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“We guarantee that all Venezuelans will receive free education, to the highest level, as a promise of the revolutionary government. This [event] demonstrates the importance that the [Bolivarian] revolution gives to education”, Hugo Chavez declared on October 8. The Venezuelan president was officially re-opening the Andres Bello high school, situated in the metropolitan centre of the Caracas. The high school has been extensively renovated and upgraded to provide for a student population of 1700, the October 9 Ultimas Noticias reported.
On October 16, the Mexico’s national ombudsman, Jose Luis Soberanes Fernandez, delivered the recommendations of his report into the killing of two young men and the detention of another 207 people by municipal, state and federal security forces on May 3 and 4 in the municipalities of Texcoco and San Salvador Atenco. The clashes were sparked by attempts to remove flower venders without licences from a market.
Thousands of people flocked to the La Rinconada area, south of Caracas, on October 15, to hear socialist President Hugo Chavez inaugurate the new “Ezequiel Zamora” train line from Caracas to Cua, in the Valles del Tuy — the first new above-ground train line constructed in Venezuela for more than 70 years.
Welcome to the new Green Left Weekly website. GLW is taking a one-week break — our next issue will be dated November 8.
Ever since the federal Coalition government introduced Work Choices, the trade union movement has been united behind the demand that the legislation be repealed. The debate has been over what alternative industrial relations system the movement should advocate.
Caroline Lund, a lifelong fighter for socialism, workers’ rights and women’s liberation, died at her home in Oakland, California, on October 14, aged 62. She will be sorely missed by her friends and comrades in the US and around the world, especially her lifelong partner and comrade Barry Sheppard.
Millions of people on low-lying islands and lands in the Asia-Pacific region will become refugees in the next 40 years due to rising sea levels induced by climate change, according to a CSIRO report issued on October 8. The report was written by scientists with CSIRO’s marine and atmospheric research division, and was commissioned by aid and conservation agencies forming the national Climate Change and Development Roundtable.
According to an October 19 media release from the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), workers under the age of 15 are now signing Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs — individual work contracts) under the Howard government’s Work Choices legislation, which came into effect at the end of March.
No full-medal jacket “As the American-led Coalition of the Willing prepared to storm Baghdad 3½ years ago, some of our Army’s top brass were privately condemning Australia’s involvement as a contemptible waste of money and effort. Not because some were quietly warning, presciently as it transpired, that Australia would be committing to a war without apparent end… No. They were angry that Canberra was willing to commit so much military capital (more than $1.6bn so far) to a war for which the Australian Army would receive precious little recognition.” — September 27 Bulletin magazine.
Around the country, campus and high-school environment activists are focusing on getting young people to participate in the November 4 Walk against Warming international day of action on climate change.
If the Green Left Weekly Fighting Fund is going to make its target of $250,000 by the end of this year we will have to raise $95,000 over the next 10 weeks. That is a challenge, but we’ve made this sort of dash before and we can do it again.
Why did PM John Howard pre-empt his own inquiry, and a universal Australian corporate view that it makes no economic sense, to declare himself “very strongly” in favour of nuclear power last week?