World

  • BRITAIN: Detention centre burns

    It is feared that five women and an unknown number of children may have died in the fire which broke out on February 14 at England's Yarl's Wood detention centre. As of February 27, 25 detainees were still unaccounted for.

  • MAURITIUS: Anti-terrorism law leads to political crisis

    [On February 19, Mauritius' interim president, Supreme Court Chief Justice Arianga Pillay, signed into law anti-terrorism legislation over which his two predecessors had resigned. Twice passed by parliament, the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, deemed

  • UNITED STATES: What's wrong with Black Hawk Down

    [The following is a slightly abridged version of a speech given at an anti-war forum at Columbia University in New YorkIII, one of the actors in the movie Black Hawk Down.] When I first read the script to

  • INDONESIA: Floods exacerbate economic disaster

    YOGYAKARTA — There's no such thing as a wholly "natural" disaster. The recent catastrophic floods in Jakarta and along the northern coast of Java, which claimed at least 200 lives, were no exception. The Dutch colonial

  • SCOTLAND: Socialist youth group founded

    GLASGOW — Fifty delegates attended the founding conference of the Scottish Socialist Party's youth network, Scottish Socialist Youth, on February 9. A central campaign for the SSY will be a campaign to legalise cannabis. Two very

  • ACEH: Student leader arrested

    The chairperson of SMUR (Students in Solidarity with the People), Mahmudal, was arrested in Banda Aceh on February 19 during a demonstration organised by ORPAD (Acehnese Women's Democratic Organisation). SMUR is an

  • VENEZUELA: Anti-Chavez campaign escalates

    The campaign against leftist President Hugo Chavez, led by local big business interests and backed by Washington, has rapidly escalated in recent months, with more and more talk of the need to remove Chavez. On November 5-7,

  • SOUTH AFRICA: Privatised power company sacks workers

    JOHANNESBURG — Around 480 voluntary retrenchments have been offered to municipal workers at the recently privatised Kelvin power plant. Kelvin, a coal-powered electricity station, provides 25% of Johannesburg's electricity

  • ISRAEL: Divisions grow over war

    Israeli society is becoming increasingly polarised. On one side there are those who have lost, or are losing, faith in a military strategy to crush the current intifada, and who are beginning to understand that without justice for

  • SCOTLAND: Protesters blockade Trident base

    GLASGOW — At 5am on February 11 a convoy of mini buses, cars and vans carrying 500 anti-nuclear activists from across Europe made their way to the home of Britain's Trident nuclear missile submarine base at Faslane on the Clyde

  • YEMEN: Saleh joins Bush's 'war on terrorism'

    LONDON — Whatever authoritarian aspirations Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh may have cherished in the past, tribal and regional fiefdoms have always served as a brake on centralised power. Now, thanks to September 11, the