863
A Socialist Alliance statement on the 鈥楾asmanian Forests Statement of Principles鈥
***
Since its inception in 2001, the Socialist Alliance has been actively involved in campaigns to protect high conservation native forests from being logged and we support an end to the forestry conflict in Tasmania.
Haiti's November 28 election was marred by widespread fraud. Despite the call of all the leading candidates but one to cancel the exercise, officials with the UN Security Council mission as well as the United States, Canada and Europe are voicing satisfaction with the result and urging the country鈥檚 electoral commission to press ahead with a second-round runoff vote in January.
Sombat Boonngamanong is a long-time NGO activist in Thailand and has been of great help to renewing public Red Shirt activity following the bloody April-May military crackdown.
Lee Yu Kyung spoke to him about the prospects for the democracy movement in Thailand.
* * *
The streets of Ayala, the old financial capital of Manila, were taken over by about 5000 people on November 25 in a protest against the growing use of contract labour. Philippine Airlines, owned by the Philippines second richest man, is the latest company to sack its workforce and rehire them as contract workers 鈥 with lower wages and without the benefits and security guaranteed to formal, permanent workers.
The 2005 Naivasha Agreement ended the civil war between the Sudanese government and the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM), based in South Sudan.
About 2 million people were killed in the 1983-2005 conflict. A further 500,000 people were killed in the 1955-1972 civil war, also fought between the government and rebels in the south.
Under the agreement, a referendum on independence will be held in the south in January 2011. The SPLM leadership recently endorsed independence for the South, while prior to the peace process it been committed to a united, democratic, federal Sudan.
The federal Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard filed a submission to Fair Work Australia (FWA) on November18, which backed away from its year-long commitment to support the Australian Services Union (ASU) application for an Equal Remuneration Order for social and community sector and disability workers.
The government said it supported the principle of pay equity, and agreed community sector workers were underpaid, but its submission argued against granting equal pay to this historically exploited section of the workforce because of budget constraints.
Tough talk by the warmongers at the November 20-21 NATO conference in Lisbon, Portugal, obscured the growing opposition in the US and Europe to the nine-year occupation of Afghanistan.
Ten thousand people took to the streets of London on November 20 to protest the war. Angry at the British government鈥檚 recent cuts to services and pensions, many carried 鈥淐ut war not welfare鈥 placards.
The 2011 UN climate conference in Cancun, Mexico, is not expected to agree to sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. But the UN and rich nations will push for the conference to endorse a carbon trading scheme to protect forests, known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD).
Below is an 鈥渙pen letter to the indigenous peoples of the world鈥 from Bolivian President Evo Morales. Released in September, the letter calls for the protection of the world鈥檚 forests, and also for opposition to REDD and other carbon trading schemes.
***
Media fanfare has subsided around the October rescue of 33 miners from the San Jose mine in Chile 鈥 an event watched by an estimated 1 billion people across the globe.
But could this event at least help bring about change for miners鈥 rights and conditions?
Unfortunately, if we look behind all the commotion and government rhetoric about making big changes for the lives of miners in Chile, the answer seems to be no.
On November 7, two miners were killed in an accident in the Los Reyes mine near Copiapo, close to where the San Jose mine accident took place.
The sixth plenum of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist 鈥 UCPN(M)) began on November 20 in Gorka District. It was the largest meeting in the party鈥檚 history; more then 7000 local members are taking part in discussions.
The Nepalese revolution is in a state of limbo. The current government resigned in May, but continues in a caretaker fashion, as no alternative has come forward.
Maire Leadbeater is a spokesperson for the Indonesia Human Rights Committee (Auckland). She recently returned from West Papua, a nation that has faced repression since its occupation by Indonesia in 1963. She spoke to 91自拍论坛 Weekly's Ash Pemberton.
* * *
Can you give your impressions of West Papuan society under Indonesian occupation?
- Page 1
- Next page