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Mass protests demand pro-US president resign

On November 4, Mikhail Saakashvili, the pro-US president of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, accused Russia of fomenting mass protests against him. Saakashvili’s remarks were his first response to three days of protests in the capital Tbilisi in which some 100,000 people — a tenth of the city’s population — demanded his resignation.

Afghanistan: Three western districts fall to Taliban

“Taliban insurgents have captured a third district in western Afghanistan, local officials said on Monday [November 5], defying Western assertions the rebels are unable to mount large military offensives”, Reuters reported that same day.

Hugo! The Definitive Chavez Biography

Hugo! — The Hugo Chavez Story From Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution
By Bart Jones
Steerforth Press, 2007
570pags, $US30 (hb)

Pakistan: People challenge US-backed dictator

On November 3, Pakistani military dictator General Pervez Musharraf initiated an intensified crackdown against all opposition to his increasingly unstable regime, with the decleration of a state of emergency. While the military’s spin doctors have attempted to make a distinction between this state of emergency and martial law, it has seen thousands of people put into “preventative detention”, mobile phones jammed, all non-government broadcasting stations taken off air and the abandonment of what pretence of rule of law still remained under Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999.

Work Choices II: Howard's real agenda

In a striking piece of political theatre, on November 5 federal workplace ogre Joe Hockey promised to resign from a re-elected Howard ministry if the government changed Work Choices (significantly). “They can run all the scare campaigns they want”, Hockey said, “but the bottom line is if we are making any substantial changes to our laws, then I will resign.”

Iraq: Turkey begins imposing sanctions

The November 2 British Independent reported that US- NATO ally Turkey “has started to impose economic sanctions on Iraqi Kurdistan by stopping flights between Istanbul” and Irbil, capital of the Kurdistan autonomous region in northern Iraq.

The corporate interests behind Howard's land grab

Les Malezer, chair of the UN Global Indigenous Caucus, which was responsible for drafting the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, spoke to a packed meeting in the Redfern community centre on October 28. “Our wealth is that of our Indigenous values: land, culture and spirit”, he said. “Not in assimilation, not in power, not in dollars, not in telling our people what they should do, or running organisations that do the same. Our wealth is in our lands, territories and resources. And the forced theft of these means that there must be reparation.”