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The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) are marking Mental Health Week with a massive banner campaign around Sydney to support schizophrenia research and raise public awareness. Construction workers raised around $1 million for this research over the last three years. Schizophrenia affects one in every hundred Australians and is most prominent in young men between the ages of 15 to 25. The CFMEU is encouraging its members and the community to dig deep to help raise money to find a cure.* * * Unions have threatened to fight any proposals by the Howard Government to introduce performance based pay for university academics. It is believed that Industrial Relations Minister Kevin Andrews and the Head of the Department of Workplace Relations Peter Boxall held talks with university vice chancellors before the election about the $69 million in funding that is tied to the imposition of the Government's anti-union laws, including Australian Workplace Agreements. National Tertiary Education Union spokesman Ken Alpine said university staff are concerned with changes to unfair dismissal laws and the government's agenda to limit industrial action.* * * NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr has called for greater cooperation between the states and the Federal Government following the election. "We stand ready to talk to the newly elected and strengthened Howard Government if they have the remotest willingness to engage with us on health, education, welfare and prisons. I hope the Prime Minister can be persuaded to a constructive federal system", Carr said. He should have no trouble working with Howard, the ideological divide between them being so small as to be virtually non-existent. Carr proved this in the lead up to the Sydney Olympics when he worked with Howard to introduce draconian police powers and give the military the right to shoot people in the streets.* * * The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society has warned of the danger to marine mammals posed by trawl net fishing. This followed the drowning of 14 dolphins in trawl nets in the Bass Strait last week. World-wide the toll on whales and dolphins is estimated by scientists to exceed 300,000 each year.* * * CAPITALIST HOG OF THE WEEK is capitalism itself. The CSIRO's measurements for the southern hemisphere show that 2002-2003 brought the second highest rate of carbon growth in the atmosphere. And scientists are now concerned that there has been a sharp increase in global warming, fearing that as the earth warms, the forests and oceans which usually absorb carbon dioxide may be actually releasing it. The Howard Government has refused to sign even the relatively limited Kyoto agreement, because such measures would affect corporate profits. Capitalism is not only doomed, but is willing to take the rest of the world with it into oblivion.