Seven hundred people braved rising flood waters in Lismore, southern NSW, to join more than 100,000 across the state. Although their city had been declared a disaster zone, people battled to several venues to hear about the campaign on a Sky Channel broadcast that linked 220 venues on Friday July 1.

African Heads of State and Governments are winding up Tuesday the 5th Ordinary African Union (AU) summit in Sirte, Libya, reaffirming their demand to have two permanent seats at the UN Security Council.

Recent Chinese attempts to buy American multinationals have been stirring up "nationalist" worries in the United States. Economist Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist, has just published an article that was reproduced in the Brazilian newspaper "Folha de Sao Paulo" on June 28th, the title of which suggests that "the Chinese are more dangerous than the Japanese."

3000 delegates, including delegations from the SACP and COSATU, gathered together for the ANC’s second NGC between 29 June and 3 July 2005 in Tshwane. For the delegates, and indeed for the commentators in the public media, there was no doubt that this marked a very decisive moment in the ongoing South African transition.

On 12 June Gordon Brown announced that he had persuaded the G8 leaders to cancel £32 billion of debt for twenty seven of the world’s poorest nations. BUT what does it say in the small print?

IT IS vital, in the run-up to the G8 summit, that anti-poverty campaigners are able to tread a path between wide-eyed idealism and abject cynicism.

The Communist Party of India expresses its serious concern and disapproves the new framework for the US-India Defense Relationship which was signed by our Defense minister in Washington yesterday.

Forty-five years have passed since the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty was revised. Pushing aside strong public opposition, the Kishi Cabinet and the Liberal Democratic Party in the House of Representatives on May 20, 1960 single-handedly approved the revision.

Several thousand workers in the Pilbara in Western Australia ignored government threats and kicked off the ACTU’s week of protest against the Howard government’s anti-union laws on Monday this week.

The illegal and criminal invasion of Iraq continues to be a drain on US imperialism complicating its ability to respond more forcefully to North Korea, Zimbabwe and other perceived "outposts of tyranny."

THE clamping down of internal emergency on June 26, 1975 and its operation over the next 19 months represents one of the darkest periods in the political history of India. For all practical purposes, the Indian Constitution was kept in suspense, parliamentary democracy was trodden brutally underfoot, and an authoritarian rule proclaimed.

In Japan-U.S. "defense" talks, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stressed the importance of maintaining deterrence in response to Defense Agency Director General Ohno Yoshinori’s view that the task is to reduce the burden (on local residents), mainly in Okinawa.

The Janjaweed militia forces allied with the Khartoum regime are continuing a brutal campaign of systematic sexual violence directed against the women and girls of non-Arab or African tribal groups. Khartoum for its part remains deeply complicit in this campaign, now in its third year.

Three continuities link the global US of the cold war era with the attempt to assert world supremacy since 2001. The first is its position of international domination, outside the sphere of influence of communist regimes during the cold war, globally since the collapse of the USSR.

The recent attacks on the United Nations have nothing to do with the so-called "scandals" involving the oil for food program. Rather, they are part of a well-orchestrated campaign by elements of the Bush administration and their far-right allies in the U.S. press, aimed at punishing the UN for its refusal to support Bush's war in Iraq, and at undermining the overall power and influence of the UN and international law.

The Bush administration secured Khartoum’s promises to promote Bush administration foreign policy objectives in Northeastern Africa and the Middle East in exchange for material assistance and tacit legitimation of its ruthless regime.

"The “China threat” theory which ceased to beat the drum for a while following the breakout of the war in Iraq shows a trend of making its way back in America recently. Among those who preach the “China threat” theory, some have little knowledge of China’s contemporary development and policies, hence many misunderstandings."

There are ideological forces in our country ... whose entire political programme is premised on [obedience] to the G8. Whether it is the developments around comrade Zuma or worker rights, these forces do not give our local challenges their own value and dignity - they are all conceptualized as useful sacrifices to the G8, tokens of our compliance. These forces do not look at their own country with the eyes of South Africans...

WHILE most media analysis of the failed European Union summit concentrated on the personal joust between Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac, the most astounding phenomenon was the collective self-delusion over the constitutional treaty.

The Bush administration thinks that genocide is less urgent than its foreign policy agenda as it relates to its so-called on war on terror. For some time, we’ve known that the administration is willing to side with dictators and tyrants – some of whom possess WMD and nuclear weapons – to advance its foreign policy.