GLW issue 701, published 2007-03-07.

in

Venezuelan women 'struggling all our lives'

In Venezuela, after decades of class polarisation, neglect of the needs of the majority, corruption on a massive scale and unbridled bureaucracy, the magnitude of problems that Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution led by socialist president Hugo Chavez is attempting to tackle is enormous.

ACEH: Congress proceeds despite food poisoning

The first congress by the Preparatory Committee for the Acehnese People’s Party (KP-PRA) was disrupted on February 28 when around 75 participants were rushed to hospital with suspected food poisoning.

Iraqi women face execution for supporting resistance

Three Iraqi women aged 25-31 face execution after being sentenced to death by the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Court for involvement in resistance to the US-led occupation of Iraq. Wassan Talib, Zainab Fadhil and Liqa Omar Muhammad denied the charges. A statement by the World Tribunal on Iraq and the Brussels Tribunal Executive Committee opposing the execution noted: “The United States and its local conspirators, in creating hundreds of thousands of widows and reducing life in Iraq to a struggle for bare survival have placed women in the crosshairs and now on the gallows.” Arguing that the women should not have been charged at all, the groups cited a 1982 UN General Assembly resolution affirming “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle”.

Iranian women demand law reform

Women’s rights activists in Iran have initiated a petition campaign, titled “One Million Signatures Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws”. The campaign — a follow-up to a June 12 protest in Tehran last year that was brutally attacked by police — aims to overturn anti-women laws, as well as provide education, involve women in organising for their rights, and promote collaboration between different groups. Signatures are being collected via door-to-door contact and dialogue with individual women, in public places and at events where women gather, through seminars and forums, and also through the internet. For more information visit <http://en.we4change.com>.
Further

Comment and Analysis

Work Choices reverses gains for women

The Howard government’s Work Choices laws “have had an overall negative effect for women in the work force”, Griffith University Professor David Peetz told Green Left Weekly on February 27. “The slow trend toward improvement in female compared to male levels of pay and conditions has been reversed under Work Choices, threatening much of the gains of the previous 10 years”, said Peetz.

SMH columnist slanders Cuba, red-baits Turnbull

The following letter was sent by Cuban consul-general Nelida Hernandez Carmona in response to Sydney Morning Herald columnist Miranda Devine’s claim that, “You know Australia has lost its mind on the green front when the conservative Howard government starts emulating the communist dictatorship of Cuba”. Devine (the SMH’s resident right-wing ranter) argued that while “federal environment minister Malcolm Turnbull’s plan, foisted without warning on the nation last week, to ban incandescent light bulbs from 2010 and force us to replace them with more energy-efficient fluorescent ones” was presented by the government “as a world first, the Associated Press soon pointed out that Cuba’s dictator Fidel Castro launched a similar program two years ago… His protege, Venezuela’s socialist president Hugo Chavez, soon followed suit. You might say Turnbull, Castro and Chavez are the three amigos of the climate change nanny state.”
Further Comment and Analysis