World

  • Joesef Isak: A life of struggle

    On March 24-28, Sydney will host one of the most significant gatherings of left-wing leaders from Asia and the Pacific in some years. The Third Asia-Pacific Solidarity Conference is being attended by activists from the Philippines to Indonesia, from

  • The truth about Cuba

    Marce Cameron The February 19 Good Weekend, the magazine supplement of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age, ran a cover story titled "Children of the Revolution" with a nice picture of smiling Cuban kids. "[Cuba's President] Fidel

  • CAMBODIA: Sex workers fight proposed drug trial

    Allen Myers, Phnom Penh The Cambodian government is under pressure to allow a controversial trial of the anti-HIV drug tenofovir. A planned trial of the drug was banned by Prime Minister Hun Sen last August after vocal protests by sex workers, whom

  • BOTSWANA: Bushmen launch boycott campaign

    Members of the Gana and Gwi bushmen tribes of the Kalahari used the March 8-12 World Tourism Fair in Berlin to launch a boycott call. The Gana and Gwi are calling for a moratorium on tourist development in the Kalahiri Game Reserve until they are

  • NEW ZEALAND: UN committee criticises foreshore bill

    On March 14, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination released the reports of its 66th session, including the judgement that New Zealand's Foreshore and Seabed Act was discriminatory because it extinguished native title over the

  • AFGHANISTAN: US soldiers beat prisoners to death

    Rohan Pearce Even if one of the prisoners had survived, "both [of his] legs would have had to be amputated", a report by the US army on the deaths of two Afghan prisoners, who were chained to the ceiling during the assault, noted. The investigation

  • EU-3 join US war drive against Iran

    Doug Lorimer On March 11 the US government announced it would back the diplomatic efforts of Britain, France and Germany — the "EU-3" — in offering Iran economic incentives to abandon its plans to carry out uranium enrichment for its nuclear

  • VENEZUELA: Supreme Court opens way to jail coup leaders

    Stuart Munckton On March 11 the constitutional chamber of Venezuela's Supreme Court annulled the infamous decision made by the court on August 14, 2002, that set free the four military officers who led the April 2002 coup against left-wing

  • VIETNAM: Agent Orange victims denied justice

    Alison Dellit On March 10, US district Court Judge Jack Weinstein dismissed a lawsuit brought by more than 100 Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange against the 37 corporations that manufactured the deadly chemical. The plaintiffs claimed US

  • EGYPT: Nawal el Sadaawi runs for president

    Feminist writer and human rights activist Nawal el Sadaawi has announced she will run for president in Egypt's September election. On February 26, President Hosni Mubarak announced that the country's law would be amended to allow more than one

  • IRAQ: Parliament meets, nothing changes

    Rohan Pearce On March 16, Iraq's new 275-member National Assembly met for the first time since US-sponsored elections were held on January 30. The parliament met inside Baghdad's Green Zone — the US-controlled area that houses most of the

  • Anti-imperialist youth to descend on Caracas

    Fred Fuentes, Hanoi Enrique Ramos, president of the Venezuelan National Institute of Youth, told the February 27-28 Hanoi preparatory meeting for the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students, to be held in Caracas, that the festival "would be a