World

The images on the television screen are now so familiar we become immune. Unimaginable numbers of people suffering and dying in a part of the world we know little about for reasons we know even less. What is it that we feel? Sadness, pity, a sense of anger, a sense of hopelessness? So we make the right noises, perhaps make a donation to the relevant charity and move on to the next news item. Yet the people suffering are just like us; the only difference is that we are lucky enough to have been born here.

On August 15, the cities of Ica and Pisco located in the southern region of Peru were hit by a massive earthquake registering 7.9 on the Richter scale. This was the first quake recorded in living history in this area. It resulted in the loss of 540 lives, and immense physical destruction; 80% of buildings within the heart of Pisco collapsed, and more than 16000 people were left without housing and basic services.

Since Beijing’s push to speed-up privatisation in the mid-1990s, left-leaning intellectuals in China have increasingly made use of Dushu (Readings), a monthly discussion magazine, as a platform to challenge this policy direction and Beijing’s overall pro-capitalist agenda. They highlighted the horrific social consequences of Beijing’s course and have generated waves of debates on the way forward for China.

The following statement was originally posted on , in response to the current US-backed campaign of destabilisation against the democratically-elected government of President Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, elected in December 2005 with just under 54% of the vote. Visit the site to add your name.

Next month, a representative of the foreign ministry of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela will visit Australia to address the Latin America and Asia Pacific International Solidarity Forum in Melbourne on October 11-14.’s, Green Left Weekly’s Jim McIlroy and Coral Wynter conducted an interview in Caracas last November with Venezuelan vice-minister for Asia, the Middle East and Oceania, Vladimir Villegas. Villegas talked about the Venezuelan government’s revolutionary approach to international relations.

On September 12, the new East Timorese government led by Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, tabled the Government Program for 2007-12. The coalition Parliamentary Majority Alliance (AMP) believes the program will help alleviate poverty and resolve internal unrest and security issues. “Everything is urgent for this nation, [and] we are defining priorities for the short term”, Gusmao told parliament.

Public Services International (PSI), an international union federation, is calling on its affiliates to send letters of protest to the Salvadoran government following the arrest of 8 members of the executive board of the Trade Union of Nursing Workers of El Salvador, SIGEESAL, members of the Salvadoran Trade Union Front (Frente Sindical Salvadoreno). The union leaders were arrested in the city of Ahuchapan and Santa Ana, early in the morning of September 4 by members of the National Police. There are also arrest warrants issued against other union leaders as well.

“US combat deaths in Iraq have dropped by half in the two months since the buildup of 28,000 additional troops reached full strength”, Associated Press reported on August 31. In the days following, most of the US corporate media repeated this claim. But what they didn’t report was that the number of US combat deaths in June-August — a total of 264 — made it the deadliest summer for US occupation troops since the war began in March 2003. Last summer, 169 US soldiers were killed in Iraq.

The outcome of Timor Leste’s parliamentary election could be seen as a political victory for former president, and now prime minister, Xanana Gusmao.

During the last week of August, more than 3000 workers at the state-controlled Chengdu Power company went on strike at their diesel engines producing plant in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, and protested at the city government offices. The action was a bid to pressure the factory management to honour the original agreement under which working conditions would be changed while the company is restructured for privatisation.

The United States government has almost perfected a method of intervention that is able to penetrate and infiltrate all sectors of civil society in countries that it deems to be of economic and strategic interest. In the case of oil-rich Venezuela — in the middle of a process of transformation led by socialist President Hugo Chavez that is adversely affecting the interests of US corporations — this strategy began to take form in 2002.

Delegates at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in Brighton gave Gordon Brown a frosty reception during his first speech to the TUC as Britain’s new Labour PM on September 10. Brown used the speech to underline his demand that pay rises in the public sector be limited to no more than 2% over the coming year.