World

Below is a March 9 statement by the Malaysian Socialist Party (PSM). For more information, visit .

The March 29 election in Zimbabwe is very likely to result in President Robert Mugabe winning, by hook or by crook, a slim majority so as to avoid a run-off.

Malaysia's National Front (BN) government continues to refuse the Malaysian Socialist Party's (PSM) application to register as a political party, claiming that the PSM is a threat to national security. On the basis that the right to form a

While the Western corporate media was swooning over the tour of army duty in war-torn Afghanistan by Prince Harry, the third in line to the British crown, scant coverage was given to US national intelligence director Vice-Admiral Mike McConnell’s admission that the situation facing the US and its NATO allies in Afghanistan is “deteriorating”, despite a doubling of their occupation forces since 2004.

The breakout of the people of Gaza in late January provided a heroic spectacle unlike any other since the Warsaw ghetto uprising and the smashing down of the Berlin Wall.

Just weeks after the Ecuadorian and Venezuelan governments called on Colombia to respect the need for peace and negotiation with the guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP), the Colombian of President Alvaro Uribe launched an extensive armed air and land assault against the insurgency movement.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denounced the Colombian state as a “terrorist state”, and said it had become “the Israel of Latin America”, following the Colombian military’s bombing of Ecuadorian territory on March 1 that killed up to 21 members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Chavez argued the US government was behind Colombia’s actions.

US chief of staff operations director General Carter Ham told a February 25 press briefing that the Pentagon plans to keep its occupation force in Iraq at 140,000 troops after the end of the 30,000-strong US troop “surge” in July.

More than 200 US military veterans and active-duty troops from Iraq and Afghanistan will participate in a four-day event in Washington, to shed light on the atrocities committed by US occupation forces.

Below is a March 4 statement released by Hugo Blanco, a veteran revolutionary and campesino (peasant) leader. He is currently the director of the magazine Lucha Indigena. This statement was translated by Philip Stuart Cournoyer, and is reprinted from international socialist e-journal Links, http://links.org.au.

@intro2 =Below is a February 29 statement by the International Trade Union Confederation, which represents 168 million workers in 155 countries and territories and has 311 national affiliates. Visit <http://www.ituc-csi.org>.

On March 4 and 5, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a brief visit to Israel, ostensibly to advance a “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians, launched in the US resort of Annapolis last November.