Vice President of weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Space is going to be important. It has a great feature in the military. Stephen Hadley, military advisor to George Bush Senior, and lawyer for Lockheed Martin. The board of Lockheed Martin includes Lynn Cheney, wife of US Vice President Dick Cheney. (Quotes and information from SchNews news report, Feb 7). anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on. www.angry.at/politicians - new anarchist website with fliers for download, contacts etc. www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, internet radio, band interviews etc. Also includes the text of 'Escape', an anarchist novel - www.geocities.com/skipnewborn/novel.doc www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review (www.vicnet.net.au/~anarchist - PO Box 20 Parkville VIC 3052) and The Ham (www.theham.cat.org.au), as well as Melbourne Indymedia (www.melbourne.indymedia.org). Media outlets mentioned in All the News That Fits are sources - items are not direct quotes from news media. Background information may have been gathered from sources in addition to media outlets cited. Where no source is cited, the information has been gathered from direct sources. . -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
Correction: Last week's All the News That Fits quoted a story by the Financial Review which gave some figures on the call centre industry. The Financial Review seems to have made a mistake with them. This week's stories: Australian Soldier Charged Over East Timor...Nursing Home Crisis Continues...Australian Government Works With Iran To Return Dissidents...Marriage Dangerously Close to Being up to the People Concerned...Space Shuttle Disaster May Have Had Familiar Cause...Quotes of the week. A former member of the Australian SAS has been charged with abusing a corpse while on duty in East Timor. Investigations are continuing into allegations of mistreatment of prisoners. The Age, February 22. An 87 year old patient at an aged care centre was assaulted at least four times by another patient. Anastasia Sdrinis says she also found her mother smeared with faeces several times. Other relatives of patients at the Kingston Centre say that emergency buzzers in some wards were broken, dementia patients were often unsupervised and toilets were in a disgraceful condition. A worker at the centre has been suspended after removing genital hair from fourteen patients with either dementia or serious mental illness, without consent or authorisation. The Age, February 22. The Australian government is negotiating with the Iranian government, to return 190 Iranian citizens who are seeking asylum in Australia. 22 of the asylum seekers are children. Among the 474 people officially listed as executed by the government of Iran in 2002 alone are people killed by stoning, throwing off a cliff, by public mutilation of limbs, and eye gouging. Most of these punishments were carried out before a public audience. Hundreds were arrested during recent anti-government demonstrations, with the fate of many still unknown. The body of a female student, Leila Nourgostari, was found dumped in a street a few days after her abduction by the government in Shiraz. In January 2003 , a 15 year old girl was condemned to be flogged. It is normal practice to include children under 18 to be sentenced to punishments such as execution, amputation of limbs and flogging in public. On December 28 2002, a member of the powerful Guardian Council said: [death by] stoning cannot be replaced by any other form of punishment and its validity is not subject to the [considerations of] time and place. Commenting on a possible bill to abolish stoning, a pro-Khatami Majlis deputy Elahe Koulaii said: This is a lie. No proposal to abolish stoning has been submitted to the Majlis. (State-run Khorassan daily, December 17, 2002). press release by refugee advocates, January 20. The government tried to have the courts declare that a marriage between a woman and a female to male transsexual was illegal, because they could not have children. The government unsuccessfully argued that a principal purpose of marriage was having children, and therefore the marriage should be invalid. A spokesperson for Attorney-General Daryl Williams said that the case raised serious issues about the role of Parliament in determining the meaning of marriage. The Age, February 22. The space shuttle disaster may have been a result of privatisation. The space shuttle program has been 92% privatised and is now run by aerospace companies Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Over the summer a retired 36-year veteran of NASA called on President Bush to enact a temporary moratorium on all space shuttle flights because of safety concerns, but was ignored. SchNews news report, February 7. Quotes of the Week: We would never have had tax reform if I had followed the opinion polls on that issue. Prime Minister John Howard, explaining why he will keep supporting war with Iraq regardless of public opinion. The fracturing of the Western alliance over Iraq and the huge antiwar demonstrations around the world this weekend are reminders that there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States [government] and world public opinion. The New York Times. For a man leading Australia closer to a war possibly against the wishes of the majority, John Howard seems remarkably at peace with himself. He is absolutely sure it is the morally correct course of action. The Age. [The United States government is] about to betray, as it has done so many times in the past, those core values of self-determination and human liberty. Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya, who at first supported war with Iraq, after seeing the US government's plans for Iraq after the war. Reported in the Age. anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on. www.angry.at/politicians - new anarchist website with fliers for download, contacts etc. www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio,
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Invasion of Iraq to Reward American Oil Companies...Call Centres Get Worse...Insane Prisoner Can Be Forcibly Medicated then Executed...Gap Between Rich and Poor Not Wide Enough Say Employers...NSW Education Department Just Knew It Was Going To Fail, Didn't Bother Turning Up To Test...Quotes of the Week. The Iraqi dissidents chosen by the United States government to head a new regime in Iraq say they will cancel all oil contracts given to companies from countries who don't help in the invasion of Iraq. US oil companies would be expected to win most of the contracts. Many of these companies are linked to senior officials in the Bush regime, including President Bush himself. (The Nation (US), October 7). Conditions in the Australian call centre industry are bad and getting worse. A Primus Telecommunications employee has been fired for taking a non-business-related phone call, and claims that 50 staff have left AAPT in recent months with stress-related illnesses. The chief executive of research group callcentres.net, Martin Conboy, said the call centre industry's workforce was growing at about 10 per cent a year - but transaction volumes were increasing by more than 30 per cent per year. Although some of this increase is handled by increased automation, Mr Conway said that all those people are working harder. Mr Conboy said that, while mundane tasks had been taken away from agents, they were now expected to offer a higher grade of customer service, which put more pressure on staff. Australia's call centre industry consists of approximately 3850 call centres and 22,000 staff. (Australian Financial Review, February 7). An American court has ruled that an insane prisoner can be forcibly given anti-psychotic drugs to improve his condition, and then executed once he becomes legally sane. Judges ruled that the drugs were 'generally beneficial to the prisoner'. Eligibility for execution is the only unwanted consequence of the medication, they wrote. (New York Times, February 11 and 12). Unions are seeking an increase of $24.60 per week for low paid Australian workers. Unions say the pay increase last year for Australia's top 100 CEOs was enough to pay the minimum wage increase for 59,000 low-paid workers. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is opposing the claim. (Australian Financial Review, February 6). The New South Wales State government scrapped a review of Aboriginal education before the State election. The Minister for Education, John Watkins, said that he stopped a review because he already knew that the State's education policy had failed Aboriginal children. The New South Wales Teachers Federation says that they believe the review was cancelled because of damaging results that would've come out before the State election. (Sydney Morning Herald, February 17). Quotes of the Week: I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. (Major-General Smedley D. Butler). Tony Blair is no longer Prime Minister of Britain, he is the foreign minister of the United States. (Nelson Mandela). Global Politics Quiz 1) Which is the only country in the world to have dropped bombs on over twenty different countries since 1945? 2) Which is the only country to have used nuclear weapons? 3) Which country was responsible for a car bomb which killed 80 civilians in Beirut in 1985, in a botched assassination attempt, thereby making it the most lethal terrorist bombing in modern Middle East history? 4) Which country's illegal bombing of Libya in 1986 was described by the UN Legal Committee as a classic case of terrorism? 5) Which country rejected the order of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to terminate its unlawful use of force against Nicaragua in 1986, and then vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling on all states to observe international law? 6) Which country was accused by a UN-sponsored truth commission of providing direct and indirect support for acts of genocide against the Mayan Indians in Guatemala during the 1980s? 7) Which country unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in December 2001? 8) Which country renounced the efforts to negotiate a verification process for the Biological Weapons Convention and brought an international conference on the matter to a halt in July 2001? 9) Which country prevented the United
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
