When the Asian tsunami of Christmas 2005 washed ashore on the east coast of Africa, it uncovered a great scandal.
The huge wave of protests by students, teachers, lecturers and school students continues to send shock waves across Italy. The demonstrations are against the Berlusconi government’s assault on secondary and higher education.
Last Thursday around 200,000 teachers and students took to the streets across France against the government’s attacks on education. The strike was called by all the teachers’ and students’ unions. The right-wing administration of Nicolas Sarkozy wants to cut the education budget rather than focussing on improving teaching and learning conditions.
Venezuela went to the polls last Sunday supposedly to elect new state governors and mayors. In reality the election was a confidence vote in left wing president Hugo Chavez.
A Nato airstrike killed scores of civilians at a wedding party near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan last week.
A growing wave of protests and occupations continues to sweep Italy in opposition to the government’s programme of savage education cuts.
Ireland Ireland’s biggest union Siptu has announced a strike of Aer Lingus workers for next week over the airline’s plans to make 74 million euros worth of cuts.
Colombia’s president Alvaro Uribe bluntly admitted, "Yes, the police fired on the indigenous protesters." This followed several days of attacks by police and the military on the communities of the Cauca region.
Thousands of Iraqi workers took to the streets of Basra on 27 October in a protest at massive cuts in salaries demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Textile workers in the Egyptian town of Mahalla al-Kubra staged a protest on Thursday of last week against plans to privatise the company.
Famine is stalking Afghanistan and is threatening the lives of millions of its people, international aid agencies have warned.
Up to a million students, teachers, lecturers, school students and their supporters demonstrated through Rome on Thursday 30 October, as parliament approved laws introduced by Silvio Berlusconi’s government to slash education funding and to axe thousands of teaching posts. Over 90 percent of the country’s schools were shut.
