World

Following a week of discussions behind closed doors, the national executive of the Communication Workers Union voted by nine votes to five on October 22 to recommend that postal workers accept Royal Mail’s latest offer on pay, pensions and working conditions. The proposed deal will now be put to CWU members in a national ballot.

Venezuelan opposition groups are planning to use “all means possible to stop the constitutional reform referendum”, scheduled to take place on December 2, reported the October 25 Ultimas Noiticias. Describing the proposed constitutional reforms as a “constitutional coup”, a coalition of opposition parties — some of which participated in the short-lived military coup against the government of socialist President Hugo Chavez in 2002 — have called for a massive protest on November 3, demanding that the National Electoral Council (CNE) suspend the constitutional reform referendum.

Two thousand people rallied in the East Timorese capital of Dili on October 17 to demand food sovereignty for East Timor. The demonstration was the culmination of three days of activities to mark World Food Day.

At its 16th Congress five years ago, the Communist Party of China (CPC) amended its constitution to allow the admission of capitalists to its ranks and to legitimise the swelling number of capitalists already in its membership. Today, 3 million of its total membership of 73 million are capitalists — over 4%.

At a well-attended press conference on October 25, Cuban ambassador Gilda Lopez Armenteros directed public attention to the upcoming United Nations General Assembly vote on a resolution calling for an end to the United States economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba.

The death, on October 25, of the second Australian SAS soldier in Afghanistan this month, Matthew Locke, in the province of Oruzgan in southern Afghanistan, has again focused attention on the hidden military occupation that has bipartisan support in Australia. David Pearce was killed in the same province by Taliban forces on October 8.

Israel has continued to carry out rocket attacks on Gaza. On October 25, Israeli missiles killed two Palestinians, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed in two weeks by the occupation forces to more than 10.

“Waving colourful banners and Kurdish flags, thousands of people demonstrated across northern Iraq today in protest at the growing threat of a big military incursion by Turkey to hunt down Kurdish rebels”, the October 18 London Times reported.

On October 24, US President George Bush — a firm defender of freedom and human rights, as any Iraqi tortured by US forces at Abu Ghraib could testify — denounced Cuba as a “tropical gulag”. Bush said that Cuba is characterised by “terror and trauma”. The president also reaffirmed his support for the punishing US economic embargo against Cuba, which has lasted almost half a century and cost the Cuban people some US$89 billion.

On October 3 Caribbean Net News reported that the South American nation Guyana, which borders Venezuela to its west, will soon benefit from a US$12.5 million debt write-off by Venezuela under an agreement expected to be finalised in the near future.

US President George Bush has opposed US Senate legislation to fund health care for the nuclear-test-affected Marshallese. Sixty-seven US nuclear bombs were detonated in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958.

Across the board, the right made gains in Greater Auckland’s council elections at the expense of both the political centre (Labour-aligned tickets) and the grassroots left (notably RAM — the Residents Action Movement).