World

The front page of the San Francisco Chronicle the day after the historic November 4 presidential election provided this image: a full page color photo of Barack Obama with the quote, “Change has come to America”.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez released a statement congratulating US president-elect Barack Obama, declaring that, “We are convinced that the time has come to establish new relations between our two countries and in our region, based on the principles of respect for sovereignty, equality and true co-operation”, according to a November 6 Ultimas Noticias article.

Despite Western media and politicians having largely ignored a decade of genocidal warfare that has cost 6 million lives, the recent upsurge in fighting in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has drawn not only media attention, but visits to the region by the British and French foreign ministers and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

The Kyoto Protocol’s “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM), which was supposed to reduce emissions, is subsidising the fossil-fuel industry.

The article below has been translated by Federico Fuentes for Green Left Weekly from the November edition of Latin America-wide publication America XXI, and is reprinted with permission.

While celebrations over Barack Obama’s victory in the presidential elections dominated US streets, gay rights supporters rallied against the banning of same-sex marriage in California.

People all over the world have waited for the end of the hated far-right-wing administration of US President George Bush and his Vice-President Dick Cheney. However, what will an Obama presidency bring with it? US Socialist Worker held a round table with a range of activists and left-wing authors on this topic. Below are some heavily abridged excerpts of some contributions. All contributions, in full, can be found at http://socialistworker.org.

Machinists, represented by the Industrial Association of Machinists (IAM), at Boeing plants in the US voted on November 1 to end a 57-day strike and accept a new contract offer.

The article below is abridged from a November 4 statement released by the Saharawi Journalists’ and Writers’ Union (UPES). For more information, visit http://www.upes.org.

Globally, the campaign for serious action on climate change has been forced to confront the question of how to relate to the workforce in environmentally destructive industries.

According to an October 29 Papua New Guinea Post Courier report, the first 40 families from Carterets Island, a small atoll that is part of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville (ARB), are expected to move to mainland Bougainville by March next year.

The United States Socialist Worker is maintaining an online election journal and analysis of the November 4 vote. Below is the account posted by SW journalist Alan Maas at 11pm on November 4 on the impact of the victory for Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama, who has become the first African American head of state in a nation founded on slavery and where, only a few decades ago, many African Americans were denied the vote in a number of southern states.