US televangelist preacher and Republican Party politician Pat Robertson's racist comments on the Haitian revolution, in which Black slaves overthrew French rule and then defeated Napolean's army.
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When the Sea Shepherd vessel Ady Gil sank on January 8 following a collision with a ship in the Japanese whaling fleet, snap protests were called outside Japanese embassy offices in Australia. For some, this has become a political football to kick their own goals, but the cause of marine conservation deserves better.
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The agreements that helped end decades of armed conflict in the six counties in Ireland’s north still claimed by Britain are hanging in the balance over a lack of progress in their implementation.
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Ashura, or mourning days for Shia Muslims, has deep historical roots in Iran. Mourning occurs through processions, passion plays and other such ceremonies dating back to pre-Islamic Iran.
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More than 1400 activists from 43 countries travelled to Egypt to mark the first anniversary of Israel's December 2008-January 2009 assault on the Palestinian Gaza Strip.
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In a January 5 statement, Bolivian President Evo Morales called on “the peoples of the world, social movements and Mother Earth’s defenders … scientists, academics, lawyers and governments that want to work with their citizens to the Peoples’ World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth’s Rights”.
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Any large city in the world would have suffered extensive damage from an earthquake on the scale of the one that ravaged Haiti’s capital city on January 12. But it's no accident that so much of Haitian capital Port-au-Prince now looks like a war zone.
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The movement in Nepal for the restoration of civilian supremacy continued in December, with 100,000 people demonstrating in Kathamndu on December 22 on the final day of a three-day general strike called by the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M).
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The US government had a terrifying New Year’s message for the people of Yemen — you are our targets this year.
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The 15th Conference of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (COP15) in December was marked by a farcical, undemocratic process whereby a handful of rich countries sought to impose a deal worked out in secret. That deal not only failed to meet the needs of humanity as dictated by science, but was actually a step backwards from already existing UN agreements.
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An alleged attempt to defraud Ivory Coast citizens of millions of dollars of compensation awarded for being poisoned by toxic waste has been protested by Amnesty International. An AI letter to the Ivory Coast justice minister on December 18 accused an organisation called the National Coordination of Toxic Waste Victims of Cote D’Ivoire (CNVDT-CI) of falsely claiming to represent the 30,000 victims who brought a case against oil-trading company Trafigura in Britain.
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The integrity of the European Union’s embattled Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) was rocked by revelations in December that carbon-trading tax fraud has cost European taxpayers more than €5 billion.