“The conduct of a number of EU governments over the past number of weeks has been alarming,” president of Irish republican party Sinn Fein and member of the Irish Dail (parliament) Gerry Adams said on the outcome of the European Union summit, which ended Greece submitting to a harsh deal.
“They have effectively closed down the Greek banking system and held the Greek Government and people to ransom.
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Leading British campaigners against global debt have slammed the creditors over a deal reached between the European Union countries and Greece, likening the deal to the imperial politics of the 19th century.
The debt campaigners also drew parallels with the way debt was used to control Latin American nations in the 1980s.
Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, speaks to the National Assembly in Caracas about the Guyana border dispute. Photo: AVN.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says the giant oil company Exxon-Mobil and other oil lobbies have been working to undermine his nation's relations with the Caribbean, especially neighbouring Guyana.
With the recent rise of right-wing extremism in Australia, it’s a no-brainer that Muslims are on the receiving end of some of the worst cases of Islamophobia to happen since the Cronulla riots in 2005. Of all these Muslims, it seems that Muslim women who choose to veil themselves suffer from these attacks the most.
As a Muslim woman who chooses to wear the hijab, my experiences with right-wingers along with the media who throw around Islamophobic statements on a daily basis have made me who I am today.
Protest demanding investigation of war crimes. Jaffna, Sri Lankan-occupied Tamil Eelam, February 24.
Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has dissolved parliament and called elections for August 17. Sirisena was elected president on January 9, replacing Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Allegations of human rights abuses have sky-rocketed in Honduras alongside a rise increase in militarisation in the violence-plagued Central American country.
One month after Turkey’s June 7 parliamentary elections, the country still does not have a government. Ahmet Davutoglu of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) remains caretaker prime minister.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan remains the dominant figure in the AKP and is manoeuvring to retain his party’s leading position. The president is supposed to be an impartial figure above party politics but Erdogan pays scant regard to such constitutional niceties.
The elections were marked by two significant and related developments.
An email by a former leading climate scientist at oil giant Exxon Mobil suggested the company knew about the risks fossil fuels posed for climate change back in 1981. Yet the company instead spent millions on supporting climate change deniers.
“Exxon first got interested in climate change in 1981 because it was seeking to develop the Natuna gas field off Indonesia,” Lenny Bernstein, a 30-year industry veteran and Exxon’s former in-house climate expert, wrote in the email. “This is an immense reserve of natural gas, but it is 70 percent CO2.”
The British Conservative Party government introduced new austerity measures on July 8, which include slashing millions of pounds in social spending, increasing the military budget and cutting corporate taxes.
Chancellor George Osborne announced the new budget to parliament, which includes some 12 billion pounds in social spending cuts over three years.
One year ago, on July 7, 2014, Israel began an assault on the Gaza Strip that would last 51 days.
While a permanent ceasefire was brokered between Hamas and Israel on August 26, physical safety and freedom of movement continues to be denied to the people of Gaza. The already rapid deterioration of the economy and infrastructure was only hastened by the seven weeks of aerial bombardment.
In the wake of the political assassination of nine African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17 by a white supremacist, racial tensions remain high.
Since that incident, seven Black churches in the South have suffered fires, recalling many such incidents in the past.
Australia managed its way through the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in better shape than most countries, mostly due to two factors.
The first was $83 billion in Australian government stimulus spending, the third largest in the world as a percentage of GDP, behind the US and South Korea.
The second was resilient demand for iron ore and coal exports to China which came from an initial US$4 trillion in Chinese stimulus spending organised through the country’s banks.
Opponents of the Stage 3 expansion of the Acland coalmine in the Darling Downs in Queensland have called on the Palaszczuk government to make good on its campaign promises and reject the application by New Hope Coal. This comes in the wake of revelations that the mining company New Hope Group, would receive about 77% of royalties, while the state would get only 7%.
"Some people think [the WestConnex tollway] can't be stopped. I am not one of those," Dr Michelle Zeibots told an anti-WestConnex rally of around 200 people in Goddard Park, Concord, on July 4. Zeibots, a transport planning expert, was one of a number of speakers at the rally, with the theme: "WestConnex Independence Day: Save Our City".
"The [NSW state] government can't even present a business case for this project. More than $15 billion of public money is being spent on a private road, rather than on public transport.
Earlier this year it looked as if Labor4Refugees’ amendments to the Labor Party’s platform that specifically reject boat turnbacks might win enough votes from the ALP left and the Catholic right to get through at the ALP national conference in late July.
However, the Labor leadership is committed to a policy of deterring asylum seekers and is working to prevent any policy change at the conference.
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