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The drive to oust Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian has been put on hold as the major parties jostle to win the December 9 mayoral and city council elections for the major cities of Taipei and Kaohsiung.
Howard speech The October 4 Sydney Morning Herald printed an extract of John Howard's speech to the Quadrant 50th anniversary celebration the night before. I wrote a letter about it. Unsurprisingly, the SMH has not printed it: "Of Howard's two
Ruhel Ahmed, Asif Iqbal, Shafiq Rasul and Monir Ali, from the English midlands town of Tipton, travelled to Pakistan in late 2001 for a wedding and a backpacking holiday. All except Ali were captured in Afghanistan by the Northern Alliance and turned over to the US military, which wrongfully imprisoned and tortured them at Guantanamo Bay for more than two years.
A Congolese prosecutor has called for three former managers of the Perth-based Anvil Mining corporation to be indicted for "complicity in war crimes" - involvement in the massacre of up to 100 people in the village of Kilwa in October 2004. The slaughter, committed by Congolese Armed Forces soldiers ferried to the scene by Anvil-chartered planes and company-owned trucks, took place 50 kilometres from the company's Dikulushi silver and copper mine in the south-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
God On My Side
Directed by Andrew Denton
In cinemas now
Advocates of justice for asylum seekers and refugees were relieved when the government was forced to withdraw its proposed amendments to the Migration Act, amendments that would have meant that any asylum seeker arriving by boat in Australia would be deported to Nauru to be processed.
Children of MenScreenplay by Alfonso Cuaron and Timothy J SextonDirected by Alfonso CuaronWith Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clare-Hope Ashitey and Michael CaineIn cinemas now
Cuban Consul-General Nelida Hernandez told supporters on October 24 that Cuba will again ask the United Nations General Assembly on November 8 to support a motion to lift the 45-year-long economic embargo imposed by the US government on Cuba.
Arab MPs demonstrated outside the Israeli parliament (Knesset) calling on other countries to impose sanctions on the Zionist state as Avigdor Lieberman, the openly racist anti-Arab leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu (“Israel is our home”) party, was sworn into PM Ehud Olmert’s cabinet on October 30.
"If there's an organisation that can lead the trade union movement to where it should be going, it's this one", Chris Cain, Western Australian state secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia told the opening plenary of the 5th Socialist Alliance national conference held at Geelong Trades Hall on October 29.
Israeli cabinet minister Jacob Edery admitted on October 22 that Israel had used white phosphorus, a substance that burns when it comes into contact with air, during its 34-day July-August war on Lebanon.
In the final countdown to the November 7 mid-term congressional elections, Democrats.com has already begun celebrating. Calling for candlelight vigils outside polling stations across the nation on election night, the website says its blue-clad supporters will bear moral witness against voting fraud during the historic moment when the Democrats are expected to retake Congress (well, at least the House of Representatives), with the “Republican Revolution” finally unraveling after 12 long years.