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LaborStart.org reports that on June 7 Mikhail Chesalin, chairperson of the local Dockers Union of Russia in Kaliningrad, was savagely stabbed and beaten outside the union office. He was stabbed numerous times in the spine and severely beaten about the head. His assailants left him lying face-down, unconscious, in a pool of blood. Chesalin’s colleagues believe that the attack was orchestrated by Vladimir Kalinichenko, the general director of Kaliningrad Sea Commercial Port, where the dockworkers’ union is currently running an organising campaign. Kalinichenko has tried to break up union events by sending his personal “security” forces, together with local thugs, to spy on and intimidate workers. Visit for more information.

Wherever President George Bush went in Europe this June, whether he was meeting with G8 leaders, Pope Benedict, presidents or opposition leaders of NATO allies, or rightist officials in the former socialist countries, he provided an excellent reason for the people to come out in the streets, often in massive numbers.

The recent storms that devastated much of the NSW Central Coast and the Hunter Valley were described by some as a mini cyclone. The fierce gales led to dramatic floods — the most severe since the 1970s, the deaths of several people and the beaching of a coal freighter on a Newcastle reef.

“The ABC’s Four Corners program on June 11, ‘Ghost Prisoners’, was a powerful exposure of the United States’ global torture network and of Australian complicity in it”, said Socialist Alliance spokesperson Raul Bassi. “It’s another step towards justice for Mamdouh Habib, one of the victims of this criminal system that has tortured some to death, forced others into worthless ’confessions’ and disappeared hundreds.”

On June 12, 80 people attended a meeting in support of two Tamil activists who were recently arrested for allegedly sending tsunami relief funds to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).