(2000) The New Intifada
The violence in Israel does not do the long suffering Palestinian or Israeli peoples any good. What’s behind this mess? It is now clear that this Intifada was planned in advance.
The violence in Israel does not do the long suffering Palestinian or Israeli peoples any good. What’s behind this mess? It is now clear that this Intifada was planned in advance.
Sometimes the smartest industrial tactic is to appear crazy. That seems to be the most favourable explanation for the recent behavior of ACTU secretary Bill Kelty.
It may be as early as next week that the Workplace Relations Bill, the Howard government’s proposed industrial legislation, will be presented to the Federal Parliament. The legislation is likely to be complex and subject to a hostile reaction on the Labor side and, potentially, the Democrats.
Graham Greene described Shusaku Endo, a Japanese who converted to Catholicism, as “one of the finest novelists of our time.” Irving Howe hailed him as “one of the most accomplished writers… living in Japan or anywhere else”, and A.N. Wilson said of one novel: “Endo is always a moralist, but When I Whistle shows him to be a great artist as well.” Endo, one of Japan’s leading writers, was well known.
Ask an Australian trade union leader what they think about the labour scene in Asia and, more likely than not, you will hear a story of a nascent movement under the thumb of authoritarian regimes.
The defeat of Tom Donahue as President of the AFL-CIO last week by John Joseph Sweeney is a tragedy. Far from heralding a new era for aggressive and innovative unionism under the new leadership, Mr Donahue’s defeat may be another milestone marking the slow decline of American organised labour.
In the welter of claim and counter-claim the industrial dispute involving CRA has been characterised by a high degree of confusion. It appears that over several years CRA has been extremely clever and successful in pursuing a strategy to undermine trade unions at its sites.
The ascension of Governor Clinton to President Clinton on 20 January 1993 raised a gulp of excited apprehension in progressive circles in Australia. President Clinton’s idealism and rhetoric about Americans working with each other was a familiar social democratic call.
A few people might have felt cheated at the recent lunches in honour of the Second Deputy President of South Africa and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, F.W. de Klerk.
This week marks another anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacres in 1989. In Australia there will be fewer mourners and protests. In China any organised, public protest will be illegal and suppressed. At its most daring, there will be a few dropping of bottles by students outside of their cloisters.