World

On February 12, the corporate sporting behemoth known as the 21st Winter Olympic Games will open to great fanfare here. In a time of economic hardship and government cuts to social programs across Canada, huge sums of public money have been spent to stage this uber spectacle.

On June 28 last year, US-trained military officers overthrew elected President Manuel Zelaya. This sparked sustained mass resistance from the poor majority, angry that the rich had overthrown a president who had carried out pro-poor reforms and sought to begin a democratic process to change the pro-elite constitution.

Perhaps one of the most breathtakingly hypocritical moments of the past year was when US President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel peace prize.

The Indonesian foreign affairs department was expecting a visit from an Australian “people smuggling envoy” when three refugee rights activists were apprehended and detained at Port Merak.

Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans took to the streets on January 27 to protest the inauguration of Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo, who was the victor in fraudulent elections held last November. Jeffery R. Webber spoke during the march with Rafael Alegria, a key leader in the National Resistance Front Against the Coup (FNRG) and a Honduran leader of the international peasant movement, Via Campesina. This is reprinted from MRZine.

The letter published below was sent by Cuban first deputy environment minister Fernando Gonzalez to Yvo de Boer, who is the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, The December UN climate summit in Copenhagen ended in a farce with an “agreement” drawn up behind close doors by a select group of rich nations, which tried to force it on the rest of the world.

Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution, led by President Hugo Chavez, has set “socialism of hte 21st century” as its goal. The process of change faces big challenges from outside and within. William I. Robinson, from the Latin American and Iberian Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, spoke to Chronis Polychroniou, the editor of Greek daily Eleftherotypia. The interview is abridged from Znet.

The following is a joint statement by Asian left organisations in solidarity with the people of Haiti. To add your organisation’s support, email [email protected].

At Sydney Town Hall on January 28, 50 people rallied against the militarisation of Haiti and highlighted that Haiti is suffering from a human-made disaster as much as a natural one. The rally was organised by the Latin American Social Forum (LASF).

Incumbent and Sri Lanka Freedom Party candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa has won the January 26 presidential election, receiving 58% of votes cast.

More US soldier deaths by suicide than combat "[Mental health expert] Zul Merali said while more than 4,500 U.S. military personnel have died in combat since the beginning of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, 'a larger number are falling when

On January 14, two days after the catastrophe in Haiti, which destroyed that neighbouring sister nation, I wrote: “In the area of healthcare and others, the Haitian people have received the cooperation of Cuba, even though this is a small and blockaded country.