The internet launch on March 5 of the Independent Australian Jewish Voices (IAJV) has provoked both criticism and support. Author Antony Loewenstein, one of the initiators, told Green Left Weekly that the Jewish establishment reacted “very badly” because, in his view, their position as the spokespeople for the Jewish community for decades is now being challenged.
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In 1989, 39 pharmaceutical giants sued the government of AIDS-stricken South Africa, seeking to stop it from implementing a law to improve the poors access to life-saving AIDS drugs. That aggression sparked a public outcry within South Africa and elsewhere, leading to an international campaign that only ended in 2001 when the 39 companies dropped their case.
John Bonsai (a very small bush) Howard is morally bankrupt, and cannot be trusted. While Saddam Hussein was a nasty bit of work, all of Bonsai’s arguments for war were lies.
More than 500 people from 35 countries have been incarcerated in the Guantanamo Bay prison complex since 2002. Since becoming the detention centre for prisoners captured in US President George Bushs unending global war on terror, it has been the source of numerous allegations of physical and psychological abuse. It is a legal black hole in which detainees have waited for up to half a decade without charges being laid.
It seems the Howard government’s relentless attempts to blast opposition leader Kevin Rudd for meetings last year with disgraced former WA Labor premier and current “political lobbyist” Brian Burke have missed their target, or even backfired. A poll, published in the March 12 Sydney Morning Herald, showed Labor’s potential vote and approval for Rudd continuing to climb, with support for the Coalition and PM John Howard’s ratings declining further.
The small Andean nation of Ecuador is facing a political crisis as the Congress and the courts turn on each other over new president Rafael Correa’s plans for a Constituent Assembly and a “citizens’ revolution” to build “21st century socialism” in the poverty-stricken country.
The federal Coalition, some state Labor governments and the corporate media have been justifying racist policies by claiming they are defending women’s rights. This argument has been one of several “justifications” for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and for why we should all be worried about refugee arrivals.
US President George Bush has been touring Latin American countries this March with two goals in mind: keep the continent divided and keep it subservient to US imperialist interests. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has also been visiting his neighbours. His goals are the opposite: to unite the countries of Latin America and to encourage and support the continent’s independence from US imperialism.
On March 16 police arrested Satur Ocampo, a member of Congress from the left-wing Bayan Muna party list. Ocampo, who had been in hiding for eight days, was taken into custody shortly after he filed a court petition to quash the arrest warrant. He faces charges of killing military spies in the 80s, according to a March 17 Philippine Daily Inquirer report.
During a whirlwind tour of a series of Latin American nations, in what the media reported as a “counter-tour” to that being carried out by US President George Bush at the same time, Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chavez signed a number of agreements that extend his country’s push to integrate the region’s economies. Via the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), promoted in alliance with socialist Cuba, Venezuela is signing a large number of agreements that aim to promote pro-people development based on cooperation rather than competition, in order to break foreign economic domination of the continent, predominantly by US capital.
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