"Same car, different driver" is a phrase you can hear on the streets of the West African country of Sierra Leone every day. It sums up our bitter feelings about the government which has ruled since civil war began in 1991.
AN ALLIANCE of two major unions, and support from the mid-level leaders of major political parties, has come together to increase the power of workers fighting against privatisation.
ON CHRISTMAS Day, the Indonesian military announced that it had killed 18 Acehnese guerillas. It was a paltry accomplishment by its own brutal standards. In the time since martial law was imposed on Aceh in May 2003, the army has admitted to having killed 3,216 Acehnese. Amnesty International reports a litany of atrocities in the same period—torture, extra-judicial killings, "rape and other forms of sexual violence".
THE AGENDA for the third Cairo Conference, which takes place from 24-27 March in the Egyptian capital, has just been finalised. The International Campaign Against US Aggression has organised the conference against war and globalisation. The aim of the third Cairo Conference is to encourage much wider participation.
THIRD WORLD countries are often told that free trade will bring them prosperity. But in Mauritius—a small African island state just east of Madagascar—we know this claim is a myth.
General Musharraf has refused to step down as head of the Pakistani military. His decision has embarrassed the mainstream parties who have repeatedly failed to launch a movement to remove the general since his 1999 coup—and have instead sought to share power with the military.
WORKERS AT the Filtrona factory in Switzerland—owned by the British-based company Bunzl—are engaged in a bitter fight to save their factory from closure.
A few days before last week’s attack by armed militants on the US consulate in the port city of Jeddah, a scuffle was taking place outside a courthouse in the capital, Riyadh.
MATTHEWS NDLOVU, a South African activist fighting against privatisation, has been sentenced to two years in jail for "malicious damage to property".
TWO PROTESTS in Pakistan have shown growing opposition to the privatisation policies of General Musharraf’s military regime.
"EVERY TIME a worker from the factory dies, it is always from cancer—lung cancer, bone cancer, or leukemia,"says Shaban Khaled.
"You can almost smell fear in the air. Al-Arish and Sheikh Zoayyed are ghost towns. Police officers warn citizens, ‘This city has to be put to rights’."
