Green Left Weekly issue #800

Coup and mass resistance in Honduras: Eva Golinger blogs live

Eva Golinger, whose 2006 book The Chavez Code exposed the role of the US in the 2002 coup that briefly overthrew the democratically elected Venezuelan government, is blogging continuously on the situation in Honduras.

Defying the regime — Iran's people demand change

Daily protests have continued in Iran against alleged vote-rigging in the June 12 presidential elections, despite an intensification of violent repression.

The world condemns Honduras coup, demands elected President Manuel Zelaya returns

Below is just some of the many statements being released by governments, political parties, social movement organisations and solidarity groups around the world in support of the Honduran people as they struggle to restore elected President Manuel Zelaya, overthrown in a military coup on June 28. This is only some of the statements released. If your organisation has release a statement, email weekly.greenleft@greenleft.org.au

AUSTRALIA: Cities drowning in cars: what’s the alternative?

Australian cities are growing in population and in geographic spread. Urban sprawl, encouraged by governments at all levels, is pushing suburbia in all directions.

Green Left Weekly turns 800!

Green Left Weekly received dozens of solidarity messages for its 800^th birthday from Australia and from around the world.

John Pilger: The system is corrupt

The theft of public money by members of parliament, including government ministers, has given Britons a rare glimpse inside the tent of power and privilege.

AUSTRALIA: Green Left Weekly Fighting Fund: Letter from the struggle for democracy in Iran

Below are extracts from a June 18 email from Tehran, Iran. It was posted on the Socialist Pakistan News e-list by Farooq Sulehria, a comrade from the Labour Party Pakistan. Sulehria is a regular contributor to Green Left Weekly.

AUSTRALIA: Militant unions save workers’ lives

Bosses do not provide safe and healthy workplaces for their workers out of the goodness of their hearts. Capitalism’s drive for short-term profits means workplace safety is a cost that can cut like any other.

Military coup in Honduras as elected president kidnapped — Obama's first coup?

Eva Golinger's blog contains constantly updated information on this military overthrow of an elected president. There are amass protests on the streets and unions have called a general strike. A leftist Congressperson and presidential candidate is reported murdered by the military. The coup has been opposed by many Latin American governments. The ambassadors in Honduras from Cuba, Venezuela and Honduras — and the Honduras foreign minister — are reported kidnapped by the military. Golinger has produced evidence that the US knew of the coup in advance. Things are changing rapidly. But below is Golinger’s iniitial article on the coup.

Nepal: Student leader speaks on struggle for change

Ben Peterson is a Green Left Weekly correspondent in Kathmandu. He spoke with Manushi Bhattarai, who was part of the Maoist ticket that won student elections at Tribhuvan University —Nepal’s largest. She discussed the revolution, recent developments, the international situation and the role of youth in the struggle for change.

Honduras: Coup attempt threatens democracy

An attempted coup has broken out in Honduras in the lead-up to a referendum scheduled for June 28. The referendum is on whether a further vote should be held to decide to re-write the Central American nation’s constitution.

Honduras: Indigenous people condemn plot

The article below is abridged from a June 24 statement by the Civic Council of People’s and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH).

Confronting the crisis: ’Yes we can!’

The following article is based on a speech by John Rice to the 1500-strong June 13 Adelaide Climate Emergency Rally. Rice is a member of the Climate Emergency Action Network (CLEAN) in South Australia.

Peru: Blood for rubber, blood for oil

At the turn of the twentieth century, global demand for rubber from the upper reaches of the Amazon (encompassing Peruvian, Colombian and Brazilian territory) was at its height.

AUSTRALIA: A pig of a health-care system

The first person to die after testing positive to swine flu in Australia was a 26-year-old Aboriginal man from a remote desert community. Health workers have said it is evidence of the significant gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous health, and warn more deaths are likely.

AUSTRALIA: Cuba’s green revolution

The ecological achievements of Cuba in the last two decades have been well documented. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s was the trigger for ending the unsustainable, industrial agriculture that Cuba had practised for decades.

Latin America’s Bolivarian alliance grows

In a summit in Venezuela on June 24, the Caribbean and South American integration organisation ALBA was strengthened by the addition of Ecuador, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda as its newest member countries.

Who will control Iraq’s oil?

Furious protests are threatening to undermine the Iraqi government’s plan to give international oil companies a stake in its giant oilfields in a desperate effort to increase its declining oil production and revenues.

AUSTRALIA: ACTU motion supports Western Sahara

The June 2-4 Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) congress passed a motion in support of the right of the people of Western Sahara to self-determination.

AUSTRALIA: Another side of Marx

Servant of the Revolution
Written by Anitra Nelson
Directed by Brenda Addie
Mechanics Institute Performing Arts Centre, Brunswick (cnr Sydney & Glenlyon rds)
July 21-25 and July 28-August 1, 8pm
Tickets $25/$15 concession
Bookings 0420 933 101 or servantrevolution@gmail.com
Visit

AUSTRALIA: Carbon trading must die, so the planet can live

In his 2006 bestseller about climate change, Heat, British writer George Monbiot said his biggest worry was not that people would stop talking about climate change. His fear was that they’d talk us to kingdom come.

