World

For the 16th consecutive year, the United Nations has overwhelmingly voted for a resolution urging the US to lift its 47-year long economic embargo against Cuba.

“America’s hostile policy to the Iranian people and the country’s legal institutions are against international law. They are worthless and ineffective, and doomed to failure”, Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Mohammad Ali Hosseini told a media conference in Tehran on October 25.

A new UN report that tracks the world’s progress in achieving sustainable development goals, as recommended in the UN’s historic 1987 Our Common Future report, has painted a grim picture of across-the-board environmental deterioration.

An official from ousted president Jean Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas political movement was abducted at gunpoint on October 27. Dr Maryse Narcisse acted as spokesperson for exiled president and belongs to the five-member executive committee of Fanmi Lavalas. She was taken in front of her home in the area of Petion-Ville in Haiti’s capital.

Twenty-four aircraft of the Sri Lankan air force were damaged or destroyed during an attack on the Anuradhapura air base, in Sri Lanka’s North Central Province, carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on October 22. The LTTE has for several decades been fighting for self-determination for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, in response to the discrimination and violent repression carried out against the Tamil people by a series of racist Sri Lankan governments that have drawn their support from the island’s Sinhalese majority.

“Here in Bolivia, the majority have realised that the neoliberals have always betrayed us. Now the people cannot be so easily bought off, there is growing consciousness and a shift in the attitude of society. That is why it will be difficult for [the neoliberals] to defeat us now. We will continue governing for at least 50 to 100 years — some say forever.” This is how Roman Loayza, head of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) group of delegates to Bolivia’s constituent assembly, described the situation in Bolivia when Green Left Weekly spoke to him on October 17.

After receiving the modified project of constitutional reform, which includes an additional 36 changes proposed by the National Assembly, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, announced on October 31 that the proposed changes, which will be put to a referendum on December 2, should be voted on in separate blocs, rather than as one single bloc.

Starting on October 15, New Zealand Security Intelligence Service officers and police began raids on the homes of environmental, unionist and Maori activists in an unprecedented police action allegedly in response to a “terrorist” threat. Peter Robson from Green Left Weekly spoke to New Zealand-based activist Joe Carolan, who is involved with the Civil Rights Defence Committee (CRDC), the Solidarity union, and is a member of the national executive of Socialist Worker, about the raids and who is affected by them.

On October 28, the Israeli defence ministry ordered the cutting of fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, half of whom are children. While Israeli government representatives claimed that they planned to cut supplies by 5-11%, fuel supplies were immediately cut by more than 30%, according to Palestinian officials.

Respect — the Unity Coalition, the first British political party to the left of Labour to win a seat in the Westminster parliament since 1945, has split. In May 2005 George Galloway confounded pundits by winning an historic victory in the East London constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow. A former Labour MP, Galloway was expelled for his vociferous and unflagging opposition to the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and with others in the anti-war movement — notably the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), which plays a leading role in the Stop the War Coalition — formed Respect.

The US military has increased air strikes in Iraq five-fold this year, according to data obtained by USA Today. The paper’s October 22 edition reported that the US military had carried out 1140 air strikes in the first nine months of this year, compared with 229 last year. The figures do not include attacks carried out by helicopters.

The Venezuelan consulate and the residency of a Cuban doctor were attacked with explosives in the opposition-controlled state of Santa Cruz in the early hours of Monday October 22.