World

More than 30 delegates from around the world attended the Jerusalem Initiative conference held in occupied East Jerusalem to call for an end to Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The three-day conference from June 2-4 was organised by the Palestinian People’s Party and the Communist Party of Israel and was attended by representatives from European, Scandanvian and Australian socialist parties as well as members of the international peace movement, trade unions and women’s organisations from around the world.

There is little mystery behind Iraqis' tenacious resistance to US President George Bush's war of occupation: over four years of war have left the country devastated and resulted in the deaths of over half a million Iraqis, according to a study published in the influential British medical journal The Lancet.

At midnight on June 4, around 2800 kitchen staff, orderlies and hospital cleaners were set to be locked out of their workplaces by four contracting companies — Spotless, OCS, ISS and Compass — in hospitals across New Zealand. However, last-minute negotiations between the Service and Food Workers Union Nga Ringa Tota (SFWU) and the District Health Board averted the lockout.

The corporate owned- and controlled-media’s accounts of recent events in Venezuela give the impression that a new student movement is fighting for their democratic rights against an increasingly autocratic government. This is testimony to the way the corporate media turns reality on its head — making the victim look like the aggressor and vice versa.

Cuban newspaper Granma reported on June 6 that Venezuela’s socialist president, Hugo Chavez, had called for an expansion of ALBA — the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, a solidarity-based alternative to US-backed bilateral “free trade” agreements and the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Chavez made the call during the closing of the first meeting of ALBA’s Council of Ministers in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas.

Some 55,000 people demonstrated in Hong Kong on June 4 — the 18th anniversary of the Chinese army’s bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy student protesters at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

On June 5, Labour Party Pakistan general secretary Farooq Tariq was arrested from his home by a large contingent of police without a warrant. His detention is part of a recent wave of repression by the military regime of President Pervez Musharraf, in which hundreds of activists have been arrested. The LPP, which is pursuing legal action and organising protests against Tariq’s detention, believes he was arrested due to his role in the lawyers’ pro-democracy movement and in activities against the Pakistan electronic Media Regulatory Authority, and because of the LPP’s announcement that it would hold a Free Media Conference on June 6. Tariq had also been arrested on May 4 and detained for three days to prevent his participation in the public reception for suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.

On June 5, the Iraqi parliament approved a law giving itself the formal authority to block the extension beyond December of the UN Security Council mandate under which US and allied foreign troops are deployed in Iraq.

More than 1 million public servants across South Africa have embarked on the largest public sector industrial campaign in the country’s history. On June 1, more than 700,000 workers downed pens and clipboards for an indefinite stoppage, while another 300,000 “essential workers”, who are prohibited from striking, joined huge nationwide marches, pickets and other protest actions. While the immediate demand is for a significant pay increase, an important undercurrent of the mass action is working-class and poor people’s growing dissatisfaction with the pro-rich policies of the African National Congress (ANC) government.

The Socialist Party of Timor (PST) is fielding 65 candidates in the June 30 parliamentary elections, and also has 25 candidates on the supplementary list (which comes into operation if candidates withdraw or die, or vacate their position after the election). Fourteen parties are contesting the elections. Topping the PST’s list of candidates is party secretary-general Avelino Coelho da Silva. PST president Nelson Correia is second on the list; two well-known women activists, Angela Fraga and Maria de Carvalho, are the third and fourth candidates.

The latest attempt by the US to isolate the revolutionary government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez failed when the Organisation of American States general assembly meeting in Panama on June 4 refused the US demand to criticise and “investigate” Venezuela for supposed attacks on freedom of expression.

Under the banner of “For freedom of speech and against imperialism”, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets of Caracas on June 2 in defence of their revolution, and as a direct response to the domestic and international campaign being whipped up by Washington in the wake of the non-renewal of Radio Caracas TV’s (RCTV) broadcasting concession, dwarfing all of the opposition marches that had occurred in preceding days. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced: “If the Venezuelan oligarchy believe that they will stop us with their threats, with their manipulations or with their destabilisation plans, forget it!”