To the person who mailed me a donation recently - thanks! Could you email me, because I couldn't contact the email in your letter. This week's stories: Grief, Anxiety and Confusion - We Must Be in Church...Democracy Not Very High on the Agenda For US...Threat To World Peace From Rogue State...Iraqi People to Be Liberated From Life Under Saddam - And From Life In General...Free Market Triumphs Again...Quotes of the Week. The support of Sydney's Catholic Archbishop, George Pell, for an American psychologist who claims homosexuality is a curable disorder will only result in untold grief, anxiety and confusion, according to the Australian Psychological Society. Dr Peter Rudegeair claims that, among other categories, those who fail on the sporting field because of poor co-ordination are at risk of turning to homosexuality later in life. Dr Rudegeair's visit to Australia has been promoted by Archbishop Pell, as well as Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart. (Sydney Morning Herald, January 29, and Melbourne Community Voice, January 31). A US national security adviser has implied that the US intends to set up a dictatorship in Iraq after invading it. Condoleezza Rice told Egypt's state-run Al-Ahram newspaper that, once Washington had taken control, it hoped to install an administration made up of Iraqis currently living in the United States. We believe that when Iraq has been liberated from this terrible regime, the Iraqi people will be perfectly capable of running their own affairs, she said, But there will be a certain moment, particularly while military operations are still under way, during which we will need to restore order and US military forces will play a central role in that. (The Age, February 3). An online poll by Time magazine, asking which country poses the greatest danger to world peace in 2003?, has so far given the following results: North Korea 7.3 % Iraq 8.4 % The United States 84.3 % A total of 328726 votes were cast. (Time magazine website poll, as of February 3). British doctor's group Medact estimates that an invasion of Iraq would lead to a total of 48,000 and 260,000 deaths. Civil war within Iraq could add another 20,000 deaths. Later deaths from adverse health effects could add a further 200,000 deaths. These estimates do not include the use of nuclear weapons, which the US has refused to rule out using. US President George W. Bush chose to outline his economic plan at a trucking company warehouse while surrounded by cardboard boxes. The boxes were all stamped with Made in China, so workers preparing for the event taped over every Made in China with a white sticker or packing tape. The President spoke in front of a printed canvas backdrop with pictures of cardboard boxes stamped Made in America in large black letters. (Sydney Morning Herald, January 24). Quotes of the week: Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. - Paulo Freire, educator (1921-1997) It was a hard choice...we think the price is worth it. - Madeleine Albright, then US ambassador to the United Nations, when asked how she felt about the fact that sanctions had killed more than 500,000 Iraqi children. anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on. www.angry.at/politicians - new anarchist website with fliers for download, contacts etc. www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, internet radio, band interviews etc. Also includes the text of 'Escape', an anarchist novel - www.geocities.com/skipnewborn/novel.doc www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review (www.vicnet.net.au/~anarchist - PO Box 20 Parkville VIC 3052) and The Ham (www.theham.cat.org.au), as well as Melbourne Indymedia (www.melbourne.indymedia.org). Media outlets mentioned in All the News That Fits are sources - items are not direct quotes from news media. Background information may have been gathered from sources in addition to media outlets cited. Where no source is cited, the information has been gathered from direct sources. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Low-Income Schools Failing Because of Lack of Funding...Resistance is Useful...Some Terrorists are More Equal Than Others...the War on Terror Successfully Stamps Out Amateur Photography...No Link Between Iraq and Al Qa*da...Family Driven Insane By Immigration Detention...Quote of the week. Some Victorian schools in poor areas can no longer afford basic programs like physical education and art. Carolyn Atkins from the Victorian Council of Social Services, said that core aspects of education are now being paid for by fund-raising on the part of schools themselves. Mr Atkins said that schools in poor areas could only generate $4000 a year through fund-raising, whereas schools in rich areas could generate $40,000. Victoria's shortage of teachers is set to worsen dramatically over the next few years, according to a report by the State government. The report predicts a shortfall of between 600 and 900 teachers each year to 2006. Andrew Blair, of the Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals said that if you have teachers who are teaching in hard-to-supply teaching areas, on occassions you are less likely to be as scrupulous in attending to quality issues, performance issues. Poorer areas and rural areas are far less popular choices for teachers. Data compiled by the principals' body shows that 7 percent of Australian schools had already stopped offering some subjects or programs because of a lack of teachers. (Melbourne Times, January 29, and the Age, January 28). A new British study has found that people who take part in strikes, occupations and political demonstrations experience an improvement in their well-being, which can help them overcome stress, pain, anxiety and depression. Researcher Dr John Drury said that Collective actions, such as protests, strikes, occupations and demonstrations, are less common in the UK than they were perhaps 20 years ago, researcher Dr. John Drury said in a statement. The take-home message from this research therefore might be that people should get more involved in campaigns, struggles and social movements, not only in the wider interest of social change but also for their own personal good. (Reuters, December 23). American statesman and American secretary of state during the Vietnam War, Henry Kissinger, visited Sydney where he met with the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. Prime Minister John Howard, a long-standing admirer of the 72-year-old Kissinger, took time out from holidays to meet him. Mr Kissinger is accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes. He organised a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. He also gave Indonesia a 'green light' to invade East Timor, leading to an estimated 200,000 deaths. Mr Kissinger was also involved in the overthrow of President Allende in Chile, an elected left wing politician who was murdered and replaced with a right wing military dictatorship. (www.sydney.indymedia.org website, January 20). An American amateur photographer named Mike Maginnis has been arrested and accused of being a terrorist - just for taking pictures of buildings in an area where Vice President Cheney was residing. Mike Maginnis says he carries his camera wherever he goes. Maginnis, who works in information technology, frequently photographs such subjects as corporate buildings and communications equipment. As he was putting his camera away, Maginnis found himself confronted by a Denver police officer who demanded that he hand over his film and camera. When he refused to give it up, the officer pushed him to the ground and arrested him. After being brought to the District 1 police station on Decatur Street, Maginnis was made to wait alone in an interrogation room. Two hours later, a Secret Service agent arrived, who identified himself as Special Agent Willse. The agent told Maginnis that his suspicious activities made him a threat to national security, and that he would be charged as a terrorist under the USA-PATRIOT act. The Secret Service agent tried to make Maginnis admit that he was taking the photographs to analyze weaknesses in the Vice President's security entourage and cause terror and mayhem. When Maginnis refused to admit to being any sort of terrorist, the Secret Service agent called him a raghead collaborator and a dirty pinko faggot. After approximately an hour of interrogation, Maginnis was allowed to make a telephone call. Rather than contacting a lawyer, he called the Denver Post and asked for the news desk. This was immediately overheard by the desk sergeant, who hung up the phone and placed Maginnis in a holding cell. Three hours later, Maginnis was finally released, but with no explanation. He received no copy of an arrest report, and no receipt for his confiscated possessions. He was told that he would probably not get his camera back, as it was being held as evidence. Maginnis's lawyer contacted the Denver Police Department
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Some Fires Are More Important Than Others...Bosses Agree, There's No Comparison Between Our Pay and the Plebs'...A Terrorist Is Someone Who's On Their Side...Lying Gets the Swoosh of Approval...Train Drivers Refuse to Move Ammunition for Gulf War...Quote of the Week (wrong!). A resident of public housing in Canberra says that, during the Canberra bushfires, firefighters arrived, started unrolling hoses, then left to protect a farm instead when the fire approached. The man said that the ACT government has been trying to get rid of the Uriarra public housing settlement for years. (ABC radio). Unions say that the top 100 chief executives of Australian companies have received pay rises of 38 per cent in the past 12 months, while employers are opposing a $25 weekly pay rise for ordinary workers. Chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Peter Hendy, says it appears the campaign is a back-door attempt to rein in corporate salaries. Mr Hendy said that that would be really opening a pandora's box. (ABC news website, January 16). A report by Human Rights Watch says that the United States government is ignoring repression by governments, as long as they support their war on terror. The Bush administration is pushing for increased military ties with the Indonesian military in the name of the 'war on terror', and has expanded its International Military Education and Training program, which brings foreign military officers to the United States to be trained. (Herald Sun, January 15, East Timor Action Network and Indonesia Human Rights Network (US), January 23). Multinational Nike may be using 'free speech' as an excuse to lie about its operations