In December, after 16 months of wrangling, the elected delegates to the constituent assembly finally passed a draft constitution that will be put to a national referendum sometime before September.
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The world is teetering on the brink of unstoppable climate change. Many now recognise the need for serious change in the way we produce and use energy, our transport systems, food production, urban design and forestry practices. Yet politicians are still mouthing platitudes while allowing corporations to continue to profit from polluting our atmosphere and destroying our ecosystem.
The 10oC “summer” weather in Bolivia’s capital city is strongly felt in Bolivian Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera's house, which has no heating, like nearly all the houses in La Paz. For almost an hour we went over the conjuncture of a week of uncertain negotiations between the government and opposition, in search of an anxiously awaited national accord.
There are two starkly different election processes underway right now, but most readers will probably have only been reading about one of them: the US presidential elections, which Forbes magazine estimates will likely cost as much as US$3.3 billion all up! In Cuba, just 145 kilometres from the coast of Florida, a very different election process is taking place.
The 8th congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) ended with a massive 100,000 strong all-India rally in Kolkata on December 18. A key focus of the rally was solidarity with the peasants of Nandigram against attempts to drive them off their land by the West Bengal government in order to establish a Special Economic Zone (SEZ).
“The death rate in Iraq in the past 12 months has been the second highest in any year since the invasion, according to figures that appear to contradict American claims that the troop ‘surge’ has dramatically reduced the level of violence across the country”, the British Independent daily reported on January 7.
As part of a global day of protest to call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay about 50 people gathered on the steps of Parliament House in Adelaide on January 11. Guantanamo Bay has a particular meaning in this city, as the home town of David Hicks, one of the first detainees to arrive at Guantanamo Bay and the first to be put through the military commission injustice system.
In a sign of solidarity with the struggle by the peasants of Nandigram against the West Bengal state government’s attempt to seize their land for a Special Economic Zone, the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist), publisher of Liberation magazine, held its 8th congress in Kolkata, the state’s capital, December 11-16.
The chance of President Chen Shui-bian’s pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) holding on to its ruling party position in the March 22 presidential poll is in serious doubt after his party suffered a major defeat in the January 12 parliamentary election.
A proposal to build the 1200-student Al Amanah Islamic College in the semi-rural Sydney suburb of Camden has seen an escalation of organised racism not seen in the Sydney area since the 2005 Cronulla riots.
Work Choices hit the most vulnerable sections of the work force hardest among them, young workers. With the Howard government now history, the challenge for young workers is to reclaim what was lost under these hated laws, to extend their rights at work, and actively participate in the rebuilding of the unions as organisations that put workers rights first. Bea Bassi, coordinator of the Socialist Alliances NSW Trade Union Committee, urges the next generation of workers to get active in the union movement.
Headlining this years Big Day Out is Rage Against the Machine. RATM stands out as one of the few bands to achieve mainstream success while putting an openly anti-capitalist message.
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