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Ecuador began to implement its “citizens’ revolution” called for by left-wing President Rafael Correa on November 29 with opening of the constituent assembly, made up of elected delegates tasked with reforming the state’s institutional framework and drawing up a new constitution.
Over 50 military and civilian dissidents remain in custody following the storming of the Manila Peninsular luxury hotel on November 29 by troops loyal to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to dislodge a group of soldiers who had seized the hotel and used it to hold a press conference calling for a “people’s power” uprising against the unpopular president. Civil society and religious leaders joined the rebels at the press conference.
A 19-year-old Saudi Arabian woman has been sentenced to 200 lashes and 6 months in jail following an incident in 2006 in which she was kidnaped and gang-raped by seven men. When the kidnapping occurred, the woman was in a car in the company of a man who was not an immediate relative, a crime in the Saudi kingdom.
@body intro = BREAKING NEWS — As Green Left Weekly goes to press, the Venezuelan government has released video evidence of a violent destabilisation campaign being planned by US-funded opponents of the Chavez government and the process of change. The campaign is based on rejected the outcome of the referendum being held on December 2. Speaking to up to a million supporters of the constitutional reforms and the revolution on November 30, President Hugo Chavez threatened to cut off oil supplies immediately to the US, in retaliation against any violent attacks.
On November 16, NSW deputy coroner Dorelle Pinch ruled that five journalists from Australia’s Seven and Ten commercial TV networks who died in the East Timorese town of Balibo on October 16, 1975, were not killed by crossfire (which is what Australian authorities have previously maintained) but were deliberately murdered by invading Indonesian forces, on orders from above in what Pinch ruled to be a “war crime”.
A report on a November 17 Perth rally against the NT intervention was accompanied by a photo incorrectly credited to Barry Healy. The credit should have read: “Photo by Jodi Hoffmann/courtesy Aboriginal Legal Service of WA.”
There were emotional scenes in the Perth Coroners Court on November 28 as deputy State Coroner Evelyn Vicker read her findings into the death of a 35-year-old Aboriginal man, Carl Woods, in police custody in the suburb of Parmelia on April 11 last year. Woods’ relatives wept and expressed anger at Vicker’s finding of accidental death.
“More deadly violence occurred north and south of Baghdad as insurgents appeared intent on sending a message to US and Iraqi officials that their recent expressions of confidence in the nation’s security were premature”, the November 24 Los Angeles Times reported, adding that the attacks were “marked by hits on targets that lately had escaped attack”.
Twenty-one police cars swarmed on the inner-western suburb of Flemington on November 28 after allegations a teenager of African descent swore at two police cars on patrol.
The November 24 electoral victory of the ALP was based largely upon public opposition to the Howard Coalition government’s Work Choices laws. But in the Northern Territory, opposition among Aborigines to PM John Howard’s “emergency intervention” into their communities was a major factor in boosting support for Labor.
Harpoon: Into the Heart of Whaling
By Andrew Darby
Allen & Unwin, 2007
296 pages, $29.95 (pb)
On November 27, as Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met, with the backing of US President George Bush in Annapolis, Maryland, to discuss a possible peace treaty, Israeli troops invaded a number of West Bank cities and attacked the Gaza Strip, killing at least four people. Abbas’s US-trained Palestinian Security Forces attacked thousands of unarmed demonstrations against the conference in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus, Tulkarem and Hebron.