762

Announcing the nationalisation of Banco de Venezuela, which will now be “put at the service of the people”, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stated during a live televised broadcast on July 31 that it would be transformed into a “socialist bank”.
Work Choices @letter =What rock was Nick Everett hiding under during last year's federal election? (Write On, GLW #761) You couldn't move without a Labor political hopeful promising to "tear-up" Work Choices through the campaign. Rudd promised it
Speaking on his weekly program Alo Presidente on August 3, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced important steps towards unity of pro-revolution parties in the lead-up to the November 23 regional elections.
There can be no peace, and certainly no peace with coexistence, in Sri Lanka — divided or undivided — until there is an apology from the Sinhalese to the Tamils for all the atrocities unleashed on them, not just in 1983, but all the way back to 1956, and increasingly so today.
Below is an abridged call for solidarity from the Korean Federation of Trade Unions against July 24 arrest warrants issued for the KCTU leadership by the government of President Lee Myung-bak, as part of a crackdown on the mass movement against the decision to allow US beef imports. The full statement can be read at http://asia-pacific-action.org. On August 6, police used water cannon and arrested 167 people to break up protests overnight against a visit by US President George Bush, according to an AFP report that day. The 10,000-strong, according to organisers, peaceful candle-lit vigil was protesting the US beef import decision.
Palestinian refugee Akram al Masri, 31, who was deported from Australia in 2002, has been shot dead in his homeland less than six months after Australian authorities allegedly refused him a visitor’s visa.
“Queensland is the biggest coal producing state in the biggest coal producing country in the world”, John MacKenzie of Friends of the Earth told an August 6 Socialist Alliance forum.
More than 10,000 peasants rallied on August 4 in Okara, Punjab demanding the withdrawal of false charges of murder against the leaders of Tenant Association of Punjab (AMP).
The fourth annual Equal Love rally and exchange of “Midwinta” vows was held in Melbourne on August 3.
“Given everything that is occurring in Tarija, Santa Cruz, Pando and Beni, we have to denounce … that we are on the threshold of a real coup d’etat against the constitutional order”, announced Bolivian minister of the presidency, Ramon Quintana, on August 7.
South Australian teachers undertook four days of rolling stoppages and community rallies across the state from August 4-7 in an attempt to force the state government to re-negotiate its pay and funding arrangement for public schools and TAFEs. Eighty-three per cent of teachers voted in favour of the stoppages in workplace ballots in late July.