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As we passed by the Tintaya open-pit copper mine, I was unprepared for the scene of utter desolation. The fully laden hired lorry was heading back to Arequipa from the highland town of Yauri, where my companions had purchased 20 head of ganado (cattle) earlier that morning. The cattle market had seemed impressive enough to my untutored eyes, but it was nothing like the old days, they informed me.
A statement by federal ALP leader Kevin Rudd that a Labor government would seek to have Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad charged with “inciting genocide” attracted front-page coverage in the October 3 Australian and ridicule from foreign minister Alexander Downer.
Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution, led by socialist President Hugo Chavez, has captured the imagination of people around the world and sparked widespread commentary on the nature of the process of social change under way in the oil-rich South American nation.
Forty years after his assassination, Ernesto “Che” Guevara remains ubiquitous. His image is familiar to everyone. Taken by Alberto Korda, the famous photo of Che shows a young revolutionary looking into the middle-distance with an expression of intense, steely determination. The image has come to symbolise the struggle for Third Wold independence, and is synonymous with the Cuban Revolution, which overthrew a US-backed dictator to institutionalise people’s power.
Class-free analysis seeking to justify Beijing’s pursuit of capitalism with a human face will likely find a place in the Communist Party of China’s constitution at the party’s 17th congress, which begins on October 15. A scheduled constitutional amendment is expected to be couched in such terms as the pursuit of a “socialist harmonious society” and a “people-centred” “scientific concept of development”, which will be credited as “major theoretical developments” of CPC general secretary Hu Jintao.
The message of the new CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology report to the Australian Climate Change Science Program, Climate Change in Australia, couldn’t be simpler: Stop fiddling while Australia burns!
As the October 24 hearing approaches for the Perth-Mandurah railway tunnel construction workers — who are being prosecuted by the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) for taking “unlawful” industrial action in February 2006 against the sacking of the health and safety union representative — new research has exposed “critically high” levels of injury in the construction industry.
The federal government should restore Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef’s work visa immediately, and pay him compensation for distress and financial loss, Jim McIlroy, the Socialist Alliance candidate for the south Brisbane seat of Griffith, told Green left Weekly. Griffith is held by ALP leader Kevin Rudd.
Chickenhawk-in-chief "... one of the eight guests sitting around a table with [Emperor George] Bush at the White House, reported: 'Responding to one of the bloggers in Iraq he expressed envy that they could be there, and said he'd like to be there
On September 29, US-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai offered to meet Taliban leader Mullah Omar and give the Taliban — classified as “terrorists” by the US and its NATO allies — posts in his government.
“Now we have the proof: The Howard government’s multi-million dollar advertising campaign to sell Work Choices is built on the lie that workers are better off under individual contracts than collective agreements”, Sam Wainwright, the Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Fremantle in the coming federal election, said on October 4.

The death toll for US troops in Iraq in September — 66 — was the lowest monthly total since August last year when 65 US troops were killed. However, by the end of last month, a total of 804 US soldiers had died this year in Iraq — 301 more than in the first nine months of 2006.