In the face of a general strike called by Shiite militants in Baghdads northeastern Sadr City district, home to 2.5 million people, US troops ended their week-long siege of the district on October 31.
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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.
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 Islands watchhouse. On that day, members of Queenslands Aboriginal community and their supporters will rally in Brisbane to demand an end to Aboriginal deaths in custody.
Bolivia, a country with a majority indigenous population, now has its first indigenous president, Evo Morales. Morales, who won the December 2005 presidential election, doesnt 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.
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.
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 hed 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 companys 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.
The Second Latin American and Asia Pacific Solidarity Gathering, held on October 21-22, was attended by 200 people. Organised by the Latin American Solidarity Network (LasNet), it was addressed by Gissel Gonzales from Bolivias Coalition in Defence of Water and Life; Maria de Lourdes Vicente da Silva, an organiser with the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil; Rosa del Carmen Curihuentro Lancaleo, a journalist and a Mapuche (the indigenous community of Chile and Argentina); and Heriberto Salas, a representative from the Mexican People for the Defence of the Earth, among others.
What sort of dogmatic free-market ideologue would use poor peoples (often socially constructed) desire for credit to justify shrinking the already beleaguered welfare policies of wretched Third World states?
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