World

“We want to believe we are safe here … but the bottom line is that I’ve lost confidence in the Israeli side and that needs to be restored urgently, and it is their duty to restore this confidence”, United National Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) head John Ging told AP on January 13.

Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a political science professor at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University and a well-known socialist activist, has been ordered to appear at a Bangkok police station to be charged under the country’s stiff laws for insulting the country’s monarch.

We have to state and repeat it: we are not witnessing a war in Gaza, but a massacre carried out by the third largest air force in the world against a defenceless civilian population.

Citizens across Cuba have thronged the streets of cities and towns to welcome the “Caravan of Liberty”, a convoy of trucks and buses retracing the path of Fidel Castro and the victorious fighters of the Rebel Army, after the declaration of the defeat of the Batista dictatorship on January 1, 1959.

“Say what they like, the new Sambil is not going ahead”, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on December 23.

Bolivian President Evo Morales has declared the Andean nation to be free from illiteracy, according to a December 22 Granma report.

The statement below was issued on January 15 by the Australia Venezuela Solidarity Network (AVSN). For more information, visit http://www.venezuelasolidarity.org. Since this statement was released, the Ecuadorian government of President Rafael Correa has condemned Israel's "crimes against humanity" and advocated sanctions be applied. In the Arab world, Qatar and Mauritania have suspended diplomatic and economic ties with Israel.

On January 1, US drones pounded Waziristan in Pakistan’s north-western tribal areas, killing five people.

On January 1, 2009, the small island nation of Cuba celebrated the 50th anniversary of a revolution that overthrew a brutal dictatorship and set Cuba on its long and often complicated road towards socialism.

“When the truth is replaced by silence”, the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, “the silence is a lie”.

While Western powers and many Arab governments are complicit in Israel’s crimes against the people of Gaza, the revolutionary governments of Venezuela and Cuba have strongly opposed Israel’s war.

Thousands of Egyptians have taken to the streets to protest the continuing Israeli aggression against Gaza and the participation of the Egyptian regime in the isolation of its population.