in the Third World. The company says that its defence of its alleged sweatshops in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam is protected speech under the United States Constitution - and therefore that they can't be sued for false advertising, even if their statements are lies. The case arose from allegations of physical and verbal abuse, sexual harassment and unsafe working conditions made against Nike during the early to mid-'90s. The company repeatedly denied the allegations, despite a leaked internal audit of a Vietnamese factory by the accountancy firm Ernst and Young, which contradicted Nike's public statements of denial. Many leading US media companies are supporting Nike, including The New York Times and CNN. (The Age, January 13). A group of British train drivers have refused to move a freight train carrying ammunition believed to be intended for British forces being deployed in the Gulf. Railway managers cancelled the Ministry of Defence service after the crewmen said they opposed Tony Blair's threat to attack Iraq. (The Guardian (UK), January 9). Quote of the week: The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. - Nazi leader Hermann Goering. anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on. www.angry.at/politicians - new anarchist website with fliers for download, contacts etc. www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, internet radio, band interviews etc. Also includes the text of 'Escape', an anarchist novel - www.geocities.com/skipnewborn/novel.doc www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review (www.vicnet.net.au/~anarchist - PO Box 20 Parkville VIC 3052) and The Ham (www.theham.cat.org.au), as well as Melbourne Indymedia (www.melbourne.indymedia.org). Media outlets mentioned in All the News That Fits are sources - items are not direct quotes from news media. Background information may have been gathered from sources in addition to media outlets cited. Where no source is cited, the information has been gathered from direct sources. .. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Running People Over Legalised...No, Blood For Oil...US Government Says It Doesn't Need Evidence...Most People Don't Trust Politicians...Cost-Effective and Streamlined, But At the Same Time Not Very Good...Nestle Tries To Get Blood From A Stone...A Terrorist Is Someone Who's Against Us...Quotes of the Week. Police have refused to charge a driver who ran a refugee advocate over in a 4 wheel drive. The Department of Immigration was attempting to fly a sick refugee to the detention centre on Christmas Island, despite medical advice that he was unable to fly. The man was attempting to stop a van which was driving the refugee to the airport. The driver had stopped but then restarted their engine, ran over the man's leg, and then reversed back over it. US government officials are considering proposals to take Iraq's oil revenue as 'spoils of war' after invading it, to finance their occupation. (The Age, January 11). United Nations weapons inspectors have said that they have found no smoking gun - no evidence that Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the lack of a smoking gun does not mean there's not one there...you don't really have to have a smoking gun White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that we know for a fact that there are weapons there, and explained the lack of evidence by saying the problem with guns that are hidden is you can't see their smoke. (The Age, January 11). 83% of Australians believe that politicians aren't trustworthy, according to an online poll. (ninemsn.com.au, November 27). Standards in universities are falling, according to a new study, and many lecturers say they are under pressure to pass students who should be failing. The 178 page study by the Department of Education, Science and Training interviewed more than 2000 academics and found a deep sense of concern about standards, with the majority saying that standards have fallen in the last ten years. The study also says that universities are unable to provide evidence for claims that they have high standards. Universities have have been made to run in a more 'free market' fashion, relying more on full fee-paying students and on running their own income-generating enterprises. (The Age, January 12). Food and coffee multinational Nestle is demanding $US6 million ($A10.6 million) from the government of the world's poorest nation, Ethiopia. Ethiopia is struggling with its worst famine for almost 20 years. The money is compensation for an Ethiopian business which the previous military government nationalised in 1975. According to Oxfam, the amount could feed amillion people for a month. The business was not owned by Nestle at the time, but Nestle bought the firm's former parent company in 1986. Last month, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said six million people needed emergency food aid. This could increase to 15 million soon. The famine, brought on by the failure of rains for the third successive year, has been intensified by a collapse in the price of coffee which supports a quarter of the country's population. Ethiopia has the lowest income per head in the world, with the average person surviving on $US100 a year. More than 10 per cent of its children die before their first birthday. Aid agencies believe the famine could be worse than 1984's in which one million people died. Nestle, the world's largest coffee processor, made $US5.5 billion profit last year. (The Guardian (UK), December 20). The Immigration Minister has banned an anti-globalisation protestor from entering Australia, and refused to say why. 22 year old Doyle Canning's only conviction is for taking part in a sit-in at a US Congressman's office. She has been classed as a 'dangerous alien', putting her in the same category as people with terrorist connections. Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock has refused to tell Ms Canning, the Commonwealth Ombudsman, or the press why he or intelligence agencies see her as a threat to Australia. (The Australian, January 3, 2003). Quotes of the Week: This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe that the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the American imperialists that our enemies always claimed we wereRome did not stoop to containment; it conquered. And so should we. The President's Real Goal in Iraq, Jay Bookman, Atlanta-Journal Constitution, September 29, 2002. If you ask [Palestinian children] to draw some shapes, many will draw something like a square, a circle, a tank and a triangle. That's how ever-present the [Isreali] Occupation is for these children. (www.burningriver.org). I
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Police May Have Murdered Suspect...Treat People Like Animals, and Funnily Enough...Private Schools Allowed to Persecute Students...Police and ASIO To Get New Powers By the Back Door?...Internet Filters Engage in Secret Censorship...37 Months' Jail For Joking About the President...No Right of Conscience for Israeli Soldiers...Quote of the Week. A policeman says that members of the Victorian drug squad planted a gun after they shot Graeme Jensen in 1988, and falsely claimed that they fired on him in self-defence. Detective Sergeant Malcolm Rosenes was in charge of the surveillance unit following Jensen, who was suspected of armed robbery, when he was shot. He has now been arrested on drug charges, and made the claim to a police Ethical Standards Department team investigating corruption in the drug squad. (The Age, January 4). Refugees caused about $8 million damage to the Baxter, Port Hedland, Woomera and Christmas Island detention centres over the Christmas period. The government has denied that their refugee policy is in crisis. Refugees suspected of causing damage to the centres have been held in jails and police lockups. Acting Immigration Minister Daryl Williams said that they are in administrative detention and they can be held indefinitely, without being charged or facing trial. (The Age, January 1 and 4). The New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Board says that both Labor and Liberal state governments have ignored persecution of gay people by religious schools. The Board's chairman, Chris Puplick, said that it is outrageous that private and independent schools are still able to impose terms and conditions of discrimination against gay and lesbian students which would be unacceptable in state schools, despite the fact that they take public money to finance their activities. it is unacceptable and it occurs only because of the bloody-minded gutlessness of successive state governments. Mr Puplick said that governments rolled over whenever the independent schools - particularly Catholic schools - have threatened them politically. The Victorian Equal Opportunity Act allows discrimination by religious organisations if it conforms with the doctrines of the religion. Almost all religions condemn homosexuality. Churches and religious schools in New South Wales are exempt from the Anti-Discrimination Act altogether. In August a 16 year old gay student sued Melbourne's Hillcrest Christian College. The student said that the school principal told him to lie about his sexuality, and another staff member told him he had the devil in him but that she could get him straightened out. (Melbourne Community Voice, December 20). The new Australian Crime Commission will have extensive powers, including the power to require suspects to answer questions under threat of five years jail. The Director-General of ASIO and police commissioners will both sit on the Commission. The government recently attempted to give ASIO extra powers, but was defeated in Parliament after public pressure. The Commission was supported by both the government and Labor Party. (The Australian, December 27). A study of 'web filters' - programs designed to stop children accessing pornography - has found that they also block health information sites. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that gay sites in particular were blocked, even if they had nothing to do with sex. The words gay and lesbian were blocked more often than any other terms. (Melbourne Community Voice, December 20). An American who made a remark about a burning bush was sentenced this month to 37 months in prison for threatening to kill or harm the president. Richard Humphreys said he got into a barroom discussion with a truck driver in which he joked about the biblical expression burning bush. A bartender who overheard the conversation knew that Bush was visiting the area the next day and so telephoned police. I said God might speak to the world through a burning Bush, Humphreys testified during his trial. I had said that before and I thought it was funny. (SchNews, Christmas 2002 issue). Israel's High Court has ruled that Israeli soldiers have no right to refuse to serve in the occupied territories of Palestine. The soldiers said that their duties there involved dominating, expelling, starving and humiliating Palestinians. At least 1755 Palestinians and 675 Isrealis have been killed since September 2000 in fighting over Israel's occupation of Palestine. Palestinians recently accused Israeli troops of beating a Palestinian teenager to death. At least one soldier will be returned to a military prison for refusing to serve. (The Age, January 1). Quote of the Week: We have 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation, our real job in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which permit us to maintain this position
