World

On April 25, the three cops who murdered African American Sean Bell in a hail of 50 bullets in New York were acquitted of all charges.

“Deaths and injuries are soaring in Sadr City as US troops increase their military and economic pressure” on the Iraqi capital’s huge Shiite slum district, the English-language website of Baghdad Azzaman daily reported on May 5.

“If the government cannot lower the cost of living it simply has to leave”, a demonstrator said in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. “If the police and UN troops want to shoot at us, that’s OK, because in the end, if we are not killed by bullets, we’ll die of hunger.”

Below is an abridged April 30 Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) article. Visit http://cispes.org.

A realignment of political forces appears to be underway in East Timor, with the signing of an agreement for a strategic alliance for future elections between the largest party in parliament, the Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor (Fretilin), and the Timorese Social Democratic Association (ASDT) — the second largest party in the coalition of non-Fretilin parties that has held government since the July 2007 parliamentary elections.

Originally published in Liberation, the magazine of the Communist Party of India-Marxist-Leninist Liberation. A longer version can be found at the socialist e-journal, Links, http://links.org.au.

A day of violence, fraud and a “grand rebellion” against the Santa Cruz oligarchy.

Coordinated acts of nonviolent civil disobedience took place at six different locations across the city May 7 in a protest against the not-guilty verdict for three police officers who shot and killed unarmed African American man Sean Bell with 50 bullets — on the night before his wedding.

Below is a statement from the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. Visit http://space4peace.org.

“The Adelitas have arrived/To defend our oil/Whoever wants to give it to the foreigners/ Will get the shit kicked out of him!” yodelled the brigades of women pouring onto the esplanade of the Mexican senate. The demonstration was to protest a petroleum privatisation measure President Felipe Calderon insists is not a petroleum privatisation measure — and which he sent onto the Senate for fast-track ratification at the tag end of the session this April.

As I write this article, the situation in Bolivia seems to be heading toward a civil war provoked by the secessionist attitude of the oligarchies in Santa Cruz and the other departments of the Half Moon (Tarija, Pando and Beni — in resource-rich eastern Bolivia), the prefect of Cochabamba and maybe someone else who remains in the shadows.

The killings of four US soldiers in Iraq on April 30 pushed the US troop death toll for April up to 52, making it the deadliest month for the US occupation forces since last September, when 65 US soldiers were killed. US troop fatalities have now reached 4063 since the occupation began.