Democracy

On the weekend of July 18 and 19 there was another round of right-wing Reclaim Australia (RA) protests. The stated aim of RA and its offshoot, the United Patriots Front (UPF), was to defend what they call “Australian values” from the threat of “Islamicisation”.

On July 20, 32 people were killed in a suicide bombing attack on a cultural centre in Suruç, a town in Turkish Kurdistan. More than 100 were injured. Suruç is located across the border from the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobanê, which was besieged by forces of the self-styled Islamic State terrorist group, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), between September and January.

45 people gathered in Perth on July 24 to express solidarity with a group of young people who were victims of an Islamic State suicide bombing in the Kurdish town of Suruç on July 20.

At least 30 people were killed and more than 100 injured on July 20, when ISIS suicide bomber from the self-styled Islamic State group attacked a cultural centre in the Kurdish town of Suruç, on the Turkish side of the border from Kobane.

The call for help below comes from the Melbourne Street Medic Collective in the aftermath of the police pepper-spray attack on an anti-racist protest on July 18. The group has launched a crowd-funding appeal for badly needed first aid supplies. Visit their crowd-funding page for more information and to donate. ***

Khader Adnan with friends and family following his release from Israeli detention. Israel released Palestinian activist Khader Adnan from jail on July 12, after holding him for more than a year without charge, TeleSUR English reported.

Private polling shows veteran left-wing Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, who takes a strong stand against austerity and has a history of backing supporting popular movements, ahead in the first round of voting, the New Statesman said on July 15. The New Statesman said the success of Corbyn's campaign surprised observers. Corbyn collected 40 nominations from local parties, just eight less than the bookmakers' favourite, Andy Burnham.

Ireland passed a new Gender Recognition Bill on July 15 that will allow transgender people to change their birth certificates and other documents, and achieve full legal recognition of their preferred gender. The bill is an elaboration on a previous one that allowed the legal changes, but only with a supporting statement from a doctor.

Child killed by Saudi bombing of Yemen. Twenty million people in Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, are at risk of dying from hunger or thirst. That’s 80% of the country’s population, which, according to UN agencies, badly needs emergency supplies of food and water, along with fuel and medicine. This almost unimaginable crisis sounds like something out of a disaster movie. But the cause is not an earthquake or a tsunami.

The Bulgarian Prisoners Rights Association (BPRA) has made progress in its attempts to bring due process into Bulgaria's parole laws. Founded in 2012, the BPRA has been represented on a Ministry of Justice working group on prison reform since May. Their representative is Valio Ivanov, who was released from Sofia Central Prison in February after serving 22 years — 20 in solitary confinement. Ivanov succeeded in getting the working group to recommend changes in parole laws, BPRA chairperson Jock Palfreeman told Green Left Weekly.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, writing for his Leargas blog, has warned that the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that formally ended more than two decades of armed conflict in the six counties in Ireland's north still claimed by Britain, “hangs by a thread”.