Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, called on a United Nations development summit to address debt, tax, trade and environmental policies that impact poverty.
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A United Nations global development summit begins its fourth day of difficult negotiations in Nairobi, Kenya. read full story / add a comment

The Pegida far right organisation who were recently run out of Ireland, and the neo-fascist EDL are holding a fake LGBT march in Northern England, as documented by this Pink News article: -

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/07/19/far-right-extremis...arns/

The EDL regularly chant anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-IRA chants. Amongst those attending include members of the National Front, SEA, United Patriots. EDL and Pegida, with named violent neo-nazis on the Facebook attendees list, including Dave Coppin and Liam Walsall: -

Afterwards, the far right thugs have booked an afterparty at the British military-themed Don Bar by manageress Julie, who booked the venue for them via their Facebook page, presumably unaware of their politics. read full story / add a comment

“The parliamentary regime leaves everything to the decision of majorities; how shall the great majorities outside parliament not want to decide? When you play the fiddle at the top of the state, what else is to be expected but that those down below dance”?
- Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, IV (1852) read full story / add a comment

The People's Newsletter from the People's Movement in their bi-monthly newsletter carry an article on Brexit which is topical given that the British go to the polls on it this Thurs 23rd June. The various opinion polls show it to be relatively close.

The article here from the People's Movement puts forward good Left wing arguments why Britain should leave and they are good reasons for Ireland to leave too. The impression given is that the Brexit referendum was agreed to because of political pressure from the people. It is likely though that there are considerable powerful interests within the elite want to leave as they see their chances to be better off in the long run, yet those arguments not discussed here would be more issues within national capitalist faction.

The other article in this months newsletter is read full story / add a comment

Support the international effort to free Puerto Rican patriot and political prisoner, Oscar López Rivera! read full story / add a comment

The House passed Puerto Rico debt crisis legislation 297-127. The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act now heads to the US Senate for approval.
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The cruel “sport” of live hare coursing has been dealt a severe blow...

One of its top financial sponsors, gambling tycoon and philanthropist JP McManus, will no longer be sponsoring the three-day Irish Cup hare coursing event in County Limerick.

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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau releases new rules governing "payday" lending - high interest loans that impact low-income communities. read full story / add a comment

Rodrigo Duterte’s authoritarian neoliberalism isn’t the answer to poverty and political abuse in the Philippines. read full story / add a comment

VID (2 mins)-Julian Assange 2000 days arbitrarily detained in England:
statement by former anti-war prisoner of U.S Ciaron O'Reilly
https://youtu.be/HDB0jKI6st0 read full story / add a comment

100 years ago, if a Dublin Castle tout had entered the Connolly Books building on Essex Street, Temple Bar, he would have been quids in. Sitting hugger mugger around a huge table in the centre of the room are more than 20 of the most subversive characters in Ireland, spouting socialist verse and preaching revolution and rebellion. They include communists, trotskyists, anarchists, republicans, trade unionists, anti-austerity activists, pacifists, militant feminists, internationalists, environmentalists, ex political prisoners, independent TDs, writers, poets, singers, artists, and actors. They have banded together in one bold adventure: to read, over a series of lunchtimes, the entire, epic, 24-hour Non Stop Connolly Show. read full story / add a comment

In Dublin’s Temple Bar, within gunshot of the General Post Office, a diverse band of Irish citizen actors are planning to strike a blow against war and imperialism and for Irish freedom. This is not a costumed re-enactment of the 1916 Easter Rising but an act of contemporary revolutionary theatre, where the audience for the epic 1970s play the Non Stop Connolly Show, by Margaretta D’Arcy and John Arden, become the cast. Each lunchtime between 27 April and 12 May, volunteers muster at Connolly Books to take reading parts in the play which covers the life, struggles and death of James Connolly. Not only has the fourth wall been broken down, but the spirit of text has spurred solidarity action by the players in support of Maura Harrington, jailed in Mountjoy on Friday for her opposition to Shell’s rape of the the West of Ireland countryside. read full story / add a comment

Like it or not, Rodrigo Duterte has been leading the presidential polls in successive surveys. read full story / add a comment

Amsterdam, 2 May 2016 - www.ttip-leaks.org Today Greenpeace Netherlands releases secret documents of the EU-US TTIP negotiations. On www.ttip-leaks.org the documents will be made available for everyone to read, because democracy needs transparency.

“These documents make clear the scale and scope of the trade citizens of the United States and the European Union are being asked to make in pursuit of corporate profits. It is time for the negotiations to stop, and the debate to begin.

Should we be able to act when we have reasonable grounds to believe our health and wellbeing is at risk, or must we wait until the damage is done?

Were our governments serious in Paris when they said they would do what was necessary to protect the planet, and keep climate change under 1.5 degrees?

Environmental protection should not be seen as a barrier to trade, but as a safeguard for our health, and the health of future generations. read full story / add a comment

The controversial trade deal being negotiated between the EU and the US could spell disaster for EU farming and particularly for the Irish beef sector, according to a new report from Friends of the Earth Europe.

The report ‘Trading away EU farmers’ reviews modelling studies carried out in the EU and US on the impacts of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The report concludes that TTIP will massively increase imports from the US, while having far fewer benefits for EU producers. Studies foresee a decline of up to 0.8% for EU agriculture’s contribution to gross domestic product, while US agriculture's contribution to it will increase by 1.9% - a net trade benefit to US interests of over 4 billion euros. read full story / add a comment

Weekly police raids, harsh living conditions, constant threaths of violence, arrest and detention by authorities, these are just some of the things that more than a thousand children in the Netherlands have to deal with. As part of refugee families whose asylum application has been turned down by the Dutch state, these children live in family camps spread over the country. Even though in the last years different organizations have campaigned against these human right violations and studies have pointed out the intense emotional harm these children face, the Dutch state has done nothing but building a new prison for refugee families who are about to be deported. At this point several families have formed a collective with political activists. Next to local demonstrations at the family camps, they call out for international support to pressure the Dutch state to end the violations of the children’s rights and those of their families. read full story / add a comment

Science No Longer Supports Fluoridation. Are politicians beholden to special interest groups which use appeal to authority and big money to protect fluoridation instead of the American people? read full story / add a comment

Rodrigo Duterte’s authoritarian vision is no way forward for the Philippines.
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Previously confidential documents published (1) today reveal the staggering extent of UK Government surveillance that has been kept secret from the public and Parliament for the last 15 years. Revealed in a case brought by Privacy International about the use of so-called 'Bulk Personal Datasets' and a law dating back to 1984, the extracts show that the UK Government's intelligence services, GCHQ, MI5, and MI6, routinely requisition personal data from potentially thousands of public and private organisations. This includes data held by financial institutions and may also include anything from confidential NHS records to databases of people who have signed electronic petitions. read full story / add a comment