World

Matt McCarten is the secretary of New Zealand’s fastest growing union, Unite. The union organises fast-food workers, cleaners, hotel, casino, security and part-time staff. It has a financial membership of 8000 members. The transient nature of these industries means Unite has an annual membership turnover of 66%. It recruits about 600 new members every month.

“Mum’s dead”. The gloomy faced Sujendran Gunesekaram greeted me, as we met in person for the first time. His mother died of a heart attack on September 5, after suffering for three years. Sujendran is a 27-year-old Sri Lankan Tamil originally from Muttur in Trincomalee, the war-hit town in the east. He was one of 254 asylum seekers on the Australia-bound boat Jeya Lestari that moored off at the port in Merak, Indonesia in October 2009.

Wikileaks in summary.

As indigenous peoples, we are extremely concerned that the principles agreed upon in the Cochabamba People’s Agreement have been unilaterally removed from the negotiating document [for the Cancun climate conference] that was released on November 24. Equally alarming is the misrepresentation of the Copenhagen Accord as a legitimate path forward, despite its widespread denouncement by civil society and its tepid reception last December in Denmark, when the United Nations merely “took note of” it.

About 100,000 people took over the streets of Dublin on November 27 to protest the Irish government’s “bailout package” from the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank, and the savage austerity accompanying the loans, the Morning Star said on November 28. The government formalised the loans, worth €85 billion, on November 29. Loan conditions include the government spending cuts over four years to reduce its deficit. The 2011 budget will contain €4.7 billion in cuts and €1.5 billion in new taxes, the Morning Star said.

The Cuban Communist Party has called its Sixth Congress for April. It has presented a document for discussion that proposes economic and political reforms to be implement over the next five years. The proposals are outlined in the “The Economic and Social Policy Development Project”, a 32-page pamphlet that establishes 291 “lines of action”. The document covers: the economic management model; macroeconomic and foreign economic policies; investment, agro-industrial and energy plans; and initiatives in the tourism, transport, construction and trade sectors.

The Venezuelan government released a statement accusing the United States of provoking the ongoing conflict between North and South Korea to further US interests in the region, Venezuelanalysis.com said November 26. The statement came amid escalating tensions, as the US and South Korea carried out military exercises in disputed waters North Korea claims as its own.

• A secret, US-backed operation had started to remove enriched uranium spent fuel from a Pakistani nuclear reactor research facility. • The US, Israel and several Middle East countries collaborated to isolate and threaten Iran, and several European countries were revealed to be holding US-owned nuclear weapons on their soil.

More than 250,000 confidential files from United States embassies and consulates around the world sit in the database of whistleblower website Wikileaks.

Haiti's November 28 election was marred by widespread fraud. Despite the call of all the leading candidates but one to cancel the exercise, officials with the UN Security Council mission as well as the United States, Canada and Europe are voicing satisfaction with the result and urging the country’s electoral commission to press ahead with a second-round runoff vote in January.

Sombat Boonngamanong is a long-time NGO activist in Thailand and has been of great help to renewing public Red Shirt activity following the bloody April-May military crackdown. Lee Yu Kyung spoke to him about the prospects for the democracy movement in Thailand. * * *

The streets of Ayala, the old financial capital of Manila, were taken over by about 5000 people on November 25 in a protest against the growing use of contract labour. Philippine Airlines, owned by the Philippines second richest man, is the latest company to sack its workforce and rehire them as contract workers – with lower wages and without the benefits and security guaranteed to formal, permanent workers.