World

The below article is a statement from the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network released on November 28.

What kind of government in the 21st century can deny another people basic human rights -- that is, the right to food, water, shelter, security and dignity?

I want to give some preliminary and personal impressions, in the heat of the moment, where many comrades are very preoccupied by the significance of the [Chavista movement's] loss of the Mayor of Greater Caracas and of some important or key governorships in the country.

Three trade unionists Richard Gallardo, Luis Hernandez and Carlos Requena, leaders of the pro-revolution National Union of Workers (UNT) and also members of the United Socialist Left were shot dead late Thursday night in Aragua state, Venezuela.

The current global economic crisis has all the earmarks of an epoch-defining event. Mainstream economists now openly employ phrases like “systemic meltdown” and “peering into the abyss”.

Few humanitarian crises have occasioned as much media and activist attention in the US as the conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan.

Dr Fernando Martirena from the Centre of Investigation in Structures and Materials (CIDEM) research institute at the University of Santa Clara, Cuba, recently visited Australia to speak to a number of meetings organised by the Australian Green Development Forum.

After such a long period of time in a vacuum, uncertain of how to respond to change caused by neoliberal economic policies, little by little, democracy movement activists have been able to wrest back the political podium.

The below article is abridged from a speech given by Mano Navaratnam from the Tamil Ealam Women’s Organisation (TEWO) at an October 30 Melbourne film screening of My Daughter the Terrorist, organised with the Socialist Alliance. The Tamil people, whose homeland is in the north and east of Sri Lanka, have been waging a long struggle for national self-determination against the Sri Lankan state.

The Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM), formed only in 1996, shocked Malaysia’s political establishment by winning two seats in the March 8 general elections. Nasir Hashim was elected to the Selangor state legislative assembly and Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj was elected to the national parliament.

On November 17, the Service Employees Industrial Union (SEIU) announced that it would be holding an advisory ballot of members in California to determine the future of the United Healthcare Workers–West (UHW-W), which with 150,000 members is the SEIU’s third largest local.

In October, a three-member delegation of Australian unionists visited the Western Saharawi refugee camps in the Hamada desert, South West Algeria. Western Sahara has been illegally occupied by Morocco since 1975.