The United Nations Independent Special Commission of Inquiry released its report on October 17 into the violent conflict in April and May in East Timor. The 79-page report found that the frailty of state institutions and the weakness of the rule of law were to blame for the conflict that erupted following the sacking of almost 600 soldiers from the Timorese Defence Force.
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Nearly 40 years after his death, John Coltrane remains one of the most important figures in jazz history.
Al Gores documentary An Inconvenient Truth has helped focus attention on the threat posed by fossil-fuel driven climate change. Gores film was met with a predictable barrage of criticism by right-wing pundits. For example Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt wrote in a September 13 article that the former US vice-presidents ludicrous scaremongering contains exaggerations, half-truths and falsehoods.
Union Solidarity-led community picketers halted the construction of the Otway gas plant for a day on October 20. The picketers came from Melbourne, Geelong, Warrnambool, Hamilton and Portland to support the workers at the site.
For two years, construction at the site has proceeded without a single day of industrial action. In June, a site agreement was negotiated between unions and the construction company, Technip.
Biofuels such as ethanol have been presented by alternative energy entrepreneurs and many environmentalists as a clean, green alternative to fossil fuels. But recently a growing chorus of scientists have warned of the dangers of biofuels.
“Liberal Senator Gary Humphries has attempted to reignite a 50-year-old political fear of reds under the bed”, reported the Canberra Times on Thursday October 12. The article was referring to an October 10 speech in the Australian Senate, during which Humphries launched an attack on socialist Cuba and Australian supporters of the Cuban Revolution.
Tamil struggle I
The article "SRI LANKA: Tamil struggle born from oppression" by Chris Slee (GLW #685) was well written and well researched. He does not feel threatened by any parties when he calls a spade a spade.
He is exactly right when heTamil struggle I
The article "SRI LANKA: Tamil struggle born from oppression" by Chris Slee (GLW #685) was well written and well researched. He does not feel threatened by any parties when he calls a spade a spade.
On October 15 Ecuador went to the polls. Having seen eight presidents in 10 years, three of whom were overthrown by a population frustrated by the corruption, ineptitude and nepotism that characterise Ecuador’s elite, the chances of any government lasting out its mandate seem pretty slim. However, the challenge could be in getting one of the pool of 13 presidential candidates even legitimately elected.
On October 17, a US federal appeals court upheld the US State Department’s 2004 designation of Kahane Chai, an Israeli-based spin-off of US ultra-Zionist Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defence League (JDL), as a “foreign terrorist organisation”.
On October 16, the UN Office of Humanitarian Assistances IRIN news service reported that electricity and clean water are now luxuries for most Iraqis. For example, Baghdad, a city with 6 million residents, gets no more than four to six hours of electricity a day.
October 12 was marked in Venezuela as the Day of Indigenous Resistance to the arrival of Spanish colonisers. On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus first landed in South America, beginning more than 500 years of genocide and oppression of the continents indigenous inhabitants. The day is a national public holiday in Venezuela and was previously designated Christopher Columbus Day.
On May 1, the day the Bolivian government announced the nationalisation of the countrys vast oil and gas reserves, I went out to witness the symbolic takeover of a former Bolivian refinery that was privatised in the late 90s.
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