In Venezuela, after decades of class polarisation, neglect of the needs of the majority, corruption on a massive scale and unbridled bureaucracy, the magnitude of problems that Venezuela聮s Bolivarian revolution led by socialist president Hugo Chavez is attempting to tackle is enormous.
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The Melbourne City Council is taking steps to introduce a partnership scheme that will allow Victorian same-sex couples to have their civil unions recognised by the council.
As right-wing death squads reassert their presence and gangs and organised crime with links to the highest levels of government operate freely, campesinos (peasants) and organised youth are being persecuted and beaten in the streets. On February 27, while holding a peaceful and legal protest against the regional free trade agreement CAFTA and the government聮s crackdown on civil liberties, 27 young activists were detained, charged with civil disobedience and brutally beaten by the civil police. Meanwhile the Popular Youth Bloc is awaiting information on the fate of Edwar Contreras Bonifacio, who was forcibly disappeared when he left college on February 7. An international solidarity campaign is underway and people are urged to write to the nearest Salvadoran consulate or embassy demanding his safe return, as well as the release of the 27 arrested youth. The youth and popular organisations are responding to this campaign of state-sponsored intimidation with the call to 聯Answer more repression with more struggle!聰
鈥淐omfort women鈥 survivors and their supporters will rally in Sydney on March 7, as part of a global day of action, to protest against the human rights abuses suffered by hundreds of thousands of women during World War II. An estimated 200,000 women in were forced into sexual slavery and continually beaten, tortured and raped by Japanese soldiers during the war.
On February 24, Hy Vuthy, a leader of the Free Trade Union of the Workers of Cambodia (FTUWKC) was shot dead while driving home. The murder occurred shortly after Hy Vuthy successfully negotiated with a company for a one-day holiday for Khmer New Year. This was the third murder of a FTUWKC representative since the union聮s former president, Chea Vichea, was killed in 2004. On February 26, the International Trade Union Confederation called on the Cambodian government to investigate the crime, bring those responsible to justice, and to end the campaign of repression against trade unionists. For more information, visit .
Pot calls kettle black
"Their [the Islamists] goal in the broader Middle East is to seize control of a country, so they have a base from which they can launch attacks against governments that refuse to meet their demands." 鈥 Lord Darth Cheney,
Australian soldiers fired on three youths in Dili on February 23. One youth died at the scene 聴 a camp for internally displaced people (IDP) near Dili Airport. The others were injured; one later died in hospital.
Angry at the brutal occupation of Iraq and the inhumane treatment of David Hicks, university students are joining anti-war and radical groups such as Resistance at orientation weeks in bigger numbers this year. The first revolution of the 21st century, in Venezuela, is also attracting a lot of interest.
Four Queensland University of Technology students were arrested on March 1 for expressing their political opinions on campus.
The Israeli army continued to terrorise residents of the West Bank city of Nablus, the Palestinian National Authority鈥檚 International Press Centre (IRC) reported on February 28. IPC reported that at 2.30am that day, an Israeli occupation contingent of 120 armoured vehicles, jeeps and bulldozers stormed into the city for a second time, and began conducting house-to-house raids, removing dozens of residents for interrogation.
Most students started on campus a week after John Howard decided to send more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. With the government under growing pressure to bring David Hicks home, the surge against the war and the so-called war on terror is growing rapidly on all campuses.
The Howard government鈥檚 Work Choices laws 鈥渉ave had an overall negative effect for women in the work force鈥, Griffith University Professor David Peetz told 麻豆传媒 Weekly on February 27. 鈥淭he slow trend toward improvement in female compared to male levels of pay and conditions has been reversed under Work Choices, threatening much of the gains of the previous 10 years鈥, said Peetz.
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