Debate continues over how guest workers and those on 457 visas should be treated. The WA branch of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) passed a resolution at its July state conference that recommends avoiding falling into the federal government and bosses’ divide-and-rule trap.
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“A visit by US officials has raised fears on Christmas Island that an immigration detention centre could be turned into a Guantanamo-style prison”, the November 17 Melbourne Age reported.
Australian unionists have a wealth of experiences to draw on in the fight against the Howard governmentÂ’s Work Choices legislation. Lessons can be drawn not just from the historic victories and defeats of the union movement in this country, but also from the experiences of working-class struggles in other countries.
More than three thousand people had a somewhat surreal experience on November 18. They attended a rally, called by the Melbourne Stop the War Coalition and Stop G20, to oppose the genocide by poverty being promoted by the finance ministersÂ’ meeting, and the warfare that makes the corporate plunder of the Third World possible.
The November 21 assassination of industry minister Pierre Gemayel has provided a focus for US-backed Lebanese politicians to rally their supporters for a possible confrontation with the Hezbollah-led opposition bloc.
Gemayel served as the representative of the Christian-based far-right Phalangist party in Prime Minister Fuad SinioraÂ’s government.
In an article for the November 27 New Yorker magazine released in advance on November 19, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that a highly classified assessment by the CIA had “found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency” (IAEA).
Open warfare erupted between Baloch nationalists and the Pakistani military in December 2005 following decades of what the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) described as a “simmering insurgency”. An HRCP investigation conducted in December 2005 and January 2006 detailed ongoing summary executions, disappearances, torture and indiscriminate bombing and artillery attacks against the people of Pakistan’s south-western province of Balochistan. Baloch nationalist fighters, mainly from the Bugti and Marri tribes, continue to attack Pakistani military and paramilitary forces and sabotage gas pipelines and other infrastructure on a daily basis.
Tonga’s pro-democracy movement has attacked the Australian and New Zealand governments for sending more than 150 soldiers and police to the Pacific nation, demanding the intervention end. The foreign forces have ostensibly been sent to help “restore law and order” in the aftermath of rioting sparked by Tonga’s monarch, King Siaosi Tupou V, announcing the closure of parliament for the year without implementing widely demanded democratic reforms.
Eva Golinger is a Venezuelan-American lawyer and author of The Chavez Code, which exposed US government involvement in a 2002 military coup that briefly overthrew Hugo Chavez, VenezuelaÂ’s left-wing president, before he was reinstated by a popular uprising. She spoke to 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly in late October. GolingerÂ’s latest book is Bush vs Chavez: WashingtonÂ’s War on Venezuela. (The first part of this interview appeared in GLW #691.)
On November 18, the UN General Assembly voted 156 to seven, with six abstentions, to support sending a UN fact-finding team to Gaza to investigate the November 8 massacre of 19 sleeping Palestinians in Beit Hanoun by an Israeli artillery barrage. Israel, the US and Australia voted against the resolution, along with four Pacific Island states.
On November 17, President Hugo Chavez unveiled Mission Energy Revolution, a social project aimed at reducing energy usage in Venezuela. The program was launched in the state of Nuevo Esparta by Chavez, energy minister Rafael Ramirez, other ministers, and representatives of the Cuban government. Ramirez said the mission was aimed not only at rationalising residential electricity consumption, but more fundamentally usage by the industrial and commercial sectors, the November 18 Ultimas Noticias reported.
Michael Lebowitz, author of Build it Now: Socialism for the Twenty-first Century and professor emeritus of the economics department at CanadaÂ’s Simon Fraser University, is a director of the Centro Internacional Miranda. The CIM is a Caracas-based foundation for analysis and discussion of VenezuelaÂ’s Bolivarian revolution — the radical process of social change led by the countryÂ’s socialist president, Hugo Chavez. Lebowitz spoke to 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly about the challenges facing the revolution (the first part of this interview appeared in GLW #690).
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