World

The Wall Street crisis seems light years away from the side streets of Manila’s urban poor slums.

An overlooked order by the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) lead lawyer this summer dealt a serious blow to the rights of US workers to protest government policies.

Canada’s largest media group is suing Palestinian solidarity activists who created a parody version of the Vancouver Sun newspaper.

On September 28, 65% of Ecuadorian voters approved the country’s 20th and newest constitution — strengthening the mandate of left-wing President Rafael Correa.

Speaking from within the belly of the beast, Bolivia’s indigenous President Evo Morales announced at the 63rd United Nations General Assembly that the world today is paying witness to a “fight between rich and poor, between socialism and capitalism”.

Haiti has been devastated in recent weeks by Hurricanes Fay, Gustav and Ike, and tropical storm Hanna. Fay was the first to hit, on August 15, and Ike was the last, on September 7.

In an “open letter to the national and international community” written from prison, Colombian trade union and human rights activist Liliana Obando denounced the government’s unprecedented “new witch-hunt against the political opposition in Colombia”.

On September 23, one of Burma’s longest-serving political prisoners, 78-year-old progressive journalist U Win Tin, was released from Insein Prison after more than 19 years. He was one of six political prisoners included in an amnesty of 9002 prisoners declared by the military junta.

“The surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated”, US Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama told Fox News on September 4. Obama’s claim echoed Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain. Both candidates claim that the surge, which involved sending more than 20,000 extra US troops into Iraq, has reduced violence and “stabilised” Iraq, rescuing the occupation from the indigenous resistance.

Former foreign minister in Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government of 1979-1990, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, gave the United Nations Security Council a blast in his opening address to the new annual session of the UN General Assembly on September 16.

On September 18, Human Rights Watch released a report titled “Venezuela: Rights Suffer Under Chavez”. The report contains biases and inaccuracies, and wrongly purports that human rights guarantees are lacking or not properly enforced in Venezuela.

Washington’s next war is already on the go. “Classified orders”, according to the September 11 New York Times, were passed by US President George Bush in July. And the target is not “axis of evil”-famed Iran. It is Washington’s close ally in the “war on terror”, Pakistan.