Unions are increasingly concerned over Airline Partners Australia鈥檚 (APA) proposed $11.1 billion takeover bid for Qantas. The buy-out, by the Macquarie Bank-led private equity consortium, has yet to be formally submitted, though the Qantas board of directors has unanimously agreed to the $5.60 a share bid.
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An anti-nuclear Peace Parade and Festival is being planned for Palm Sunday in Melbourne.
A report released on January 22 by the Society for Threatened Peoples International (GfbV) showed a sizeable increase in human rights violations in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara. The report showed that 685 people who had peacefully protested the Moroccan occupation in 2006 were arrested; and there have been regular incidents of torture and arrests of children. According to GfbV representative Ulrich Delius, 聯Morocco聮s brutal actions against the civilian population in the West Sahara are aimed at intimidating the people and wiping out from the start any criticism of Morocco聮s arbitrary rule聰. To view the report, visit .
Them A-rab folks all look the same to me
"Last night I talked about a new strategy for Iraq ... In spite of the remarkable progress, 2006 turned out differently than I had anticipated. And it did because there's an enemy there that recognises that
American Hoax: Undercover in the USA (sort of)
By Charles Firth
Pan Macmillan, 2006
272 pages
$32.95 (pb)
By Charles Firth
Pan Macmillan, 2006
272 pages
$32.95 (pb)
A genocide is engulfing the people of Gaza while a silence engulfs its bystanders. 鈥淪ome 1.4 million people, mostly children, are piled up in one of the most densely populated regions of the world, with no freedom of movement, no place to run and no space to hide鈥, wrote senior UN relief official Jan Egeland and Jan Eliasson, then Swedish foreign minister, in Le Figaro. They described people 鈥渓iving in a cage鈥, cut off by land, sea and air, with no reliable power and little water, and tortured by hunger and disease and incessant attacks by Israeli troops and planes.
Fifteen-thousand people fled from the town of Vaharai in eastern Sri Lanka following heavy shelling by the Sri Lankan army on January 18. According to the Tamilnet website, the shelling was intensified in the evening despite an urgent message sent to the International Committee of the Red Cross from Vaharai hospital authorities saying that the area around the hospital, where many displaced people had sought refuge, was under attack.
Factional fighting between the armed wings of Fatah and Hamas resumed on January 25 when a vehicle carrying members of the Hamas Executive Force was bombed. Two EF fighters later died as a result of their injuries. The subsequent bloody clashes between rival militants, which took place mainly in the Gaza Strip, left 19 people dead, including a two-year-old boy and eight civilians.
On January 22, 2002, then Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) senator Evo Morales was expelled from parliament, accused of being a 鈥渘arco-terrorist鈥. Exactly five years later, as the nation鈥檚 first indigenous president, Morales gave his first annual report to parliament. This time it was not Morales who exited prematurely.
鈥淚n my country, a surgery like that costs [US]$8,000鈥, said Roberto Andrade from El Salvador about the operation he received in Cuba that removed cataracts from both his eyes, completely free of charge, according to a January 10 Miami Herald article. 鈥淚 make $12 a day. I would never, ever, be able to save that much.鈥
On January 21, a day after 25 US soldiers died in Iraq (the third-highest death toll for a single day since US troops invaded Iraq in March 2003), 3200 additional US troops arrived in Baghdad as part of US President George Bush鈥檚 plan to boost US forces in Iraq by 21,500 troops. All but 4000 are to be sent to Baghdad, already occupied by 24,000 US combat troops.
On January 22, the Lebanese parliamentary opposition, led by the Shiite-based Hezbollah movement, organised a general strike to demand the resignation of the US-backed government of PM Fuad Siniora.
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