Global News and Analysis

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

We should not fear some Orwellian future state where we’re subjected to total electronic scrutiny – it’s our present reality

‘If you are a law-abiding citizen of this country, going about your business and your personal life, you have nothing to fear.” That’s how William Hague, the foreign secretary, responded to the revelations of mass surveillance in the US and the UK. Try telling that to Stephen Lawrence’s family.

Four police officers were deployed to spy on the family and friends of the black teenager murdered by white racists. The Lawrences and the people who supported their fight for justice were law-abiding citizens going about their business. Yet undercover police were used, one of the spies now tells us, to hunt for “disinformation” and “dirt”. Their purpose? “We were trying to stop the campaign in its tracks.” read more

Source: The Progressive Magazine

On the day of the bombing in Boston, The New York Times printed an op-ed piece by a human being who has been imprisoned at Guantánamo for more than eleven years, uncharged and, of course, untried. The occurrence of these two events on the same day was a coincidence, but that does not mean that they are unrelated.

What connects them is our devaluation, and when convenient our disvaluation, of human life as well as the earthly life of which human life is a dependent part. This cheapening of life, and the violence that inevitably accompanies it, is surely the dominant theme of our time. The ease and quickness with which we resort to violence would be astounding if it were not conventional. read more

Source: The Nation

Most Brazilians feel that the biggest football festival in the world, along with the foundation of their country, is being stolen from them.

Source: Latin America Bureau

Peaceful demonstrations against the increase of bus fares in São Paulo have been transformed in a few days into the largest riots in Brazil since the dictatorship. The first demonstration took place near Avenida Paulista on Monday 10th June.

Although the largely conservative, national media has played down the use of violence by the police, social media have given a very different account. A large number of videos and images containing clear evidence of excessive use of force by the military police against the protesters have been shared over the internet. read more

Source: The Indypendent

I waited three months to eat a Krispy Kreme. I mean I waited. Every week or so, I take the train to Penn Station, quickly zigzagging through crowds. And every time I have the same internal monologue — Don’t stop at the Krispy Kreme. Don’t give yourself diabetes. Seriously, you might as well inject Elmer’s glue straight into your heart. But then I saw the store, bright and beautiful and smelling good. It’s very hard to walk past Krispy Kreme. It’s like those dreams where my legs move but I don’t go forward. read more

Source: The Toronto Star

Excerpt:

For the past two days, the Turkish police have laid siege to sections of Istanbul. No other word comes close to capturing the scale and brutality of what has transpired since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered an operation on Saturday night to clear Gezi Park, the site of a peaceful occupation by an estimated 10,000 demonstrators for the past two weeks.

Thousands of accounts circulated by social media, confirmed by videos now widely available online, report groups of police savagely beating unarmed and supine protestors in the middle of the streets. Chemicals mixed into water cannon sprays have left protestors and bystanders with extensive skin burns. A hotel and a hospital providing aid to those caught up in the chaos were attacked, including an area functioning as a clinic and nursery. The police have employed tear gas and pepper spray on such a large scale that the air in entire neighbourhoods has become temporarily unbreathable. read more