World

Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj, a federal member of Malaysia's parliament, is one of six activsts from the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) being held without trial since June 25.

Hone Harawira, an elected member of New Zealand parliament for the newly formed Mana Party, caused a stir on July 14 when he refused to swear allegiance to the English queen in order to take his seat. Instead, Harawiri swore allegiance, in Maori, to Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the 1840 treaty between Maori tribes and Britain that recognised Maori ownership of their lands.) Stuff.co.nz said that day that parliamentary speaker Lockwood Smith refused to swear Harawira in as an MP on the grounds his affirmation was not legal.

About 1000 people took part in the Enough Campaign's protest against European Union/International Monetary Fund austerity program in Dublin on July 16.

Ireland’s seven-month-old United Left Alliance (ULA) is the “new kid on the block” of European anti-capitalist parties. Launched in November last year, it won five TDs (members of the Irish parliament, the Dail) in February elections, despite its name not appearing on the ballot paper. To date the ULA has also won 20 positions in local councils and one seat in the European parliament. In the Dail, the ULA TDs have already had successes, such as stopping the abolition of the Joint Labour Committees that set wages and conditions in some industries.

It was a Palestinian legislator who made the most telling comment to the Israeli parliament last week as it passed the boycott law, which outlaws calls to boycott Israel or its settlements in the occupied territories. Ahmed Tibi asked: “What is a peace activist or Palestinian allowed to do to oppose the occupation? Is there anything you agree to?”

National Union of Journalists general secretary Michelle Stanistreet has drawn a direct link between compulsory redundancies at the BBC and the malign influence of Rupert Murdoch on the government. She told pickets in London on July 15: "These cuts and job losses have been brought about directly by a decision to freeze the licence fee for the next six years. "This was a shabby deal done by BBC management and the government behind closed doors last autumn, with no democratic scrutiny or transparent discussion.

Speaking in response to new figures released by the Department of Finance, Sinn Fein Finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty said the total European Union/International Monetary Fund (EU/IMF) profit on loans to Ireland will exceed €13 billion.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives threw down the gauntlet to President Barack Obama on July 19 by voting to cut federal spending by US$6 trillion and demand a constitutional balanced budget amendment in exchange for agreeing to raise the federal debt ceiling. The US must raise the debt ceiling by August 2 or default on its debts for the first time, potentially leaving the government unable to pay its employees and plunging the world into a second credit crunch. The bill is unlikely to pass into law.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the millionaire former president of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and leader of France’s center-left Socialist Party, is charged with raping a west African immigrant housekeeper in a five-star Manhattan hotel. But Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr seems like he wants to make the whole case go away. After initially agreeing to US$1 million bail and house arrest, Vance arranged for Strauss-Kahn to be released without any bail. The press reported prosecutors and Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers met about a deal in which the case would be dropped.

After the initial furore of the release of thousands of secret United States embassy cables by WikiLeaks, much of the mainstream media coverage has largely ignored or hidend the most important aspect of the saga ― the damning contents of the secret documents that incriminate the powerful and expose their lies. Much of the coverage has devolved into negative stories and allegations about the personal lives of WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange and the alleged source of the secret US documents, Bradley Manning.

How does political censorship work in liberal societies? When my film, Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia, was banned in the United States in 1980, the broadcaster PBS cut all contact. Negotiations were ended abruptly; phone calls were not returned. Something had happened. But what? Year Zero had already alerted much of the world to the horrors of Pol Pot, but it also investigated the critical role of the Nixon administration in the tyrant’s rise to power and the devastation of Cambodia.

Substantial changes proposed for East Timor’s Petroleum Fund law will expose the nation’s finances to high risk and open the door to corruption. Just a few years ago the fund was widely praised as a model of prudential and sustainable management, and a means of possibly escaping the “resource curse” of waste and corruption. That is all about to change. East Timor's AMP government, led by Xanana Gusmao, has a bill before parliament that removes most of the prudential controls on the fund.