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Free Choice Is Fine But People Aren't Choosing What The Government Wants...US Government Favours Nuclear War...And Decides They Own the Moon...Kerry Packer Stole My Water...Papua New Guinea Still A Colony. The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Tony Abbott, is taking what the Canberra Times called new steps to crush unionism in the Australian Public Service. A confidential Cabinet submission obtained by The Canberra Times reveals Mr Abbott is planning to force public servants to sign non-union, individual Australian Workplace Agreements (AWA's). He also wants to ban union-based certified agreements. The government's rhetoric on industrial relations is based around free choice. AWA's and non-union agreements have been available since 1996. However most people, when given a choice, have chosen collective agreements negotiated by unions. Only 5 percent of the public service have taken up AWA's. Below senior executive level the figure is less than 1 percent. Non-union agreements have fallen to only 35 percent. Even staff in Mr Abbott's own Department have chosen a union-based agreement. Individual agreements are said to give more power to management and so lead to lower pay and worse conditions. Mr Abbott recommended that: Individual AWAs be compulsory for all new public servants. All jobs be advertised on the basis that the successful applicant be offered an AWA. All promotions and transfers resulting from advertised vacancies be contingent on AWAs. Agency heads must offer AWAs to all employees. All certified agreements must be negotiated directly with employees under the non-union Section 170LK of the Workplace Relations Act. The Community and Public Sector Union said that some of the recommendations might contravene the Government's own financial management legislation and would also be an attack on the merit principle. (Canberra Times, December 17). US government policy now favours pre-emptive nuclear strikes - that is, launching nuclear weapons against countries that have not attacked the US. The policy favours strikes against countries whether or not they have nuclear weapons themselves. (Washington Post, December 11). The US government has given a private company the OK to start commercialising the moon. The TransOribal Corporation of California is expecting to start making money within two years. No other country has agreed that the US has any rights to the moon. (WSM, December 3). The world's poorest nations, where 800 million are hungry and 40 million are infected with HIV, could solve their basic problems of food, clean water and health care with only 4% of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people on the planet. (Mainstream Media Project, Bread for the World Institute, and the 2001 United Nations Development Report, reported by WSM, December 3). The Australian government secretly agreed with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, that they would withhold aid from Papua New Guinea, unless they adopted spending cuts and other 'free market' policies. The Australian government provided money to PNG's previous government, which allowed them to spend large amounts of money before the election. The Australian government has a history of interfering with Papua New Guinea, which used to be under its control. The World Bank has a history of interfering with poor countries in general, enforcing 'structural adjustment' programs by threatening to withhold aid. The poor countries are dependent on aid largely because of unpayable debts. Worldwide, almost ten million people have been displaced by World Bank financed 'development' projects. In PNG generous figures show the adult illiteracy rate as 35% (much higher for females), and life expectancy is only 59 years. Most World Bank loans aim at strengthening industry and government rather than health or education. In fact it has forced the government to introduce higher fees for public education and health, abolished controls on basic foodstuffs, repealed the minimal wages act (1992), and demanded the privatisation of State-owned enterprises. In 1990 the 'Land Mobilisation Act' called for the privatisation of communally owned tribal land. Australia provides about $20 million per year in military funding to PNG. Money from AusAID, the official Australian aid agency, has been spent training 'mobile squads' who defend mining operations in PNG, which are largely run by Australian-based multinationals. According the ABC reports the squads are also trained in burning villages. One mobile squad was used to shoot protestors after the police refused, killing two people and injuring another 17. Mobile squads are considered more 'reliable' than either the police or the army, whose members largely supported the protets. Dan Weise, former World Bank representative in Port Moresby, says that specific instructions from Canberra were given to only
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Former ALP Premier and Minister Says Party Now the Same as the Liberals...Is That A Sigh of Relief Or Are You Just Dying?...A Terrorist is Whoever We Call A Terrorist...Government May Have Been Able to Save 353 Refugees... A senior member of the Labor Party has quit her position in the shadow cabinet, saying that the party has become basically the same as the Liberals. Carmen Lawrence was the party's spokesperson on Aboriginal affairs. She is also a former West Australian Premier and was a Minister under the Keating government. Dr Lawrence said that the party's support for war with Iraq, for tax rebates for private health insurance, and for public funding for wealthy private schools, were basically the same as the Liberals. Dr Lawrence said that the final straw was the party's new refugee policy. As a concession to refugee supporters in the ALP, the party leadership allowed some of them to sit on the committe which drafted the policy. However their suggestions were then over-ruled. The policy maintains mandatory detention, does not give immediate permanent residency to proven genuine refugees, and maintains the government's 'excision' of Christmas Island from Australian migration laws (even though the ALP criticised the government for this). (The Age, December 6). A woman who has died of lung cancer has been ordered to repay $700,000 compensation. Rolah McCabe was given the compensation after suing British America Tobacco Australia Ltd. Mrs McCabe said that, when she started smoking, tobacco companies knew that smoking was dangerous but had hidden this information from the public. The company destroyed internal documents that may have effected its case. A senior partner with law firm Slater and Gordon said that the decision would only cause sighs of relief in corporate boardrooms. (The Age, December 7). Police in New South Wales will have the power to search without a warrant and without reasonable suspicion under proposed new terrorism laws. Although the new laws are supposedly designed to deal with terrorism, they have been announced soon after a large protest against the World Trade Organisation in Sydney. (Sydney Morning Herald, November 19). The Australian government may have known the exact location of the 'SIEV-X' boat, and so may have been able to save the 353 refugees who drowned when it sank. Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty is attempting to claim public-interest immunity to avoid revealing whether police used tracking devices to trace asylum-seeker boats heading from Indonesia. Australian authorities have admitted knowing at the time about the boat's probable departure but have denied any definitive knowledge about where it sank, and say they failed to spot the boat during twice-daily reconnaissance flights. They have also admitted involvement in disruption activities to upset the activities of people smugglers in Indonesia and attempts to stop people leaving, but have not given any details. (Canberra Times, November 22). anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on. www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, band interviews etc. Now with internet radio. NEW! Also includes the text of 'Escape', a new anarchist novel - www.geocities.com/skipnewborn/novel.doc www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review (www.vicnet.net.au/~anarchist - PO Box 20 Parkville VIC 3052) and The Ham ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), as well as Melbourne Indymedia (www.melbourne.indymedia.org). .. