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BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE HOBART — Forest activist Neil Smith, known as "Hector the Protector" for his role in the 1998 campaign to save forest around Mother Cummings Peak in northern Tasmania, faces jail for refusing to pay a $5000 fine. Smith told
Bill Game replies As a show of evenhandedness, it would have been nice to be afforded the same opportunity by 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly (issue #549) to contribute my thoughts on the present [WA CEPU/ETU] election bearing in mind I am held in high regard by
BY KAREN FLETCHER MELBOURNE — The 2003 Melbourne Writers Festival will open on August 21 with a keynote address by Tariq Ali, the radical London-based author of the anti-imperialist bestseller The Clash of Fundamentalisms. Ali's address, "War,
BY LEX WINDSOR AUCKLAND — The international solidarity movement for West Papua met in Otara, Tamaki Makaurau, on August 8-10. The gathering called on the government leaders who constitute the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) to remember the unresolved
BY LINDA WALDRON MELBOURNE — Progressive activists won a victory on August 12, when the Sunshine Magistrates Court dismissed charges against Socialist Alliance activist Tony Iltis. Iltis was charged with distributing leaflets for an anti-war
MELBOURNE — Three months after Socialist Alliance's second national conference, which decided that the alliance should move toward becoming a multitendency socialist party, 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly's GRAHAM MATTHEWS, a Victorian co-convenor of the

The Australian-funded detention centre on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island first opened on October 21, 2001. The first group of Iraqi asylum seekers to arrive there were dismayed to find they had been tricked into thinking they were being taken to Australia.

BY CHRIS LATHAM It is expected that during the current session of federal parliament, a range of new anti-union legislation will be introduced by Prime Minister John Howard's Coalition government, including legislation aimed at "reforming" the
BY PETER ROBSON NEWCASTLE — The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has been called in to investigate procedure at Newcastle University, after 15 off-shore Malaysian students were accused of plagiarism whilst enrolled at the
BY PETER DWYER DURBAN — On August 8, in a move described as a "backflip" by the mainstream press, South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) government announced that it had instructed the department of health to develop a plan to provide

Become a Friend of 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly today! In March, as US President George Bush and his gang prepared to invade Iraq, <http://www.greenleft.org.au> was the third most visited web site by Australians looking for information about the

BY JENNY LONG SYDNEY — On August 14, employees of the NSW government's Office of Industrial Relations (OIR), formerly the Department of Industrial Relations, began industrial action in protest at savage jobs cuts and restructuring, announced