World

The world has recently lost one of the most important leaders of the indigenous movement in Latin America.

“We don’t live in the territories, we cannot throw stones and we cannot participate in the legitimate resistance against occupation”, Haneen Zoabi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) told Green Left Weekly.

The national president of the US organisation Veterans for Peace, Mike Ferner has written an open letter to US President Barack Obama published below. VFP involves veterans from past and current US wars. Its members “draw on our personal experiences and perspectives gained as veterans to raise public awareness of the true costs and consequences of militarism and war — and to seek peaceful, effective alternatives”. For more information, visit .

The following is a May 6 statement by the Treatment Action Campaign (South Africa), AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa, RAVANE+ PVVIH Network for the Indian Ocean Region (Mauritius) and the Grassroots Empowerment Trust (Kenya). It is reprinted from Links.

“Our motherland has been completely liberated from separatist terrorism”, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in a May 19 “victory speech” to parliament. He was referring to the military defeat of the pro-independence Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by the Sri Lankan Army.

British comedian and activist Mark Steel discusses the growing scandal about expenses claimed by British members of parliament in the article published below. The scandal is causing widespread outrage and forced the resignation of House of Commons speaker Michael Martin on May 19 — the first time in 300 years the speaker had been forced out. The scandal has engulfed MPs from the ruling Labour Party and the Conservative opposition. This article was originally published in the British Independent.

“I believe that we must reject torture without equivocation because it does not make us safe, it results in unreliable intelligence, it puts our troops at risk, and it contradicts core American values”, US President Barack Obama said while campaigning for the White House in March last year.

Malalai Joya is the youngest elected representative to Afghan’s parliament. In 2007, she was unjustly suspended for “insulting” other members of the parliament. Joya is an opponent of the US-led occupation and a strong supporter of women’s rights. She opposes the brutal, misogynistic polices of both the Taliban and the fundamentalist forces the US have installed. Her memoir, Raising My Voice: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice, is due to be released later this year.

The following statements are reprinted from Links, international journal of socialist renewal

The US Socialist Worker is running a series of commentary from a range of left-wing perspectives assessing the first 100 days of US President Barack Obama. Two contributions are published below. To read more of the commentary, visit www.socialistworker.org.

Venezuela’s National Assembly passed a law on May 7 that assigns control over goods and services connected to the country’s petroleum industry to the state.

In the early 1960s, it was the Irish of Derry who would phone late at night, speaking in a single breath, spilling out stories of discrimination and injustice. Who listened to their truth until the violence began?