Stuart Munckton

Joe Glenton, the British Army Lance Corporal who refused to return to fight in Afghanistan, was released from military prison on July 12. Glenton was jailed in March after going absent without leave from the army in 2007. He had previously spent seven months in Afghanistan as part of the US-led military occupation. He campaigned against the occupation, speaking at an anti-war demonstration in October. Glenton was greeted by about 30 supporters and dozens of reporters outside the Military Corrective Training Centre in Colchester, Counterfire.org said on July 13.

The proposal for a visit to the 26 Irish counties that make up the southern state by the British head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, has drawn condemnation from Irish republicans. Irish Taoiseach (head of government) Brian Cowan announced in June plans for a royal visit, believed to be for sometime in 2011. It would be the first visit by the British head of state to the southern Irish state since it was founded in 1921.

A series of investigations have cleared the climate scientists at the centre of the “climate gate” scandal of falsifying or suppressing data. In November, a series of leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia purporting to show them falsifying data to promote the concept of human-caused global warming were released to the media. This occurred in the lead up to the United Nations December climate summit in Copenhagen.

On June 15, something amazing happened: British Prime Minister David Cameron apologised for the British army shooting Irish people. “It was wrong”, said Cameron, after a government inquiry found the British army was responsible for the killing of 14 unarmed civil rights demonstrators, seven of them teenagers, in the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry. On January 30, 1972, up to 30,000 people marched in Derry, in the six Irish counties occupied by Britain, to demand an end to internment, a policy that allowed for the jailing of people without trial.

The proposed “bail-out” of the Greek economy by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Union (EU) has set off a huge struggle with worldwide implications. On May 5, as Greek parliament debated the IMF-EU package, half a million people took over the streets of Athens as part of a nation-wide general strike. It was Greece’s largest demonstration in 30 years.

On May 1, Nepal was entirely shut down by huge demonstrations called by the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M) to call for the resignation of the unpopular government. In Kathmandu, at least 500,000 marched — the streets a sea of red flags.

In the United States, Google-owned video-sharing site YouTube has banned the video for hip hop star M.I.A.’s new single “Born Free”, citing the graphic nature of its content. More than nine minutes long, the clip, directed by Romain Gavras, begins with heavily armed soldiers with US flags on their uniforms raiding someone’s home. The location is not known, but the setting is reminiscent of Baghdad or the Palestinian West Bank.

“How long must we stay like this, don’t they realise our hardship?”, a Tamil detainee in the Christmas Island detention centre asked when he called Green Left Weekly on April 8.

The Bolivian government is seeking to use the “people’s summit” it is organising in April to push for a global referendum on climate change, AFP said on March 17.

Claudia Larisa Brizuela Rodriguez, a supporter of the National People's Resistance Front (FNRP) was gunned down in her home in San Pedro Sula on February 24, CISPES.org said the following day. “Her two young children, ages 2 and 8, witnessed their mother’s murder.”

After holding power in Chile since the end of Pinochet’s military dictatorship in 1988, the social democratic coalition Concertacion lost power to the right wing Alianza coalition in the December and January elections.

In the lead-up to “Australia Day” on January 26, former TV host Ray Martin restarted a debate about the need to change the Australian flag.