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In the face of a general strike called by Shiite militants in Baghdad’s northeastern Sadr City district, home to 2.5 million people, US troops ended their week-long siege of the district on October 31.
The US, Britain, Italy, France, Australia and Bahrain began two days of joint naval exercises in the Persian Gulf on October 31, including marine boardings of ships 32 kilometres from the Iranian coastline. Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters in Tehran: “We are watching their movements very carefully. We do not consider this exercise appropriate. US moves go in the direction of more adventurism, not of stability and security.”
Seventy people packed into the Resistance Centre on October 26 to hear author Antony Loewenstein and Green Left Weekly journalist Rupen Savoulian speak about Israel’s role in the Middle East. Loewenstein described the wide range of responses to his new book, My Israel Question, including much positive feedback from Jews who expressed their support for his critique of the Israeli state’s repressive policies in the region.
The women’s room, and the women’s, Indigenous and queer officer positions will not exist next year at the Bendigo campus of Latrobe University.
Large rallies were held around Australia on November 4 as part of an international day of action to protest government inaction on climate change. Organisers of the “Walk against warming” estimated that the number of people who participated was up to: 47,000 in Sydney, 30,000 in Melbourne, 5000 in Hobart, 3000 in Canberra and Perth, 1500 in Brisbane, 1000 in Adelaide and Wollongong, 800 in Newcastle and 300 in Cairns.
November 18 will be the second anniversary of the police killing of Mulrunji in Palm Island’s watchhouse. On that day, members of Queensland’s Aboriginal community and their supporters will rally in Brisbane to demand an end to Aboriginal deaths in custody.
November 30 is a truly national day of protest, with more than 300 rally points across metropolitan and rural Australia. Regional Victorian workers are being encouraged to come to Melbourne on November 29 to be ready for an early start the next day at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, or the “G”.
Bolivia, a country with a majority indigenous population, now has its first indigenous president, Evo Morales. Morales, who won the December 2005 presidential election, doesn’t just identify as indigenous, he is a fighter for the indigenous cause. His presidency is a massive step forward for indigenous rights — not only in Bolivia, but in Latin America, and possibly even the world.
Green Left Weekly is calling on supporters to help get the paper into thousands of new hands on November 30 — the ACTU-called national day of action against Work Choices.
Forty-nine workers at the largest workshop in the Latrobe Valley have been locked out for almost three months by Mechanical Engineering Services (MES). As soon as he’d locked out the workers, the company owner, Anthony Elliott, went overseas for several weeks.
A Congolese prosecutor has called for three former managers of the Perth-based Anvil Mining corporation to be indicted for “complicity in war crimes” — involvement in the massacre of up to 100 people in the village of Kilwa in October 2004. The slaughter, committed by Congolese Armed Forces soldiers ferried to the scene by Anvil-chartered planes and company-owned trucks, took place 50 kilometres from the company’s Dikulushi silver and copper mine in the south-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
As of November 2, 2825 US military personnel and 232 other allied foreign troops had died in Iraq since the country was invaded on March 20, 2003, by US, British and Australian forces.