World

  • RUSSIA: Suicide epidemic revealed in army

    On November 17, the Russian government released astonishing figures revealing that less than half the 932 Russian soldiers killed last year died in the "line of duty', and 260 of them committed suicide. More than 100 deaths were classified as

  • CHILE: 30 protesters arrested

    According to Weekly News Update on the Americas, Chilean police arrested 30 of the approximately 200 demonstrators at a rally on November 10. They were protesting the infringements on civil liberties in the lead up to the November 19-21 Asia-Pacific

  • SOUTH KOREA: Public sector strike attracted repression

    Only a few thousand workers participated in the "indefinite" general strike called by the illegal Korean Government Employees Union that began on November 15. The union, which has 140,000 members, said that 45,000 had committed to join the strike to

  • UNITED STATES: Students investigated for performing Dylan

    The Secret Service payed a visit to Boulder High School on November 11, after it heard that students were planning a spoken word performance of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" at the school's talent show the following night. The school's principal Ron

  • IRAQ: US-installed 'democracy' in action

    Rohan Pearce Anyone naive enough to think that the Iraqi elections scheduled for January will produce a genuinely, as opposed to formally, independent government is likely to have their illusions shattered by a new crackdown on political opposition

  • IRAQ: Political blowback from Fallujah begins

    Rohan Pearce The NBC TV footage of a US marine executing a wounded and unarmed Iraqi resistance fighter in a Fallujah mosque was a rare crack in the facade that Washington, with the complicity of most of the corporate media, has tried to present to

  • SOUTH AFRICA: Behind the COSATU-ANC spat over Zimbabwe

    Dale T. McKinley, Johannesburg During the last week of October, a 13-member delegation from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) arrived in Zimbabwe for a brief "fact-finding mission" that, according to COSATU, was designed to "get a

  • SOUTH KOREA: General strikes pressed ahead

    Eva Cheng The illegal Korean Government Employees Union (KGEU) plans to press ahead with a general strike on November 15 despite having the strike ballot among its 140,000 members seriously disrupted by police. The KGEU had planned a general

  • SCOTLAND: More blood on Blair's hands

    Alex Miller Between November 4, when they were moved to central Iraq, and November 9, four soldiers from the Scottish Black Watch regiment were killed. On November 8, the Reuters news agency reported a British Ministry of Defence spokesman as

  • CHILE: Left success in municipal elections

    Jorge Jorquera An alliance of the left, principally made up of the Communist Party of Chile and the Humanist Party, the main Green party in Chile, managed 9.14% of the vote in the October 31 municipal elections. This is the highest left vote since

  • UNITED STATES: Torture advocate to be attorney-general

    Rohan Pearce Months ago, civil libertarians and supporters of democratic rights might have greeted the news of John Ashcroft's imminent retirement from the position of US attorney-general with relief. After all, Ashcroft, a nutty fundamentalist

  • VENEZUELA: After victory, Chavez plans land reform

    Stuart Munckton The Venezuelan regional elections held on October 31 registered another decisive victory for the Bolivarian revolution, just two-and-a half months after the radical pro-poor President Hugo Chavez won almost 60% of the vote in