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The Party of the Labouring Masses (PLM), a Filipino socialist party, released the statement below on August 12. * * * The PLM joins the campaign to protest against the recent spate of killings of labour leaders, the most recent case being the assassination of transport workers’ leader Antonio “Dodong” Petalcorin on July 2. Petalcorin joins the ranks of assassinated workers’ leaders this year, such as Emilio Rivera and Carlos Cirilo, who were also members of the national labour centre, the Alliance of Progressive Labor in the Philippines.

The streets of Cairo are running red, as Egypt's military carries out a brutal crackdown on supporters of ousted Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamad Morsi. On August 14, after weeks of threats and violent harassment, the Egyptian army moved to shut down protest camps in Nahda Square and outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya in Cairo, where supporters of Morsi have been staging sit-ins since his overthrow on July 3. By the evening, more than 500 protesters had been killed and thousands wounded. The army also killed three journalists in the attack.

A new whistleblower has come forward with a chilling new revelation concerning Washington’s surveillance of its citizens. But he is not allowed to blow his whistle under threat of jail. All the whistleblower could do was report his act of resistance and that there was a threat. He did so on the United States' progressive TV show Democracy Now! on August 13. Ladar Levison is the owner of Lavabit, an email provider that offers users a secure service the government cannot easily get into. It employs sophisticated encryption -- putting user's messages in hard-to-crack code.

Bolivian President Evo Morales has condemned the violence that has erupted in Egypt and the death of more than 750 people, and expressed solidarity with their families. Morales chaired a public ceremony in the capital and took the opportunity to condemn the violence in the Arab nation, criticising "those countries and powers that boost this kind of genocide". "We vigorously condemn and repudiate these events and send all our solidarity with peoples like Egypt fighting for democracy, for its restoration and unity of their people," Morales said.

About 350 paramedics surrounded Victorian Health Minister David Davis's Melbourne office on August 12 to protest in support of their year-long campaign for better wages. Victoria has Australia's most highly trained and lowest paid paramedics. Supporters came from as far away as Gippsland and Shepparton. “Ambulance Victoria is in serious trouble unless they can become competitive with other states,” said Ambulance Employees Australia organiser Danny Hill.