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Breaking And Entering to be Legalised...The 'I'd Quite Like A Holiday In The Pacific' Solution...It's Not Assault When Your Boss Does It...No Connection Between Refugees, and Terrorists Trying to Enter Australia...Quote of the week. Police will have the power to secretly break into people's homes and cars in order to search them, under new laws proposed by Victorian Premier Steve Bracks. (The Age, November 23). The government's 'Pacific Solution' to refugees has cost 34 times its budget. The Department of Immigration spent $71.4 million on consultants in the 12 months to June 30, up from $2.1 million the previous year. Prime Minister John Howard's hardline stance on asylum seekers is now the single expense in terms of hiring private consultants. Immigration shot from the smallest spender on consultancies in 2000-01 to the biggest spender last year. Construction of the new asylum seeker processing centre on Christmas Island will cost $153.7 million, as well as operating costs of $34.4 million over four years. (Courier-Mail, November 18). No asylum seeker has been rejected for entry into Australia on 'security grounds' (that is, because of links to terrorist groups). (Sydney Morning Herald, November 18). An employer who burned an employee with a cigarette and an aerosol can has been fined only $8000. Kenneth Joachim Wosgein, owner of Campbellfield company All About Sheetmetal, pleaded guilty in Broadmeadows Magistrates Court of failing to provide a safe system of work and adequate supervision of employees, after he attacked and racially abused one of his workers over a period of several months. The worker - who has not been named - said he was called a wog or a chocolate frog and punched and burnt with cigarette butts. Mr Wosgein admitted to burning the worker with a cigarette and to burning his tracksuit pants with an aerosol can. (Courier-Mail, November 19). Quote of the week: Talking with a child-care consultant once, I mentioned an American child psychologist, Ron Lally, whose research showed that the overall size of a creche matters. For children 'small is beautiful'. She burst out 'but Anne, those small centres are the least economic'. Anne Manne, journalist, writing in the Age, November 23. anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review (www.vicnet.net.au/~anarchist - PO Box 20 Parkville VIC 3052) and The Ham ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). Some other Australian anarchist websites: www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, band interviews etc. Now with internet radio. www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. .. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Government Ignored Rape...Nursing Home Crisis Impacting On Public Hospital System...Another Liberal Party...It's Not Terror When Our Government Does It... An asylum seeker was gang raped in an Australian jail and this was ignored by authorities, who later sent him to the same jail. The 23-year-old Angolan man had been returned by the Immigration Department to the same remand centre in Sydney where he claimed he was raped by five prisoners. In a letter written eight months after the alleged rape, he begged to be removed from Australia because of fear of other inmates. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has found the Immigration Department had breached the human rights of asylum seekers by putting them in prisons with hardened criminals. The most serious finding was that the Immigration Department ignored the rape claims of the Angolan, listed only as 'Mr AB'. Mr AB had claimed he was raped at knifepoint at Silverwater in April 1998. He told immigration authorities in July, but in August was returned to Silverwater where he was held until he was deported in April 2000. An investigation failed to substantiate the allegation, but the commissioner said there was enough evidence to believe his story. In a letter to the Immigration Department in February 1999, Mr AB said: I just want to get away from people who want to put my future in danger here in an Australian jail. Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock attacked the commission's gratuitous advice. (Herald Sun, November 15). Victoria's public hospital system is being further overstretched by the crisis in nursing homes - on any given day, an average of 614 public hospital beds are taken up by people waiting for nursing home places. Hospitals say that waiting lists have gotten longer and surgery has been delayed as a result. (The Age, November 17). A political analyst has said that the Labor and Liberal parties are virtually identical. Looking at the upcoming Victorian election, Dr David Hayward of Swinburne University's Institute for Social Research says that the differences are comparable to the differences between Coke and Pepsi. (The Age, November 7). According to a new report by British health professionals, a war against Iraq could kill half a million people, mostly civilians. 260,000 are likely to die in the conflict and its immediate aftermath, with a further 200,000 dying later from famine and disease - the US will target bombs on water systems and other infrastructure to cripple the country and will ensure these deaths. In the report's worst case scenario, nuclear weapons are fired on Iraq in response to a chemical or biological attack on Kuwait or Israel, leaving a massive 3.9 million people dead. (SchNEWS). anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review (www.vicnet.net.au/~anarchist - PO Box 20 Parkville VIC 3052) and The Ham ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). Some other Australian anarchist websites: www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, band interviews etc. Now with internet radio. www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. .. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Proof That Bosses Are Worse Than Useless...New Refugee Centre Has Same Old Brutality...I Don't Care What You Want, You're Getting Freedom of Choice... Like many people in Argentina, the employees at the Grissinopoli bread factory were caught up in the country's economic collapse, after the government completely followed International Monetary Fund policy. They saw their weekly salary steadily decline from 150 pesos to 100 and then to 40. Finally, with the firm headed for bankruptcy, the workers demanded compensation. The plant manager offered 10 pesos to each of the 14 employees, and asked them to leave the factory. He closed the shutters, and we stayed inside, said Norma Pintos, 49, who has worked at the factory for 11 years. We just wanted to keep coming to work. What began as a last-ditch effort to save their jobs, or at the very least to get some back wages, turned into an effort to gain control of the factory. The workers began taking turns guarding the factory 24 hours a day, surviving by asking for spare change at the public university and selling food on the street. Four months later, the city government handed the factory handed it over to the workers. In little more than a year, workers have seized control of dozens of foundering factories across Argentina. In some cases the factories have not just survived, but are doing better than under their previous ownerships. In February, the owners of the Ghelco factory locked the doors and soon afterwards filed for bankruptcy. The workers, who were owed the equivalent of thousands of dollars in back wages and benefits, were left to fend for themselves as they awaited the outcome of a long and uncertain legal process. At the urging of Luis Caro, a lawyer who has represented some 40 occupied factories, the workers formed a co-operative and mounted a permanent protest in front of the factory, preventing attempts to remove any equipment or inventory. After three months the bankruptcy judge allowed them temporarily to rent the factory. In September, the Buenos Aires legislature expropriated Ghelco and gave it to the co-operative. Now 43 of Ghelco's former employees, all of whom worked on the factory floor, run the company. Workers at another factory are earning more than twice as much as they did as employees and are set to take on 20 new members. They are expanding the plant and have plans to export their products. The fellows still think this is all a dream, said the co-operative's president, Roberto Salcedo, 49. Nowadays if you lose your job you know that you aren't going to find work again, and much less at our age. The workers say that one reason they can run the factory better than their managers and bosses is because of the money freed by getting rid of the owners' hefty take and the higher salaries paid to managerial staff. As in most of the occupied factories, the Union and Force Co-operative has an egalitarian pay scale. Decisions are made by direct vote in regular assemblies and each worker earns the same, based on the previous week's profits. Caro estimates that workers have taken over 100 factories and other businesses nationwide. While most takeovers have been at factories, they have also included a supermarket, a medical clinic, a mine and a shipyard. With local support for the factory-occupying workers strong, authorities have had little success removing them by force. In March, about 200 people from neighbourhood assemblies and human rights groups converged on the worker-controlled Brukman textile factory, forcing the retreat of 70 riot police who were acting on a judge's order to reclaim the property. The idea that a capitalist is needed to organise production is being demystified, said Christian Castillo, a sociology professor at the University of Buenos Aires. (Sydney Morning Herald, November 9). Detainees at the new Baxter refugee detention centre had their heads kicked by guards during an altercation. In an email, Anne Simpson, from the Bellingen Rural Australians Refugees group, said an asylum seeker told her about 30 guards in full riot gear beat a detainee during the incident. Another refugee advocate was told detainees had to lie on the ground and were kicked in the head by guards. (news.com.au, November 5). The Community and Public Sector Union has called on WR Minister Tony Abbott to come clean on reports he has proposed that the entire Commonwealth public sector workforce to be put on Australian Workplace Agreements - the unpopular system of individual contracts favoured by the government. AWAs involve individuals bargaining directly with managers without union involvement. Unions say that this gives all the power to management and leads to lower wages and worse conditions. The minister's spokesperson refused to comment. CPSU national secretary Adrian O'Connell said the reforms, if true, would damage the integrity of the public service. If Tony Abbott
