Politics

The ex-presidential candidate for the Humanist Party, Tomás Hirsch, confirmed, on Friday, his participation in an activity at the University of Santiago (USACH) where, following the harsh intervention of police officers in the march for education, the authorities are attempting to confuse public opinion by criminalising the student movement.

When you don’t acknowledge China’s stupendous achievements, what you find is a country that has little to show and still far to go. When you don’t see the political foundations of economic policies that freed the vast majority of dirt poor and backward Chinese from awesome feudal inequalities, it is taken to be the success of capitalist impulses alone.

Over 100,000 high school and university students and teachers have been protesting throughout Chile since mid-June demanding reforms to the country’s education system. To calm the demonstrations, President Sebastián Piñera announced on July 5 a US$4 billion-plan, financed using income from the copper mining industry that, he says, will make schools more efficient.

The National Health Service (NHS) was born after World War 2. Since then British people have been able to rely on a high quality, free at the point of delivery and paid for by taxes, health provider. Successive governments, starting with Margaret Thatcher’s have been trying to introduce market policies and privatisation into it.

I’m sure you have heard this comment many times, “I’m not voting because I don’t believe that my vote is changing anything”. Even though I understand where this thinking| comes from, it doesn’t work like that. The democratic system has a particular way of working, just like any other system. This is not a question of belief and it is not about liking something either.

It started with the News of the World’s royal editor and a private investigator who intercepted voice mail messages left for members of the royal household. Both men were jailed in 2007. Illegal voice mail interceptions apparently continued, implicating other journalists and staff. Now James Murdoch, Rupert’s son has closed the newspaper.

Malaysia will investigate claims of police brutality following the death of a demonstrator in a mass street protest for electoral reform, a senior minister said Monday. Riot police fired tear gas and water cannon and arrested more than 1,600 people to end a rally to demand electoral changes on Saturday, drawing intense criticism from human rights groups.

Protests continue in Tahrir Square six months after Mubarak resigned on the famous Day of Departure and while much of the world’s media is looking elsewhere for news. More demands are raised by protesters, yet the family atmosphere in Tahrir Square is causing difficulties for the military who fear using tear gas in such an environment.

On the same day as Germany assumed the presidency of the UN Security Council on July 1, some 300 current and former policy makers and experts from 43 countries launched the 59th Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs on ‘European Contributions to Nuclear Disarmament and Conflict Resolution’ with a special day-long symposium focusing on NATO-Russia relationship.

The Israeli parliament is set to vote on a bill that will impose sanctions on people or organizations that call for a boycott of Israel or its settlements. The Israeli parliament’s legal advisor, Eyal Inon, was set to make a statement against the bill on Monday, saying the new law will damage freedom of expression.