Left wing candidate Rafael Correa looks set to become Ecuador’s president following elections last Sunday.
The Lebanese opposition movement, led by Hizbollah, the Communist Party and the predominantly Christian Free Patriotic Movement, has called on its supporters to begin a street campaign to oust the US-backed government of Fouad Siniora.
A confrontation was looming this week between the US backed Lebanese government of Fouad Siniora and the opposition anti-imperialist bloc.
Pierre Gemayel, Lebanon’s minister of industry and a scion of one of the country’s most powerful Christian families, was shot dead in a Beirut suburb on Tuesday 22 November.
Last week saw 40,000 people come together to demonstrate and organise resistance at the Indian Social Forum (ISF) in Delhi, India.
Islamophobia isn’t just taking place in Britain. Authorities in France have withdrawn the security clearances for 40 mainly Muslim workers at the Paris airport of Roissy-Charles de Gaulle, one of Europe’s busiest airports.
The Uruguayan ruling class made its first big move against Tabare Vazquez’s centre-left government by launching a lockout in the goods transport industry on Monday of last week.
Primary school teachers in Greece ended their six week all-out strike on Monday of this week over pay and the government’s plans for education.
Once it boasted the most advanced health service in the Middle East, an education system that turned out generations of skilled workers and a population that consumed the most books in the Arab world.
Greek primary school teachers protested in Athens last week and began their sixth week on strike this Monday. They are fighting for better pay and for a decent education service. The strike is piling pressure on the Tory government, and linking up with other struggles against its plans for education. Secondary school teachers are striking for three days a week, other unions have taken action so their members could join teachers’ protests, and several universities have been occupied against privatisation plans. A mass rally was set for Athens this week after unions rejected government concessions.
We may have our own views about Orhan Pamuk’s novels, but there can be no doubt that Pamuk richly deserves the prize both in literary terms and as a man with deeply-held views which he is not afraid to express regardless of the consequences.