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Detention Centre Worker Fired For Refusing To Beat Refugees...Government Against Some Terrorism...Government Lied About Refguees To Win Election...And Here We Go Again... A gym instructor working at a refugee detention centre has been sacked after she refused to beat a detainee, according to Marion Le from the Independent Committee for Refugee Advocacy. (news.com.au website, November 7). Australian ships are currently helping with the American fleet in the Persian Gulf enforcing an embargo against Iraq which, according to the United Nations Children's Fund, has led to the unnecessary deaths of more than 600,000 Iraqi children. In Indonesia, Australians, together with their American counterparts, have restarted training the Indonesian military, who carried out many human rights abuses, especially in East Timor. For almost 40 years, Australian governments played a significant role in helping the Indonesian government commit acts of terrorism against their own people. In 1965, the then prime minister Harold Holt joked about the mass murder that accompanied the seizure of power by General Suharto, the west's man. With 500,000 to a million communist sympathisers knocked off, he said, I think it's safe to assume a reorientation has taken place. During the Suharto dictatorship Australian prime ministers ignored the acts of the Indonesian government, mainly because of Australian companies' investments there. Indonesia's invasion of East Timor, which cost the lives of a third of the opulation, was described by the foreign minister Gareth Evans as irreversible. As Evans put it, there were zillions of dollars to be made from the oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea. (John Pilger, October 17). Australia's government deliberately lied to the public during last year's election when it said that refugees had thrown their children into the sea to attract the attention of an Australian naval patrol, an inquiry has found. An Australian senate report said that Peter Reith engaged in the deliberate misleading of the Australian public concerning a matter of intense political interest during an election period. He claimed that refugees on a ship off the country's northwest coast had been throwing their children overboard, in an attempt to force the Australian navy to recover them and allow them to claim asylum. Photographs of Australian naval officers attempting to save refugees after the sinking of the boat were released to the media and presented as images of children thrown into the water. The claims were repeated by leading members of the government including John Howard. It said that the children overboard story had been propagated for political reasons. The way it was handled was to be a public show of the government's strength on the border protection issue. The behaviour of the unauthorised arrivals was to be a public justification for the policy. (The Guardian, October 24). A viedotape of an incident at a detention centre where detainees were allegedly beaten by guards would not be publicly released, Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock has said. Asylum seekers in the Baxter facility in South Australia alleged they were savagely beaten by guards in full riot gear last week after a detainee, who was denied medical help, broke a window in frustration. Mr Ruddock said the tape would be given to the Commonwealth Ombudsman who was investigating the allegations. However, he said it could not be publicly released as it would breach the detainees' privacy. (news.com.au website, November 7) anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review (www.vicnet.net.au/~anarchist - PO Box 20 Parkville VIC 3052) and The Ham ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). Some other Australian anarchist websites: www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, band interviews etc. Now with internet radio. www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. .. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:leftlink;vicnet.net.au Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:majordomo;vicnet.net.au?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsub: mailto:majordomo;vicnet.net.au?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Rape Not That Serious, According to Victorian Legal System...Equal Opportunity Isn't For Poor People...Refugees An Easier Target Than Terrorists...It's Official: Bosses Are Evil and Insane...Quote of the Week. One rapist convicted in Victoria last year was given a sentence of six weeks. One in five rapists convicted in Victoria did not go to jail at all. (Herald Sun, Oct 29). The Victorian Equal Opportunity Commission is not allowed to fight systematic discrimination by industry groups and employers, particularly against low-income earners, according to its head. A new booklet called 'Paying Too Much' says that private companies such as banks, electricity and water companies, and phone companies, systematically exploit, ignore and overcharge low-income earners. Andrea Sharam, co-author of the booklet, says that companies often exclude low-income neighbourhoods or groups of customers from services (called 'red-lining'), or offer better deals to richer customers. (Melbourne Times, October 23). The Federal Government has been accused of directing military and intelligence resources at detecting asylum seekers rather than terrorists. Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett said that the stupidity of that policy, and the focus on the so-called security and protection issues in something as pointless as detecting refugees rather than [terrorism] has been emphasised in a tragic way. The Government's position also had wasted hundred of millions of dollars, Senator Bartlett said. (Sunday Times, October 16). Psychologists probing the wave of corporate crime in America have noticed that psychopaths and chief executives tend to share many personality traits - in particular an ability to appear plausible and attract followers while at the same time hiding low self-esteem. Robert Hare, of the University of British Columbia, one of the leading experts on psychopathic behaviour, thinks boardrooms are full of people who have what he calls charisma without conscience. If I couldn't study psychopaths in prison, I would go down to the stock exchange, he says. Dr Babiak and Dr Hare say some of the traits most admired by corporations suit the profile of the average psychopath. They tend to have a facade of charm that is very effective in ingratiating themselves with people in power and which hides their anti-social tendencies, says Dr Babiak. It is very easy for psychopaths to play up to what the establishment wants. If that is getting in early and staying late, it's no problem. Most of them can't believe how easy it is. As America attempts to rid itself of the showbiz chief executives, boardroom recruiters are taking more trouble to delve into candidates' psychological make-up. Psychopaths tend to be arrogant, short-tempered, manipulative, deceitful, lacking in empathy and remorse, and with a need for self-aggrandisement while apparently being rational. (The Age, October 29). quote of the week: St Augustine tells the story of a conversation betweenAlexander the Great and a pirate he captured. How dare you molest the seas? asks Alexander. How dare you molest the whole world? the pirate replies. Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief. You, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor. John Pilger. anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review (www.vicnet.net.au/~anarchist - PO Box 20 Parkville VIC 3052) and The Ham ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). Some other Australian anarchist websites: www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, band interviews etc. Now with internet radio. www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. .. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:leftlink;vicnet.net.au Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:majordomo;vicnet.net.au?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsub: mailto:majordomo;vicnet.net.au?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Jails Creating Criminals...New York Firefighters Get Words But No More...Selective Compassion After Bali Bombing... A former nurse at a jail has said that criminals are routinely brutalised to the point that jail makes them far more likely to commit serious crimes, not less. The former nurse, identified only as Jenny, told one story of a man in his 20s who was raped by other prisoners. She went to his cell where he was curled up in a corner. I have never seen anyone so scared. It was one of the most horrific things. He could barely speak. I was trying to comfort him, and in the background the guards were laughing, as if it was a joke. I managed, after a while, to coax him from his cell - he was like a pup that had been badly beaten. As we were walking across the yard, they [the guards] were mimicking how he was walking, crouched over, and laughing at him. He'd been so badly raped that his bowel had ruptured. That seemed to provide an additional element of humour. He was just a boy. A prison officer working in the same jail has confirmed Jenny's story. The victim, who was serving a short sentence for drug offences, had been placed in a cell with a man who was in for 15 years for a series of violent armed robberies, and who had a history of standing over younger prisoners. The victim had filled in two complaint forms saying that he feared he would be raped and asking to be moved to another cell. They had been ignored. The victim was too scared to say anything for fear of retribution. A prison official told Jenny that it is not a rape in that case. It is just institutional sex and refused to have him taken to a sexual assault unit. Jenny even had to argue for him to be taken to hospital. The rapist also had a 'notifiable disease' - possibly AIDS. Jenny said that the prisoners are treated as being beneath animals by the guards. Forensic psychiatrist Dr Yolande Lucire told a similar story. An inmate had been banged up between two sadistic psychopaths who had beaten him up and thrown hot water over him. They knew he had money in a bank account on the outside and were threatening to send people over to his sister's house to rape her unless he handed over the money. Dr Lucire says prison authorities knew about it but did nothing. Dr Lucire interviewed the prisoner and made a submission to prison and health authorities. Ron Woodham, then senior assistant commissioner of the NSW Corrective Services Department, and now Commissioner, wrote to her saying that it is my intention to deny you access to every NSW correctional centre. The majority of prisoners are drug addicts and are sentenced for drug-related crimes. They are placed on methadone for their prison term. One officer said with methadone, we are just keeping them addicted to drugs for their sentence, making them easier to handle, and then they get out and go straight back on heroin. Another officer said that there are inmates who would genuinally like to use their time inside to come clean, but there is nowhere for them...But there is a pervading attitude in the Department that drugged prisoners are easier to deal with. One expert said that the only real difference between the 19th century prisons and the today's is that the toilets flush. They're just as brutal as they've ever been. An officer at a Sydney jail said you hear all these people talking about how jail is a holiday...but gee, if they only knew. I alwasy think about what it would be like if my son got sent to jail - I mean, there are plenty of good kids who, for whatever reason, can go a bit off the rails. If he was a rough-and-tumble sort of bloke I suppose he could survive. He'd be scarred forever - he'd never be the same. But if he was in any way soft or weak and he got more than, say, four or five years, I'd almost wish him dead rather than see him go through that system, knowing what happens. I really would. Today there are more than 21,000 people in jail at any one time - almost double the number a decade ago. Over the last 15 years the rise in the number of people in jail has been matched by an equivalent increase in the numbers of crimes. This seems to contradict the 'law and order' theory that tougher sentences and more jails will reduce crime. (Good Weekend, Oct 19). New York firefighters, despite being hailed as heroes for their role after the World Trade Centre bombing, have been refused an adequate wage. Steve Cassidy from the Uniformed Firefighters Association says firefighters appreciated the praise they had gotten from politicians, but we need a living wage. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has asked all city agencies to prepare for deep cuts in next year's budget. (The Age, Oct 12). Nearly half the victims of the Bali bombing were local Balinese - despite the presentation of the bombing in the media as an 'attack on Australia'. The Balinese victims have not been airlifted to Western
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: License to Kill...Labor Leader Tries to Stop Debate...Union Leader Could Be Jailed for Protecting Shop Stewards...Woman To Be Deported, Seperated From Child...Public Service Heads Out Of Touch...Refugee Put in Danger By Immigration Department... Murderers are having their crimes reduced, or even being let off completely, by using a legal defence called the 'gay panic defence'. In one case in the early 1990s, a man was charged with murder after bludgeoning a gay man, stabbing him 40 times, and setting fire to his flat. He was only found guilty of manslaughter after he pleaded the 'gay panic defence'. The victim had supposedly put his hand on the murderer's knee after they had been drinking for several hours. (Melbourne Community Voice). Labor leader Simon Crean has tried to stop any debate of the ALP's refugee policy at an upcoming party conference on 'modernising' the party. Labor's policy is to support mandatory detention of refugees, which goes against the views of many of its rank and file members. (Sydney Morning Herald). A union leader could be jailed for up to six months after he was formally charged yesterday with being in contempt of the building royal commission. Victorian secretary of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, Martin Kingham, repeatedly has refused commission requests to reveal identities of hundreds of shop stewards who attended union-run training courses last year and earlier this year. Mr Kingham said he could not comply with the demands because he feared those listed would be harassed and blacklisted for future employment. Mr Kingham said the laying of charges against him had been accelerated as part of a political point-scoring exercise by Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott, who he accused of trying to increase industrial conflict in Victoria before the state election. (news.com.au) A woman will be deported from Australia without her baby, after being forced to leave her country because she witnessed a murder. The woman has been in Australia for five years, and in Villawood detention centre for five months. The day she arrived at the centre, her son, still being breastfed, was taken by the authorities. She said she cried for two months straight, during which time she was only allowed to see her child for about an hour a week. During her first months at Villawood, she says her child lost recognition of her face, only responding to her song. The woman witnessed a murder while working in at a casino in Vladivostok six years years ago. The following night she was beaten and raped by the casino security guards and suffered a miscarriage. She was six months pregnant. When she went to the local police, she said, they beat and raped her. She then fled to Moscow, and then left Russia. She decided to come to Australia after she learnt that her parents had been beaten and her mother's leg broken. The baby was born in Australia and is an Australian citizen like his father, who will keep him. (Sydney Morning Herald). Senior public servants are out of touch with their older workers. A new survey has found that four out of five public servants aged 45-plus want to keep working beyond the age of 55, but their bosses think their employees would rather take their superannuation and retire. 84 percent of bosses thought superannuation would most influence their employees' decisions, only 40 per cent of public servants thought so. Another 23 per cent rated their own health as most influential, compared with bosses who rated it at only 8 per cent. Similarly, 15 per cent rated 'other interests' highest, while none of their bosses rated it at all. Care for grandchildren scored 97 per cent from agencies but 47 per cent from employees; working from home scored 96 per cent from agencies but 67 per cent from employees. Mr Hume said that although managers said they placed a high level of importance on some issues, few were actively implementing measures to address them. Asked if their agency was aware of ageing workforce issues, just 48 per cent of public servants thought so, compared with 90 per cent of bosses. And while all the bosses rated themselves prepared to deal with the issues, only 40 per cent of public servants agreed. A man has been taken from his hospital bed by the Immigration Department and flown to detention in Nauru - even though there are limited medical facilities there, and he suffers from a severe sickness which means it isn't safe for him to fly. The man suffers from Deep Vein Thrombosis. He was being held in detention in Nauru and was flown to Australia for emergency medical treatment. The Immigration Department planned to fly him back to Nauru in the middle of the night even though he was still sick. People are not supposed to fly for six months after treatment for his condition. Refugee advocates including a doctor, a lawyer, and a representative of his ethnic community were all
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Private Trams Efficient At Collecting Corporate Welfare...Wealth Gap Not Too Bad On Paper...WEF Blockade Violence Never Happened...Support For War Decreases...Ruddock's Daughter Leaves Australia Over Immigration Policy...Free Market Drives People To Suicide... Yarra Trams, the private company that took over part of Melbourne's public transport system, was recently given $2.4 million of public money for improving reliablity and punctuality. On the same day, passengers on a tram were told to get off and get on the tram behind, allegedly to improve the company's statistics for punctuality. The Public Transport Users Group and the tram drivers' union both say that trams routinely refuse to stop for passengers or force passengers to get off so that they can get to depots on time, allowing the company to collect their bonus from the government. (Melbourne Times). The richest 20 percent of Australians have over half the wealth. This figure would be higher but for the fact that the figures count superannuation, even though people often can't access it and may lose it if, for example, the stock market crashes. (MX). Of the many protestors arrested at the Crown Casino blockade in 2000 and charged, only one has ended up being convicted of anything. Before, during and long after the protests, TV stations and newspapers ran many stories accusing protestors of engaging in large-scale violence. Protestors were accused of throwing metal bolts and bags of urine at police, spitting, of training to attack police, and so on. No one in the media has corrected any of these stories or apologised. (Herald Sun). A poll carried out for SBS has found that support for war with Iraq has dropped dramatically over the last few weeks. Approximately three out of ten people in Australia now favour war with Iraq. 'Hidden taxes' are becoming more common. They are often used as 'corporate welfare', to raise money to bail out companies. Examples are a tax on every packet of sugar (to rescue the sugar industry), one on milk (for the dairy industry), and a tax to raise money to insure doctors. The taxes are usually called levies, tarrifs, duties, or surcharges, rather than taxes. (the Age). The daughter of Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock says she is so against her father's policy on immigration that she has left Australia to do volunteer aid work. Kirsty Ruddock says that the government's immigration policies go against the values that Mr Ruddock taught her as a child. She said that balancing budgets does not give you an excuse not to treat people as human beings. She also said that Mr Ruddock should stop wearing his Amnesty International pin when he's talking about immigration. Mr Ruddock's wife Heather supported her daughter. She said that while Mr Ruddock was not a racist, some people support him for what I see as the wrong reasons. Journalist Miranda Devine, who supports the government's policy on asylum seekers, wrote in her column that Ms Ruddock did not really oppose her father, but appears to be suffering an ailment similar to Stockholm Syndrome - a condition where people captured by terrorists come to identify with their captors. (ABC news website, the Australian, Herald Sun). The suicide rates in Britain and Australia surged whenever conservative governments were in power, according to medical research. University of Sydney researchers analysed suicide figures for New South Wales between 1901 and 1998, and compared them with the prevailing political regime. When conservatives ruled both the local state and national federal governments, men were 17 percent likelier to commit suicide, while women were 40 percent likelier to kill themselves. Middle-aged and older people were most at risk. The study is published in the Journal of Epidemiolgy and Community Health (JECH) -- a politically neutral research organ that is part of the British Medical Association (BMA) publishing stable. It took into account periods of drought, during which suicide rates were high among suffering rural families, and World War II, in which the rates fell. In an accompanying editorial, a team led by Mary Shaw, a doctor of social medicine at Bristol University in western England, said the Australian trend was reflected by government figures for England and Wales between 1901 and 2000. British suicide rates soared under Margaret Thatcher, who was prime minister from 1979-90, reaching 121 self-inflicted deaths per million, a tally only surpassed in the worst years of the 1930s Great Depression, when it was 135 deaths per million. The Australian authors, led by Richard Taylor, professor at the university's School of Public Health, say that conservatives traditionally have a less interventionist and more pro-market policy than Labor, which could cause alienation and a sense of exclusion. Both sides of politics have moved more and more towards pro-market policies,