AUSTRALIA: Conference warns of dangerous climate shifts

The biggest international scientific conference on climate change since 2007 gave an implicit rebuke to the governments of the biggest polluting nations, including Australia. Its message was that the threat is undeniable and inaction is inexcusable.

AUSTRALIA: Connex bites the dust

There are few words that attract negative outbursts of emotions from Melbournians as much as the mere utterance of “Connex”.

AUSTRALIA: Greens defeat league tables legislation

The threat of the publication of damaging school league tables in New South Wales has been averted for the moment.

AUSTRALIA: John Lennon: the power of art and peace

Forty years ago, between April and May 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono began an international cultural struggle against the Vietnam War using their fame and notoriety to draw attention to their peace message.

AUSTRALIA: Mulrunji inquest to re-open

The inquest into the death in custody of Palm Island man Mulrunji Doomadgee in November, 2004 will be reopened. In 2006, deputy state coroner Christine Clements found senior sergeant Chris Hurley was responsible for Doomadgee’s death.

AUSTRALIA: Non-stop coal deliveries fuel anger

Since 1982, coal-truck deliveries in Wollongong were restricted to between 7am and 6pm, Monday to Saturday. But now the NSW planning department has lifted this curfew.

AUSTRALIA: Privatisation: state-wide campaign heats up

After Labor Premier Anna Bligh announced on June 2 that Queensland would be selling off $15.4 billion of the state’s assets, a June 17-18 Galaxy Poll conducted for the Brisbane Courier Mail found that 84% of people opposed the move.

AUSTRALIA: Tamil plight: 'More than a humanitarian crisis'

A June 23 forum on the Tamil struggle for self-determination drew 30 people to the Brisbane activist centre.

AUSTRALIA: Traveston

AUSTRALIA: Unions NSW re-enters privatisation fight

On June 25, 330 delegates from 19 unions covering public sector workers met in Sydney to launch Unions NSW’s “Better Services Campaign”. The launch marked the return of the peak body to the battlefield over privatisation and public services.

El Salvador: Evangelical fundamentalism and the right

At last, after decades of brutal right-wing rule, the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) won El Salvador's March 15 presidential election.

France: Thousands protest against financial crisis

More than 150,000 people joined protests in France on June 13 against plans by President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government to make working people carry the costs of the global economic crisis.

German students strike for better education

A week of education strikes across Germany peaked on June 17 when up to 240,000 students ditched classes in 90 cities to demand improved conditions and funding.

On the box

Record 1 billion people going hungry

The British Morning Star said on June 21 that the United Nations has warned that the global financial meltdown has pushed the ranks of the world’s hungry to a record 1 billion. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said this is an increase of 11% from last year.

South Africa: Balance shifts left, anger grows

With high-volume class strife heard in the rumbling of wage demands and the friction of township “service delivery protests”, rhetorical and real conflicts are bursting open in every nook and cranny of South Africa.

Sri Lanka: Facts lost in the dusk of war

Despite the military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which waged an armed struggle for an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka’s north-east, life for the Tamil minority remains one of oppression and suffering.

United States: Top climate scientist arrested in anti-coal protest

NASA climate scientist James Hansen was among the 29 people arrested for trespass at an anti-coal mining protest in Raleigh County, West Virginia on June 23.

Wildcat strikes by British oil workers

“Hundreds of workers at sites up and down the country have launched unofficial action over the last two weeks in support of 650 colleagues at Total Lindsey Oil Refinery who were dismissed”, Sky News said on June 25.

AUSTRALIA: GM activist: Australians are eating unsafe food

PERTH — A Canadian food safety expert, Dr Shiv Chopra, has claimed the US and Canadian governments are the most corrupt when it comes to unsafe food practices. Australia is not far behind.

AUSTRALIA: Talisman Sabre protest launched in Brisbane

A banner to announce the upcoming Peace Convergence in Rockhampton from July 10-12 was unfurled on the Kangaroo Point cliffs in Brisbane on June 25.

AUSTRALIA: Tax office tries to axe conditions

The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) has called on Australian Taxation Office (ATO) staff to vote against a new agency agreement proposed by management. Voting was to place between June 23 and June 30.

AUSTRALIA: 'We put this government on notice'

This article is based on a speech by Ewan Saunders at the Brisbane Climate Emergency Rally on June 13. Saunders helped organise the event and co-chaired the rally. He is also a member of Resistance.

AUSTRALIA: Earn, learn … or kill: a new policy for Australia’s youth

When employment minister Julia Gillard declared that the onus was on young people to “earn or learn”, she forgot to mention the third option open to young Australians struggling to find a job — killing people.

AUSTRALIA: The utes of politics

Utes, the exchange and discussion thereof, could not be more Australian. Any Woza, Bluey or Macca will tell you that simply anything to do with utility vehicles is real men’s business.

AUSTRALIA: Write on — letters to the editor

AUSTRALIA: Ernest Mandel, a revolutionary life

Ernest Mandel, A Rebel’s Dream Deferred
By Jan Willem Stutje
Verso, 2009
392 pp., $60.30 (hb)