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The place they call 'hell'

Jola Jones On December 2, immigration minister Amanda Vanstone handed down her decision on the future of the 41 Iraqi asylum seekers detained on Nauru. She announced that 27 Iraqis would be given refugee status and said this reflected the

PALESTINE: The threat of a good example

Kim Bullimore, West Bank Israeli occupation forces detained over 40 Israeli peace activists and arrested four at the village of Budrus, west of Ramallah, on December 7. The activists were arrested as they took part in a non-violent solidarity

SCOTLAND: SSP reaffirms unity

Alex Miller Since Tommy Sheridan resigned as national convenor of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) for personal reasons in early November, New Labour-supporting tabloid newspapers have been predicting the end of the SSP's remarkable political

INDIA: No troops to Iraq

On December 8, the Indian parliament voted to rule out any possibility of sending troops to Iraq. Washington had petitioned the parliament to send troops around the time of the puppet election there in January. External affairs minister Natwar Singh,

SOUTH AFRICA: Anti-privatisation activist convicted

Anti-Privatisation Forum activist Matthews Ndlovu was convicted on December 5 of "malicious damage to property", and sentenced to a fine of 25,000 Rand (AU$6000) or two years' imprisonment. Ndlovu is a leader of the Phiri community resistance to

VENEZUELA: A people's health system

Peter Maybarduk, Caracas It is nearly impossible to travel in Venezuela without hearing reference to the government's highly popular and controversial health-care initiative that invites Cuban doctors to treat, train and live with working-class

Craig Johnston's leadership got results

Australian Manufacturing Workers Union food and confectionary division Victorian secretary Bronwyn Halfpenny spoke to 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly's Sue Bolton about the changes that jailed unionist Craig Johnston brought to the Victorian AMWU branch after he

NORTHERN IRELAND: Turkish man beaten by police

A December 6 press release from the Anti-Racist Network has reported gross racial abuse of a Turkish stallholder during a Northern Ireland Police Service raid on unlicensed stalls in Belfast. Musa Gulusen, who has a pending application for a stall

A history of Palm Island

Dave Riley Palm Island is 70 kilometres north-west of Townsville. The Indigenous settlement was established in 1918 after a cyclone blew away the Hull River reserve near Tully. While it was one of the last settlements to be created under the

Freedom Ride to expose racism again

Bronwyn Powell, Sydney In February 1965, a group of Sydney University students called Students for Aboriginal Rights, led by Aboriginal students Charles Perkins and Gary Williams, set out in a bus across regional Australia to expose and confront

Don't mention the war.

Katelyn Mountford, Sydney When Zanny Begg set up 10 life size stencils of checkpoint soldiers around Blacktown for an Out of Gallery exhibit, she had hoped to provoke surprise and empathy for people in Iraq who face checkpoints and soldiers every

Labor: The party of the 'new middle class'?

Peter Boyle Ern O'Malley is the pen name used by Nige Edwards when he writes a satirical column called "Smoko" for the Online Opinion website. The pen name is a reference to the celebrated hoax of 1944, when a collection of writings from a