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Boss of the Year...Australians Favour Strong Action By Someone Else...Advertising Industry Finds Itself Not Guilty...Golden Circle Wins Prize for Short Fiction...McDonalds Launches Strategy to Promote World Anti-McDonalds Day... Employees of one of the world's largest call centre operators have threatened to go on strike over unpaid wages, unexplained pay deductions, bullying, and disputes over sick leave. A former employee is also taking legal action against TeleTech at Moe, claiming she was sacked for placing calls in queues, after being harassed for 'taking too many toilet breaks'. The Community and Public Sector Union says another woman is considering suing the company after she was sacked for failing to tell the company she was sick. She was in hospital with pnuemonia. The CPSU also says workers at the centre are owed thousands of dollars in unpaid wages, and some had been harassed and bullied over sick leave. Others had had deductions taken from their pay with no explanation. TeleTech have taken over some of the functions that used to be dealt with by the public service. They can provide a cheaper service because they pay lower wages and have worse conditions. TeleTech received government 'assistance' to set up their call centre. They were also named one of the best employers in Australia by Hewitt Associates, the Australian Graduate School of Management, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age. (The Age). 68% of people polled in New South Wales and Victoria believe Australia should support UN military action against Iraq. 34% say they would agree to their own children joining in this military action. (The Age). The Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations says it will take no action over an ad for a weight loss program which featured an actor pretending to be a customer of the service. The Federation's commercial advertising division claimed that the ad's deception might be not clear cut, despite featuring an actor claiming to be 'Dianne', a customer who had lost 36 kilos using the program, and the company initially claiming she was a genuine customer. (The Age). Food labelling is routinely misleading or false, according to an investigation by 'Choice' magazine. Their findings included a brand of 'banana fruit fingers' with more pear than banana, 'pureed baby foods' which are mostly thickened fruit juice, a 'rich and indulgent' cheese risotto which had 8.4 grammes of cheese in a 560 gram pack, a 'fruit drink' whose fruit was orange peel extract, some 'naturally sweeter' corn whose second ingredient was sugar, and Goulburn Valley brand apple and strawberry fruit puree, which has no strawberries. Lin Enright from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said that while there were fines for deceptive or misleading conduct, the ACCC preferred not to prosecute. (The Age). McDonalds in Norway have launced a new burger - the McAfrica. Aid agencies said the product was insensitive, given that large areas of Africa are currently on the verge of starvation. (Schnews weekly). The Orlando City Council in Florida has voted to put homeless people in jail if they are caught sitting or lying on the footpath. The new laws are an example of many cities' homelessness strategy, which seems more based on the needs of real estate agents than poor people. Violators of the law face a US$500 fine and 60 days' jail. They did not explain how a person with no money would be able to find $500, or why people could be provided with free meal and board in jail but not by free housing (jail is generally about as expensive as the most expensive hotels, because of the costs related to security). The Council will also vote on how many days a year volunteer groups can serve free meals to the homeless in city parks - seemingly meaning that homeless people will have another expense and be less able to afford housing. Similar laws have been used in other American cities to stop Food Not Bombs, a group mostly made up of anarchists who serve free food, sometimes meaning that homeless people are visible and so making it more difficut to 'gentrify' an area (raise house prices and replace the existing residents with richer people). anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review (www.vicnet.net.au/~anarchist - PO Box 20 Parkville VIC 3052). Some other Australian anarchist websites: www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, band interviews etc. www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. .. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Police Engaged in Racist Harassment..Framed Three Men..and Killed Another...One In Seven Child Abuse Cases Ignored...Casino Authority Took $200,000...Terror At Home...Politicians To Get Further Benefits...Catholic Church Gives Money But No Apology..Anglicans Give Lecture But No Money or Apology...Government Paid $700 Million For Nothing...McDonalds Says Beef Is Vegetarian and Urine is Nutritious. Victoria Police's first Vietnamese-born police officer has given up his two year battle to rejoin the police force, saying he was forced out for complaining about racism. Huan Nguyen was commended for his undercover work during his 11 year career, but went on stress leave in 1998 after regularly suffering racist abuse from police. Mr Nguyen says that while he was on stress leave, he received a letter accepting his resignation from the police. He had not resigned. The police were directed by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to meet with Mr Nguyen, but he says they have not done so. His only option now would be to take them to the Federal Court, which he can't afford to do. (The Age). A former detective has admitted that he framed three brothers for a robbery in 1982. Anthony Lewandowski admitted that he and former CIB chief Don Hancock faked confessions and lied during the original trial and appeals, and that one of the brothers was stripped naked and punched while being 'questioned' by two police officers. (Herald Sun). Police killed a man who was unarmed and seated in a chair in his room...presenting no immediate threat. A coroner's report has found that Gregory Couper had died from a heart attack caused by Senior Constable Scott Cheasley. In December 1998, Senior Constable Cheasley and three other police officers were called to the residential care facility where Mr Couper, who suffered from schizophrenia, was living. When the facility's owner went to check on Mr Couper, he found him lying face down in a pool of blood. Senior Constable Cheasley was pinning him down with a knee to the back of his neck. Mr Couper suffered asphyxia, brain damage, and four days later a fatal heart attack. The three point hold used by Senior Constable Cheasley is part of police training. (The Age). Shirley Watters from the Queensland Council of Social Services says that one in seven cases of child abuse reported are ignored because of staff shortages. It is compulsory to report suspected child abuse under the Children and Young Persons Act. However many commentators say that the laws are inadequate if there aren't enough staff to investigate. (The Australian). The Victorian Casino and Gaming Authority accepted a US$200,000 payment from an American poker machine manufacturer. The Authority was investigating the company at the time. (The Age). One of Melbourne's largest welfare agencies has been forced to refuse help to women who are victims of domestic violence. Jo Cavanagh from the Southern Family Life Foundation says that the agency would review its decision at the end of the month, but there was no guarantee that they would take new cases even then. The Agency has asked for all cases to be referred on, but Ms Cavanagh says she knows of other agencies struggling to keep up. She said that one agency had a three month waiting list for family violence cases, and that people in that position usually can't wait that long. In the last budget, the government cut spending on welfare and other services to fund the 'war on terror'. (The Age). Members of Parliament are likely to be paid public money to cover their university fees when they go on overseas study tours. The Remuneration Tribunal is also considering new funds to pay for Opposition shadow minister's overseas travel. (Herald Sun). The Catholic Church will pay a total of more than $3.6 million to victims of sexual abuse at boys' homes in Victoria. Each of the 24 victims had some kind of communication or intellectual disability. The sister of one of the victims, who had been abused by the church for 30 years, said that what we really wanted was a public apology from the order. (The Age, MX). Governor General Dr Peter Hollingworth has delivered a speech about child abuse, titled These Are Our Children. Dr Hollingworth has been accused, by parents of children who were abused at an Anglican school, of doing little or nothing to help them and of trying to keep other parents from learning of the abuse. Dr Hollingworth's speech said that a great deal of focus of attention in relation to children and the rights of the child has been directed at institutions; public, private and ecclesiastical and to those individuals working profesionally in these institutional settings, such as schools. (The Age). The government signed a $700 million deal to buy helicopters for the Navy even though the Defence Department knew that the patrol boats which were supposed to carry the helicopters actually couldn't. The project has gone $1
