World

  • PALESTINE: The end of the Abbas era?

    Michael Shaik In mid-April, Palestinian farmers in the hilltop village of Jayyous transported their newly harvested lemons to Nablus on a journey that used to take an hour but now takes between 9 and 10 hours, along a series of improvised dirt

  • UNHRC rejects Guantanamo investigation

    On April 21, the United Nations Human Rights Commission rejected a Cuba-proposed resolution calling for an "impartial and independent fact-finding mission" into human rights abuses at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay. The 53-state body voted the

  • EAST ASIA: Japan takes role as Washington's deputy

    Eva Cheng As Washington's scaremongering about the "threat" posed to the Western world by China's economy has been broadened to include painting Beijing as a military threat, Japan is emerging as one of the US's regional bullies. During the last

  • UNITED STATES: Rumsfeld's torture investigated

    Rohan Pearce The New York-based Human Rights Watch has called for the US government to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the role US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former CIA head George Tenet played in the torture of detainees

  • CUBA: 'What we have to change is the world'

    This is abridged from a statement delivered by Cuban foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque to the UN Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva on March 17. The Commission on Human Rights has lost legitimacy. It is not credible. It allows the impunity

  • INDIA: Putting their lives on the line for socialism

    Sue Bull Few participants at the Third Asia-Pacific International Solidarity Conference, held in Sydney on March 25-28, could have failed to notice the enthusiastic presence of a small, dynamic Indian woman. Whether she was singing "We Shall

  • CUBA: Minimum wage doubles

    On April 21, Cuban President Fidel Castro announced an increase in the minimum wage to 225 pesos (US$9.40) a month, up from 100 pesos now. The increase will affect 1,657,191 workers, most of them working in agriculture, the service sector, the food

  • VENEZUELA: Occupied factory nationalised

    Simon Cunich The demands of the workers at Venezuela's valve producing company, Constructora Nacional de Valvulas, were met on April 27, as President Hugo Chavez signed a decree to nationalise the company. This signing came days after the workers

  • Anti-apartheid movement project

    Activists from the Australian or New Zealand anti-apartheid movements are invited to contact Peter Limb (<[email protected]>) about a new history of the international anti-apartheid movement to be published in South Africa. He will be visiting

  • IRAQ: US admits rebellion hasn't weakened

    Doug Lorimer "In city after city and town after town, security forces who had signed up to secure Iraq and replace US forces appear to have abandoned posts or taken refuge inside them for fear of attacks" by Iraqi resistance fighters, the April 23