The statement below was released on November 3 by the Canada Haiti Action Network in preparation for Haiti’s November 28 elections. For more information, visit . To contact CHAN, email canadahaiti@gmail.com.
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The Canada Haiti Action Network is once again expressing its grave concerns about exclusionary elections in Haiti.
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The South Australian Labor government’s public service cuts were passed through parliament on November 8, ignoring sharp criticism from the Public Service Association (PSA) and widespread protests. Australian Council of Trade Unions president Ged Kearney described the cuts as a form of “political terrorism”, in an address to the PSA that day. She said public funding issues would become increasingly frequent across Australia as governments continue to adopt “neoliberal, global agendas”.
Twenty-three-year-old Mariano Ferreira, a Workers Party (PO) activist, was shot dead in Buenos Aires on October 8 when a mob violently attacked protesting railway workers.
The protesters, all of them labour hire workers, were demanding their reinstatement after being sacked.
The attack was similar those against other workers in comparable circumstances who have demanded rights denied by the bosses. Often the bosses’ have acted with local union support.
Cap Haitien, Haiti’s second largest city, was awakened by demonstrations on November 15 against the United Nation’s occupation force, Minustah, which is accused of being responsible for starting the cholera epidemic in Haiti.
Shortly after 6am, thousands of angry demonstrators took to the streets in the city, where cholera has killed more than 200 people. Demonstrators also denounced the Haitian government’s mismanagement of the epidemic.
An unprecedented high abstention rate of 39% marked elections for municipal and regional authorities for 13 region governors and 325 mayors in Greece. The second round of the elections took place on November 14.
The regions are newly created local authorities. Their formation is closely connected to the austerity program imposed on Greece by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Union (EU). The new bodies conform to the “Kallikratis” plan, a hasty reform of the administrative structure of the country.
Ark Tribe’s battle with the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) may end on November 24, at the Adelaide Magistrates Court when Tribe's verdict is scheduled to be announced.
This would end the two-year ordeal for Tribe and his family.
The 47-year-old rigger is facing six months’ jail for not attending an ABCC interrogation over an “unauthorised” safety meeting on a building site at Flinders University in August 2008.
Aboriginal workers in the government’s $672 million Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program (SIHIP) are working for what amounts to half the dole plus rations. However, these workers are still being recorded as contributing to SIHIP meeting its employment target, Crickey.com.au said.
SIHIP is the housing project announced by the federal government in 2008. The project was to provide much needed housing for Aboriginal populations in remote areas of the Northern Territory.
Thousands of supporters of Thailand’s Red Shirt movement (the popular name for the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship) once again turned Bangkok’s busy Ratchaprasong Intersection into a sea of red on November 19.
Protesters turned out in their thousands to mark six months since the military attacked and dispersed a mass protest camp that occupied the area in April and May. More than 90 people were killed and thousands injured. Hundreds of protesters are still imprisoned.
The big four banks are squealing at a Greens plan to introduce bank regulation legislation to parliament and at a class action being considered against banks that gouge borrowers through variable interest rate loans.
The Commonwealth Bank (CBA), Westpac, ANZ and the National Australia Bank hiked interest rates above the 0.25% rise declared by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) on November 3. The Australian Institute said on November 15 the rise would give the banks $1.2 billion more profit.
An “army” of European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials arrived in Dublin on November 18 “seeking to foist a large loan on Ireland in a bid to prop up the country’s embattled banking sector and save the European currency”, the Morning Star said that day.
Irish finance minister Brian Lenihan told MPs that Ireland, the EU and the IMF were exploring the prospect of forming “a contingency capital fund that would stand behind the banks”, the article said.
“Stop Black deaths in custody now! Stop the Tasers now! and Charge and jail criminal cops now!" were the main demands of a rally against racist police violence on November 13.
One hundred people marched to Queensland parliament to present a petition calling for a new inquiry into the death of Mulrunji in police custody on Palm Island in November 2004.
Rally chair Sam Watson said the event also commemorated the murder in police hands of Daniel Yock in November 1993.
Germany’s centre-right government is facing what many have dubbed a “hot autumn” of protests, as conflict over a range of social, political and environmental issues come to a head across the country.
As the governments of Europe attempt to offload the costs of the financial crisis onto working people, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has initiated a series of “austerity” measures aimed to undermine Germany’s social welfare system.
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