World

What the polls had predicted would be an easy victory for the Social Democrats in Denmark's September 15 election turned out to be much closer. The last poll before the vote showed the Social Democrat leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt ahead of her Liberal opponent Lars Løkke Rasmussen by 52.3% to 47.5% as preferred prime minister.

Iraqi hotel worker Baha Mousa died after violent and cowardly abuse by British soldiers, a public inquiry in Britain has found. Inquiry chairperson William Gage published his report on September 8. He described the treatment of Mousa and his fellow detainees in the Iraqi city of Basra in 2003 as "an appalling episode of serious, gratuitous violence on civilians which resulted in the death of one man and injuries to others". Mousa was detained along with a number of others by members of the 1st Battalion Queen's Lancashire Regiment after a raid on the Ibn al-Haitham hotel in Basra.

Neoliberal policies “which have fed the growing political disaffection of Bolivia's majority poor, have helped fuel the country's rolling 'social revolution.'" This was how a May 6, 2006, US embassy cable from La Paz recently released by WikiLeaks viewed the powerful wave of struggle that led to the election of Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005. This secret assessment came despite Washington publicly trumpeting neoliberal policies as the way to solve the problems of Latin America's poor.

“Bloody Greeks — corrupt and lazy, born cheaters who think the world owes them a living. Why should the hard-working taxpayers of the euro zone core economies like Germany have to fund billion-euro rescue packages for those scoundrels?” That’s the vicious tone of Germany’s tabloids and conservative politicians towards Greece’s galloping public debt crisis and the Greek people’s protests against the austerity programs. The austerity has been imposed on them by the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund (the “troika”) as the price of bail-out funding.

Baba Jan, a federal committee member of the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP), surrendered himself to an "anti-terrorist court" in Gilgit Baltestan in early September. He had been on the run after police opened fire on a demonstration demanding compensation for those affected by the Atta Abad Lake floods last year, killing two Jan has since been taken from jail and the LPP fears the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) is torturing him. Jan’s “crime” was to organise rallies and demonstrations against the police killings.

Last year's floods were the worst in Pakistan's history. Twenty million people were affected and about 2000 lost their lives. Now there is record flooding for the second year in a row.

Tens of thousands of Egyptians reclaimed Tahrir square from police on September 9, demanding an end to military trials of civilians and for judicial freedom. Security forces withdrew from the square on the day before. It had been under guard since a sit-in was broken up on August 1. Groups of youth immediately started organising the September 9 rally. They marched through the streets of downtown Cairo demanding an end to the rule of the military council and calling for Cairo's residents to join the protest.

Thousands of Swazi people marched through Mbabane on September 5, burning images of Swaziland's absolute monarch King Mswati III. Protesters sung freedom songs and chanting slogans against his agenda of pay freezes and cuts to student allowances. Striking public-sector staff, who took part in the rally, called for increased taxes on the monarch and his wealthy cronies instead of welfare cuts. The rally kicked off the Swaziland United Democratic Front's Global Week of Action. Over the next six days, workers planned to stage a series of strikes.

Elections in the eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on September 4 resulted in another humiliating defeat for the conservative government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.   Merkel's centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) had already suffered five election defeats this year.   The Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania defeat was particularly galling for Merkel because the state includes her own constituency.  

Despite widespread condemnation of Israeli policies by the United Nations, other international bodies, human rights organisations and internationally respected lawyers Israel continues to deprive Palestinians of their rights of freedom, equality, and self-determination.

After the overthrow of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in February, a new chapter in Egyptian history is being written and its authors are the people themselves.

In Spain the signs are unmistakable: a “hot autumn” of political and social conflict is brewing in the run-up to the November 20 general election. Polling night will reveal how much the growing social resistance, brought onto the streets since May largely by the 15-M movement of “indignants”, has shaken up the political scene. As things stand, the most likely result is a repeat of the wipe-out suffered by the governing Spanish  Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) at the May elections for local council and regional governments (known as “autonomous communities”).