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Massive opposition to school closure

BY NOREEN NAVIN SYDNEY — One thousand people packed into a meeting at the Marrickville high school hall on March 29 in response to plans by NSW Premier Bob Carr's Labor government to close the school. The walls were lined with posters, banners

Time for drug decriminalisation

Time for the decriminalisation of drugs The second phase of Prime Minister John Howard's “Tough on Drugs” campaign is a $27 million “education” campaign involving a series of TV advertisements and a glossy booklet to be distributed to

UTS administration ignores students' democratic rights

BY VIV MILEY The student association at the University of Technology, Sydney is embroiled in a legal wrangle with the university administration and is facing an uncertain future. The 2000 student association (SA) elections were declared

SOUTH KOREA: Socialists advance towards forming new party

BY IGGY KIM SEOUL — At its sixth congress on March 24-25, South Korea's Power of the Working Class continued its advance towards creating a revolutionary working-class party. While it will continue as a preparatory group until its seventh

Resistance supports Socialist Alliance

BY ROHAN PEARCE The socialist youth organisation Resistance has thrown its weight behind the newly launched Socialist Alliance. Resistance activists have begun signing up members to the alliance on campuses, at their schools and workplaces, and on

City workers nominate corporate scumbags

BY CRAIG MCGREGOR MELBOURNE — Workers in the Australian Stock Exchange's Melbourne building got a rare taste of democracy on March 27, when a contingent of M1 activists converged on the Collins Street offices to ask them to vote for their

UNITED STATES: Bush sets out to provoke new arms race

BY EVA CHENG Chinese vice-premier Qian Qichen paid a rushed and urgent visit to Washington, DC, on April 18-24, deeply concerned that US President George W. Bush's next two major foreign policy decisions may turn out unfavourably for the People's

Education cuts condemned

BY BRONWEN BEECHEY ADELAIDE — Activists from the National Union of Students, the Australian Education Union, M1 Adelaide and the socialist youth organisation Resistance travelled from to Glenelg in a chartered tram on March 23 to protest outside

How schools funding campaign was killed

BY NOREEN NAVIN SYDNEY — In November Prime Minister John Howard's Coalition government sparked public outrage when it introduced the State Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Bill 2000. The bill was designed to allocate the bulk

Le Carre comes in from the cold

REVIEW BY ALISON DELLIT The Constant GardenerBy John Le CarreHodder & Stoughton, 2001508pp., $49.95 (hb) "The subject of The Constant Gardener is the dilemma of decent people struggling against the ever-swelling tide of heedless corporate greed,

After M1: Let's converge on Canberra to stop the WTO

BY PETER BOYLE The big corporate powers and their governments want the ministerial summit of the World Trade Organisation, planned for Qatar in November, to undo what was won at Seattle by thousands of people in the street and by the delegations of

Balzac: an unwitting revolutionary

Balzac: A BiographyBy Graham RobbPicador, 2000521pp., $20.78 (pb) REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON For Honore de Balzac, a self-proclaimed defender of "throne and altar", to have had all his works placed on the Index of Prohibited Books by the Pope in 1864