International solidarity

Washington, DC joined Manila and 10 other cities in protests on November 16 against the Pacific trade agreement that is expected to affect all aspects of ordinary life. Crowds shut down traffic in the US capital and occupied various offices that are implicated in the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which is still to be voted on by legislatures of the 12 nations negotiating the deal. The Pacific rim nations involved, which represent 40% of world GDP, are the US, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Chile, Brunei, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Vietnam and Japan.

Since the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13, the world's leaders and media have predictably reminding the world that the attacks' perpetrator – ISIS – has declared war to the death against humanity. ISIS would not deny this. Indeed, making this point was the reason it carried out the Paris attacks, which killed 129 people.

The Socialist Alliance and its youth wing, Resistance, expresses our solidarity with the people of Paris and Beirut who were targeted in back-to-back acts of terror by ISIS forces in the past few days.

El Salvador's governing left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) concluded its first national congress on November 8 with plans to advance its struggles against inequality, exclusion and neoliberalism.

Cuban doctors have served more than 29 million Hondurans and saved at least 250,000 Honduran lives over the past 17 years, local media in the Central American nation said.

Israeli military jeep broadcasting threat to gas residents, Aida refugee camp, Bethlehem, occupied West Bank, October 29. Still from video by Yazan Ikhlayel. Israel has introduced dramatic new restrictions on Palestinians living in the city of Hebron in response to recent violence and mass resistance in the occupied West Bank.

April 24, 1915, was the beginning of the slaughter 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in what is now Turkey. This set a dangerous precedent that has been copied and expanded upon by later despotic governments. Despite its morbid place in world history, governments around the world, including major international powers, refuse to acknowledge that it ever happened.

As news arrived yesterday of terror attacks in Paris that ultimately left more than 120 people dead, US President Barack Obama characterized the situation as “heartbreaking” and an assault “on all of humanity.” But his presidential sympathy was conspicuously absent the previous day when terror attacks in Beirut left more than 40 dead. Predictably, Western media and social media were much less vocal about the slaughter in Lebanon.

 PKK fighters driving a tank into Shingal. The town of Shingal (in Kurdish or "Sinjar" in Arabic) in Iraq's Nineveh Province was declared liberated from ISIS forces, which had held the town since last year, on November 13. The town is mostly inhabited by the Kurdish religious minority community of Yazidis. The town was liberated by Iraqi Kurdish forces, fighting alongside Yazadi militias and fighters from the left-wing Turkish-based Kurdish Workers Party (PKK).

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos recognised and thanked Cuba on November 12 for its important support in achieving national independence 40 years ago. Commemorating four decades of independence from colonial powers, dos Santos invited a Cuban delegation to honour the historical events that led Fidel Castro to deploy 36,000 troops to defend Angola from a US-back military invasion by forces of apartheid South Africa.

I was glad to be part of the November 11 protests, organised by the trade union Unite and by Global Peace and Justice Auckland, at the Australian Consulate in Auckland over their government's policies that have led to the indefinite detention of asylum seekers and Australian residents born in New Zealand in what are in effect concentration camps.

The following statement was released by the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) on November 12.