World

The Party of the Labouring Masses (PLM), a Filipino socialist party, released the statement below on August 12. * * * The PLM joins the campaign to protest against the recent spate of killings of labour leaders, the most recent case being the assassination of transport workers’ leader Antonio “Dodong” Petalcorin on July 2. Petalcorin joins the ranks of assassinated workers’ leaders this year, such as Emilio Rivera and Carlos Cirilo, who were also members of the national labour centre, the Alliance of Progressive Labor in the Philippines.

Daily protests are demanding the dissolution of Tunisia's National Constituent Assembly (NCA) in the wake the assassination of Popular Front leader Mohamed Brahmi. In the face of the protests, leader of the Ettakatol party and speaker of the NCA Mustafa Ben Jafaar announced the suspension of the body on August 6. However, the main party of government, Islamist group Ennahda, has refused to concede the dissolution of the NCA, in which it holds the largest number of seats. Ennahda now looks to have negotiated the NCA's resumption.

The streets of Cairo are running red, as Egypt's military carries out a brutal crackdown on supporters of ousted Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamad Morsi. On August 14, after weeks of threats and violent harassment, the Egyptian army moved to shut down protest camps in Nahda Square and outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya in Cairo, where supporters of Morsi have been staging sit-ins since his overthrow on July 3. By the evening, more than 500 protesters had been killed and thousands wounded. The army also killed three journalists in the attack.

As US President Barack Obama continued his economic speaking tour, walkouts at fast-food restaurants rippled across cities nationwide in early August, calling attention to the nation’s growing wealth gap. At the franchise stores of McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Burger King and KFC and other grease-slinging corporations, thousands of people protested the low wages dished out by the biggest names in the industry and raised a common demand: US$15 (A$16.30) an hour and the right to unionise.

Bolivian President Evo Morales has condemned the violence that has erupted in Egypt and the death of more than 750 people, and expressed solidarity with their families. Morales chaired a public ceremony in the capital and took the opportunity to condemn the violence in the Arab nation, criticising "those countries and powers that boost this kind of genocide". "We vigorously condemn and repudiate these events and send all our solidarity with peoples like Egypt fighting for democracy, for its restoration and unity of their people," Morales said.

A new whistleblower has come forward with a chilling new revelation concerning Washington’s surveillance of its citizens. But he is not allowed to blow his whistle under threat of jail. All the whistleblower could do was report his act of resistance and that there was a threat. He did so on the United States' progressive TV show Democracy Now! on August 13. Ladar Levison is the owner of Lavabit, an email provider that offers users a secure service the government cannot easily get into. It employs sophisticated encryption -- putting user's messages in hard-to-crack code.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced on August 16 that he would withdraw the country's ambassador from Egypt because of the conflict there and confrontations between supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and the defacto government, which has seen over 700 people killed. "We have witnessed a blood bath in Egypt." Maduro said. "We warned that the coup against Morsi was unconstitutional ... the responsible party for what is occuring in Egypt is the empire." He said: "The United States doesn't have friends, it has interests, and what it wants is to control the planet".

The statement below was released by the national executive of the Australian Socialist Alliance on August 16. * * * Socialist Alliance condemns the massacre of protesters by the Egyptian army during the dispersal on August 14 of sit-ins at Rabea al-Adaweya and Nahda Square by supporters of former president Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.

United States: Seven-year-old banned from mentioning 'fracking' ― ever “When a property owner reaches a settlement with an oil or gas driller, it's not unusual for the company to demand that the plaintiffs in the case agree to a gag order that bars them from talking about the agreement. But a recent case in Pennsylvania is unusual. “That's because the gag order prohibited the 7- and 10-year-old children of a couple that sued several gas companies not only from talking about their specific settlement, but from mentioning fracking at all. Ever …

The Ecuadorian government of Rafael Correa has withdrawn its ambassador to Egypt on August 14 amid bloody massacres of supporters of ousted Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi, Reuters said.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the main party representing Tamils in Sri Lanka’s parliament, has selected 36 candidates to contest the Northern Provincial Council elections, to be held on September 21. Sri Lanka’s northern province, which is mainly inhabited by Tamils, has been under military rule since the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009. The LTTE fought for nearly three decades for an independent Tamil state in the north and east of the island.

Hassan Rouhani was inaugurated as the president of Iran on August 4. He was elected in June, after mass mobilisations swept the country in support of his candidacy. Those who supported him saw his election as the best way to open up space for reforms within the country. However, he is not an outsider to the system. Rouhani was on Iran's nuclear negotiating team and was the country's top negotiator with the European Union on Iran's nuclear program from 2003 to 2009. He received official endorsement from Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, on August 3.