Politics

Death of a Tottenham resident in North London by Police shooting sparks three nights of rioting, looting, firebombing and attacks on Police by members of minority communities and youth gangs. Recent cuts to services in areas already deprived and marginalised seem to have created a toxic atmosphere that only needed a trigger, and sure enough, it happened.

The Ouattara government has repeatedly promised to break with the past, when security forces were above the law. Yet rather than create an army likely to respect the rule of law, Ouattara has promoted commanders who were in command when atrocities took place and should be investigated, not rewarded.

In an unprecedented move, top four military commanders in Turkey stepped down from their posts on 29 July 2011. Chief of General Staff Gen. Işık Koşaner, Land Forces Commander Gen. Erdal Ceylanoğlu, Naval Forces Commander Adm. Eşref Uğur Yiğit and Air Forces Commander Gen. Hasan Aksay asked to be retired with immediate effect.

The Palestinian Authority has ordered the organisation’s security forces to prevent planned demonstrations in September from turning violent, according to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. The protests, sponsored by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, will coincide with the PA’s bid for statehood at the UN on September 20.

Gangjeong on Jeju Island, a pristine Unesco-designated ecological reserve where elderly Korean women sea divers, haenyo, continue to forage for seafood. It is also the site of a fierce resistance movement by villagers who oppose the construction of a South Korean naval base on the island that will become part of the US missile defense system ‘to contain China’.

The Students Federation of Chile, the School of Professors and the Assembly of Secondary School Students confirmed on Wednesday that they will stage a march and a national strike to demand quality public education. The students will continue their mobilization and discuss in meetings countrywide the stand to be adopted against the government proposals.

Negotiators from Vietnam and China have reached consensus to resolve their maritime dispute in the East Sea, according official. Spokesperson for the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry Nguyen Phuong Nga confirmed the positive result of talks held between representatives of both governments to overcome recent tensions.

50 additional policemen are hardly going to put free circulation inside the EU in any real danger. Probably no European citizen is going to be denied entrance into Denmark. And, really, nobody believes that the border posts Copenhagen ordered reopening in the beginning of July will do anything to fight cross-border crime.

How did this woman become a potential frontrunner in Republican presidential politics? No, not Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman–the other “folksy,” anti-gay, anti-choice, Tea Party-lovin’ Republican female politician currently in the national spotlight.

This is an abridged version of Colson’s article on SocialistWorker on August 1rst, 2011.

At around 8pm today Police officers followed the vehicle of Mario Aguilar, the leader of the national Teachers’ Union, who was just coming out of the head office of the Union after sheltering there, completely soaked due to the police repression that demonstrators for a non-profit, quality education suffered today.