On October 25, 20 people attended a forum on the current situation in Burma. The meeting was organised by the socialist youth organisation Resistance, and featured two human rights activists from Burma — Benya Aye and Sujauddin Karimuddin.
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Vladimir Villegas, Venezuelas foreign affairs vice-minister for Asia, Oceania and the Middle East, met with members and affiliates of the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network at Casa Latina on October 22. Villegas, who had just completed a week of meetings with government leaders in the Pacific about how Venezuela could provide development assistance for their ailing economies and environments, spoke about the progress of the Bolivarian revolution, and outlined Venezuelas plan for strengthening cooperation with the countries of Asia Pacific based on solidarity, respect for sovereignty and collaboration in the areas of energy diversification, health services and education, in particular. The next day, Villegas was joined by solidarity activists and representatives of other Latin American governments at a tribute held at the bust of Simon Bolivar in the Plaza Iberoamerica.
5000 state sector nurses crammed into Melbournes Festival Hall and voted unanimously to end their industrial action and accept a four year enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) at an Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) mass meeting on October 25.
On October 21, 200 people attended the African Community Solidarity Gathering on the Esplanade to protest against immigration minister Kevin Andrews' decision to stop any further granting this year of refugee visas to African asylum seekers. Speakers
The Venezuelan consulate and the residency of a Cuban doctor were attacked with explosives in the opposition-controlled state of Santa Cruz in the early hours of Monday October 22.
Twenty-one years ago Jackie Kriz, an Australian Nurses Federation job representative, took part in Victorias landmark nurses dispute of 1986. As a young Geelong nurse she remembers the long campaign where nurses went from being professionals who would never strike to industrial campaigners.
The immigration department, Australia's detention centre operator GSL and the immigration minister Kevin Andrews are forcibly deporting asylum seekers who sought Australia's protection after having had the most heinous forms of torture inflicted on
Carrying signs reading Police are the real terrorists and Free all political activists, up to 1000 people rallied outside the Rotorua District Court on October 25 to protest against police raids that resulted in the arrest of 17 people a week earlier, as three of those arrested had their court cases transferred to Auckland.
Assistant state secretary of the Western Australian branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), Joe McDonald, was expelled from the Australian Labor Party on October 26, on the recommendation of Labor leader Kevin Rudd. Earlier this year Rudd had failed to have the militant unionist expelled, and the ALP had stated that it would await the outcome of McDonalds six charges for trespass on Perth building sites before making a decision.
Gabriela Ngirmang, Mirair of Palau, who was instrumental in giving the world its first nuclear-free constitution, passed away peacefully at 12.10am on October 10 (Palau time). Gabriela had been sick for some time.
Sam Watson, a Queensland Murri leader and a Socialist Alliance Senate candidate in the coming Australian federal elections, condemned the recent raids by New Zealand police on the homes of Maori and other social movement activists, in the following statement released on October 24.
NZ police raids
In his article in GLW #728 on police raids in Aotearoa [New Zealand], Stuart Munckton wrote: "Sam Buchanan, one of the four arrested in Wellington following a raid on an anarchist organising centre, told the NZ Herald he was in
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