World

  • Zimbabwe: Resisting Mugabe's reign of terror

    On June 29, ZANU-PF’s Robert Mugabe was declared the winner by electoral officials of the presidential run-off vote on June 27, in which he was the only candidate. It was announced that Mugabe had won 2,150,269 votes against 233,000 for the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Morgan Tsvangirai.

  • Colombia: Behind the freeing of Betancourt

    On July 2, an operation by the Colombian military succeeded in freeing French-Colombian citizen Ingrid Betancourt from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who had held her prisoner since 2002. Betancourt was the highest-profile FARC-held prisoner and the action, which also liberated 14 other prisoners, captured world headlines.

  • Pakistan: Workers' power in Faisalabad

    On June 24, more than 10,000 workers picketed a power loom factory in Sadhar Faisalabad for more than eight hours. They were demanding the arrest of the owner of the factory and his gangsters.

  • Burma: Waiting for Suu Kyi

    The last time I saw Aung San Suu Kyi, general secretary of Burma’s National League for Democracy (NLD), was in 1996.

  • Afghanistan: More chaos and more troops

    The last month in Afghanistan has seen the anti-occupation Islamist Taliban forces stage a jailbreak of 1200 of prisoners in Kandahar, threats by the US’s puppet Afghan President Hamid Karzai to attack Pakistan (the major US ally in the region), the killing of 11 Pakistani soldiers in a border clash with occupation troops, pro-Taliban insurgents reach the Pakistani city of Peshawar and the highest number of casualties for both US and other occupation forces for any month since the October 2001 invasion.

  • From triumph to torture

    Two weeks ago, I presented a young Palestinian, Mohammed Omer, with the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.

  • Iraq sues AWB

    According to a July 2 Brisbane Times article, the Iraqi government is suing the formerly Australian government-owned AWB Limited, which has a monopoly over Australian wheat exports, over its alleged rorting of the United Nations’ oil-for-food program as part of UN-enforced sanctions against Iraq following the first Gulf War in 1991.

  • Venezuela: Mining stopped in forest preserve

    Venezuela’s environment ministry has proclaimed sweeping restrictions on mining in the Imataca Forest, in Venezuela’s south-east, according to a June 27 Venezuelanalysis.com article. Despite this, negotiations over mining permits continue with affected companies.

  • Malaysian socialists warn of military takeover threat

    As Malaysian opposition parties and social activists, emboldened by advances in the March general elections, prepared to hold a giant protest against recent oil price hike (petrol up 41%, diesel up 67%) in Kuala Lumpur on July 6, a series of disturbing events unfolded.