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UNITED STATES: Miami police stun-gun children

For the second time in a fortnight, the Miami Dade police have admitted that a stun-gun had been used against a child. In the first incident, on October 20, a six-year-old boy holding a shard of glass was stunned with a Taser. Then, on November 10,

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

Important message to unions and trades and labour councils

We, the office bearers of the Craig Johnston Trade Union Support Committee (CJTUSC), are extremely disappointed at the November 3 correspondence currently being circulated by Australian Manufacturing Workers Union national secretary Doug Cameron.

Protest calls for Aboriginal land transfer

HOBART — More than 100 Aboriginal people and their supporters gathered on the lawns of state parliament on November 17 to support the transfer of three Tasmanian islands to Aboriginal ownership. The state government announced the day before that

Progressives make gains in PSA election

Jenny Long, Sydney Preliminary results for the 2004 election for the seven-member executive and 45-member central council of the NSW Public Service Association (PSA) indicate that no single faction will dominate these bodies and that the left-wing

PHILIPPINES: Police massacre protesters

On November 16, the Philippines army and police massacred 16 people, including a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old, in Hacienda Luisita, in Tarlac, during a protest of striking workers. More than 5000 sugar-mill workers and sugar-cane farmers in the

SOUTH AFRICA: Protest opposes pre-paid water

Hundreds of people came together on November 16 to protest the installation of pre-paid water metres in Soweto and other townships. The protest was organised by a Coalition that included Anti-Privatisation Forum, Independent Baptists, Jubilee and the

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

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

Idolising the competition

Australian IdolChannel 10Just finished BY DAVE RILEY With a net annual profit of $76.93 million to crow about, Network Ten's hold on the youth market demographic is sure to continue — at least until it's milked what it can from the recently

KOSOVA: Occupation regime begins privatisation

Michael Karadjis Five years after North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) troops entered Kosova, occupation authorities have begun a program of privatisation of state and social enterprises. The surprise is not that NATO and the United Nations