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Politics

South Africa: young and gifted black African takes over Alliance

South Africa’s largest official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), has elected a black man originally from Dobsonville for the first time in its history . He is young and gifted and it did not come as a shock as…

Swedish Supreme Court rejects Assange appeal

Sweden’s Supreme Court said Monday it had rejected an appeal by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange against his arrest warrant for alleged rape and sexual assault. Sweden issued the arrest warrant in 2010 following allegations from two Swedish women, one who…

British elections: two unions at stake

Precarious Europe 9 May 2015, OpenDemocracy: Our Kingdom The Conservatives have won. Now Britain’s own union and its EU membership are under question The Conservatives have unexpectedly formed a majority government, with Prime Minister David Cameron declaring it “the sweetest victory…

Court Rules NSA Bulk Spying Illegal: New Vindication for Snowden, and Uncertainty for PATRIOT Act

A federal appeals court has ruled the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of millions of Americans’ phone records is illegal. The program was exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden; the ACLU filed its lawsuit based largely on Snowden’s revelations. In…

UK elections: first Quaker MPs elected in a decade

Two Quakers have been elected as members of parliament in the UK Government general election. Nineteen Quakers had stood as candidates. Catherine West took the seat of Hornsey & Wood Green while Ruth Cadbury (pictured) took Brentford & Isleworth [both…

UK heads for more austerity, privatisation (bye bye National Health Service) and TTIP with Tory victory

There are many forms of violence: physical, economic, religious, racial, psychological, ecological, moral…etc, etc. What do we call it when there is an illusion of Democracy but the system is firmly in the hands of an economic elite that controls…

Shadow boxing by Mr Xi and Mr Chu

It has been almost six years since a chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) journeyed to Beijing to meet the secretary general of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), now President Xi Jinping. This recent meeting in Beijing with Chu…

How for-Profit Prisons have Become a Big Lobby.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention budget includes a mandate from Congress that at least 34,000 immigrants remain detained on a daily basis, a quota that has steadily grown each year, even as the undocumented immigrant population in the United…

Might is right as Awami League hits democracy for six

There were municipal elections in Dhaka, Bangladesh, this past Tuesday and sadly the way the elections were carried out reflected the unfortunate state the nation is in with its locked-horns political situation that has been the status quo for far…

Three days of discussion in Boston on the Colombian peace process.

A three day conference was hosted in Boston [WHEN?] by Boston University, Harvard University and MIT focusing on the political and social situation in Colombia today and the challenges facing the country on the eve of an historic peace deal…

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