World

French car-maker Peugeot-Citroen announced a drastic cost-cutting plan on July 12 to slash 8000 jobs in France and close a major factory in Aulnay-sous-Bois north of Paris. Hundreds of workers at the Aulnay plant walked off the job and staged a protest in front of the site, which is one of France's biggest car factories and a bastion of car workers' trade unions. "It's a show of disgust because Peugeot has played with us for a year, over a year now, saying that it's not certain, we're not going to close," said Khenniche of the SUD union, who has worked at the plant for 17 years.

Quebec's long-running student strike is set to resume at the start of the new semester on August 17. Students from universities and colleges are seeking to force the government to stop its plan to raise fees. The student movement has turned politics in Quebec on its head, challenging not only the fee hike but the status quo of neoliberal politics. It has called into question the existence of fees and raised the idea of free education as a right.

The article below is based on a talk given at a Socialist Alliance meeting on June 26 in Melbourne by Chris Slee, a member of the SA Melbourne branch. * * * The Socialist Alliance supports the right of the Tamil people to self-determination. A resolution adopted at an SA national conference reads: "Socialist Alliance recognises that Tamils are an oppressed nation within Sri Lanka, and supports their right to self-determination.

The June 22 coup carried out against Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo was an important blow to progressive movements across Latin America.

A huge march by striking miners and their supporters on July 12 was attacked by riot police. Huge crowds of protesters, marching on the offices of the ministry of industry, came under attack from police firing rubber bullets. The ministry is a focus for protest because it is cutting subsidies to the mining industry by 63%. This will lead to thousands of miners losing their jobs. Unions estimate that as many as 30,000 jobs will be scrapped.

Operation Miracle, a humanitarian social program created by the governments of Cuba and Venezuela, has made it possible to carry out over 1 million eye surgeries in the South American nation over the last eight years, the Cuban News Agency said. “We’re operating some 5000 patients a week, the same amount of patients who benefited annually in Venezuela before the beginning of the program,” said national coordinator Manuel Pacheco, cited by the Venezuelan News Agency. Operation Miracle began in July 2004, taking care of patients with few economic resources who had eye problems.

Trouble flared across Ireland's north on the night of July 12 as sectarian Orange Order marchers insisted on marching through nationalist areas, the Morning Star said the next day. It said serious rioting followed a unionist (supporters of Northern Ireland's union with Britain) parade through the the largely Catholic and Irish nationalist working-class suburb of Ardoyne in north Belfast.

Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate for Egypt's presidential elections, was sworn into office on June 30. But confirmation of Morsi's win was overshadowed by protests and sit-ins at Cairo's Tahrir Square and around the country. Protesters are demanding the elected parliament be restored and extra constitutional powers the ruling junta has granted itself be rescinded. The electoral comission announced on June 24 that Morsi had beaten old-regime candidate Ahmed Shafiq in the June 16 and 17 poll with 51.7% of the vote.

The combined Eurozone and European Council summit held in Brussels on June 28-29 was a “breakthrough” that produced “real progress”, the mainstream media insisted, because German Chancellor Angela Merkel “backed down”. For a few days post-summit, this reading was supported by market euphoria and sharp falls in the risk premium on Italian and Spanish public debt. However, once fund managers took a closer look at the decisions of the 19th gathering of European leaders since the crisis broke in 2008, they realised these won’t put the euro out of danger ― even in the short term.

In a split decision the United States Supreme Court largely upheld the health insurance law, the Affordable Health Care Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama. The key provision upheld by the nine robed reactionaries in a five-to-four split decision mandated that all US citizens have to buy health insurance from the private insurance companies beginning in 2014, or pay a penalty. This approach was originally proposed decades ago by right- wing think tanks as an alternative to national health insurance for all.

A poll released in May by the Israel Democracy Index has revealed most Israeli's hold deeply racist attitudes. The findings come in the wake of race riots and a crackdown on the rights of Palestinians. The poll found 52% of respondents agreed with interior minister Eli Yishai that Africans were “a cancer on the body” of Israel, the June 7 Times of Israel said. Yishai was quoted in the June 3 Maariv as saying most “Muslims that arrive here do not even believe that this country belongs to us, to the white man”.

Paraguay’s new government, which came to power in a “parliamentary coup” that removed elected President Fernando Lugo, has cut relations with Venezuela after accusing it of meddling in Paraguay’s internal affairs. However, several Latin American diplomats and media sources have cast doubt on the allegations. Paraguay's foreign ministry announced the withdrawal of its ambassador to Venezuela and declared Venezuela’s envoy to Asuncion a “persona non grata” due to “serious evidence of intervention … in the internal affairs of the Republic of Paraguay” by Venezuelan officials.