The UK is the only EU member and one of only nineteen countries worldwide, including North Korea and Iran, that still recruits 16-year-olds, a practice that’s been challenged by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and many other human rights groups. Still, figures released in 2014 show that one of four new recruits there were too young to vote, drink or smoke, but not to die
What people forget is that those who’ve merely been charged with crimes aren’t officially guilty yet. And not-yet-guilty people aren’t supposed to go to the hole, except under very narrowly defined sets of circumstances – for flight risks or for threats to the community. It’s certainly not supposed to be a punishment for not having $500.
The recognition was awarded during the 39th FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization) conference in Rome. It counts among its attendees representatives of 190 countries, including 130 ministers and 12 heads of state.
Far from being victims of social exclusion who have to be raised out of their shit, slum-dwellers are fully part of the class that will communize society.
The “public” interest has been made synonymous with economic growth and international competitiveness. Police, surveillance and military budgets are, as Nina Power notes, being increased in order to defend the “public” from vague racist threats like ISIS and “terrorism,” but in fact these weapons will be wielded against those of us committed to causing “economic disruptions” to challenge the order of extractive austerity.
When they went on strike on March 28 this year, they rejected not only the company’s meager offer but also that of the two largest Spanish trade unions — the CC.OO and the UGT — which, as one striker put, “sold us” for a small rise on the previous drastic reductions and to put an end to the strike
These are the corporate workfare schemes which have already seen almost half a million young people bullied into working for the pittance of benefits often for large national employers. This huge extension of the two schemes is being carried out at a time when unemployment is allegedly falling and this shows the real motivation for the extension of unpaid work.
The military targeting of civilian infrastructure, especially of water supplies, is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, writes Nafeez Ahmed. Yet this is precisely what NATO did in Libya, while blaming the damage on Gaddafi himself. Since then, the country’s water infrastructure – and the suffering of its people – has only deteriorated further.
Hillary depends heavily on the elite financial sector and big corporate interests to pay for her campaign, which is expected to spend at least $2.5 billion. “Hillary, Inc.’s” preemptive “money machine” will smash previous fundraising records and prevent rivals from mounting serious opposition in the caucuses and primaries. “It’s going to be like nothing you’ve seen,” a top Democratic donor gleefully told The Hill, “The numbers will be astounding.”
Clearly, our creditors’ demand for more austerity has nothing to do with concerns about genuine reform or moving Greece onto a sustainable fiscal path. Their true motivation is a question best left to future historians – who, I have no doubt, will take much of the contemporary media coverage with a grain of salt.
Under the TPP, could the US government be sued and be held liable if it decided to stop issuing Treasury debt and financed deficit spending in some other way (perhaps by quantitative easing or by issuing trillion dollar coins)? Why not, since some private companies would lose profits as a result?
One former carer said she had calculated that she had effectively been paid £200 a month less than the minimum wage while working for the company, after her travel time had been taken into account
