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VENEZUELA: How workers sacked their bosses

Jim McIlroy & Coral Wynter, Caracas During its April-May tour of Venezuela, an Australian trade union brigade organised by the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network visited the Invepal paper plant at Moron, west of Caracas. After the owners

BOLIVIA: Tensions mount as vote nears

Pablo Stefanoni, La Paz Only a few days out from the July 2 constituent assembly elections and referendum on regional autonomy, the focus of Bolivia's electoral campaign was not any of the candidates — most of them practically unknown to voters

On the box

Message Stick: Glenn Skuthorpe — Inside the lives and characters of Indigenous Australians across the country, presented in their own voices. ABC, Friday, June 30, 6.04pm. The Chaser's War on Everything — Confronting and lampooning key players

Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly's 250,000 Fighting Fund 2006: Putting a face to the war on children

Peter Boyle Occasionally the innocent casualties of war are given a human face. And it is shocking — sometimes so shocking it can help stop a war. Last week, in a blogsite (no longer online) by a Cuban doctor serving in East Timor, there was a

Iraq: Australian troops must leave

Pip Hinman As Japan's troops prepare to leave Iraq, PM John Howard has announced that Australian troops will stay, despite the majority of Iraqis not wanting them there. However, the Australian Defence Force's (ADF) shooting of the trade minister's

BRITAIN: Police shoot man in "anti-terror" raid

Alex Miller In a near-repeat of the incident last July in which innocent electrician Jean Claude De Menezes was shot and killed at point-blank range by British armed police, Mohammed Abdul Kahar was shot in the chest during a June 2 "anti-terror"

IRAQ: Leak debunks White House propaganda

Doug Lorimer The Washington Post reported on June 18 that it had obtained a copy of a cable sent to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from the US embassy in Baghdad that paints "a starkly different portrait" from the White House's public

Howard's attacks demand solidarity

James Vassilopoulos, Melbourne Union Solidarity, a community-based organisation with 10 local groups across Melbourne, aims to support workers in struggle. Dave Kerin, the initiator and coordinator of the Melbourne central group, told Â鶹´«Ã½

We can strike Work Choices out

Sue Bolton Spotlight became a lightning rod for mass discontent with the Howard government's anti-worker laws when one of its Coffs Habour employees, Annette Harris, went public about the pressure put on her to sign an individual contract. If

'Operational reasons': the new excuse for sackings

Chris Latham Less than a week after Work Choices came into effect on March 27, the Cowra Abattoir in NSW hit the headlines when it announced plans to sack 29 workers and re-hire 20 on worse conditions and with a $200 pay cut. PM John Howard

Residents oppose toll bridge

Paul Benedek, Brisbane "This bridge will mean more cars, more pollution, more asthma, more road deaths, and it will be the vulnerable — pensioners and children — that will suffer the most", a resident told a rowdy June 20 meeting discussing the

World Refugee Day

Rallies to mark World Refugee Day took place in Brisbane on June 24 and Sydney (pictured) on June 25, following protests in a range of other cities the previous week.From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, June 28, 2006. Visit the Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly home page.