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WESTERN SAHARA: A Saharawi woman's plea

BY STEPHANIE BRENNAN SMARA REFUGEE CAMP, Algeria — As our battered four-wheel drive makes its way through the desert into the outskirts of the Wilaya, dozens of small dusty children run out to meet us looking for sweets — caramello, caramello?

UQ students hit back with CHOGM posters

BY SIMON BUTLER BRISBANE — By the afternoon of August 22 the University of Queensland was covered with posters against the October 6 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. The mass paste-up was part of a coordinated action in opposition to the

Write on: Letters to the editor

Abortion access In my article "How and why abortion access is limited" (GLW #460), the prospect of Tasmanian health minister Judy Jackson investigating the possibility of public funding for a new abortion clinic was hailed as "a significant victory

Loose cannons

You'd better believe it! "A vote for Jason Hatton is a vote for tough anti-social behaviour." — August 17 advertisement in the NT News for the Country Liberal Party candidate for the Northern Territory seat of Nightcliff. Eternal damnation not

We must become 'less attractive', PM vows

BY SARAH STEPHEN It's hard to believe that it's possible, but the federal government is proposing to get even tougher on asylum seekers who arrive without proper documentation. Restrictions on their right to appeal, new regulations allowing

PUERTO RICO: Water company near collapse

BY CARMELO RUIZ-MARRERO SAN JUAN — The Puerto Rico Aqueducts and Sewers Authority (PRASA) is on the verge of collapse. In the last few years, the citizenry has been showered with a seemingly endless string of press reports about the agency's

Red flag is raised in Darwin

BY GARY MEYERHOFF DARWIN — With counting completed in the August 18 Northern Territory elections, the Socialist Alliance's Peter Johnston, a veteran anti-racism campaigner, led the charge with 4.5% of the vote in Fannie Bay, an excellent result,

Race & class in the US: Bush threatens to boycott World Conference Against Racism

SAN FRANCISCO - The New York Times, the most authoritative newspaper in the United States, ran a lead editorial on the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, taking place in Durban, South Africa, from August 28 to September 7. The headline

Bows, bees and surf skis illegal at CHOGM protests

BY TIM STEWART In case you were wondering what to bring along to the protests outside the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Brisbane on October 6, the Queensland goverment has issued a list of prohibited items under special police powers

COLOMBIA: Indigenous people beat Big Oil

The news long awaited by Colombia's U'wa tribe and its thousands of supporters around the world has finally arrived: the Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) has announced that it has failed to find oil at the Gibraltar 1 well site on the

Fifteen countries hold key to saving world's forests

LONDON — Efforts to save the world's last, critically important forests should initially focus on just a handful of countries, a new report has found. A unique satellite-based survey of the planet's remaining unbroken forests, which include virgin,

Drug summit proposes health-based solutions

BY GRANT COLEMAN PERTH — After months of media hysteria and political point-scoring, a community drug summit has come out in support of health-based solutions for the treatment of heroin use. Despite a fairly narrow agenda, the 100 delegates,