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Israel's air force bombed nearly 30 targets in the besieged Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip on March 13. The Israeli military said it pounded the territory in retaliation for rockets fired into southern Israel by Islamic Jihad resistance fighters. But the group said the rocket fire was itself a response to an Israeli air strike on Gaza on March 11 that killed three of its members.
“Forgetting Fukushima makes it more likely that such a nuclear disaster could happen elsewhere,” said Tatsuko Okawara, one of the hundreds of thousands of victims of the Fukushima accident that began on March 11, 2011. The nuclear industry, however, is trying its hardest to make us forget. It is downplaying the impacts of the accident, ignoring the fact that the Fukushima reactors are still not under control and claiming that lessons have been learned. Nothing is further from the truth.
VIDEO: Tariq Ali on the legacy of Hugo Chavez Marking one year since the untimely death of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, eminent writer and film maker Tariq Ali gave a passionate memorial lecture in central London on February 20 at an event organised by the British Venezuelan Solidarity Campaign. VIDEO: Die Linke and the fight against austerity
The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aboriginal people made Australia Bill Gammage 434pps, $40 Allen & Unwin, 2012 This is an extraordinary book that details how Australian Aboriginal people cared for the land, or as Bill Gammage calls it the “Biggest Estate on Earth”. Gammage describes, with many examples, how Aboriginal people looked after the land. No corner was ignored, from deserts and rainforests to rocky outcrops, across the entire continent for at least 60,000 years until British colonisers began to destroy all this work after their arrival in 1788.
As the May 25 European elections approach, a question that concerns left and progressive people in the Spanish state is just how many left alternatives will end up running against the “parties of government” ― the ruling conservative People’s Party (PP) and the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE).
Jean-Luc Melenchon is co-president of France's Left Party and a member of the European parliament. Melenchon is also leader of the broader Left Front, involving other parties such as the French Communist Party, on whose ticket he won about 11% of the vote in the 2012 presidential elections. Below, Melenchon gives his perspective on the crisis in Ukraine ― from Russia's actions in Crimea, to the West's saber rattling, to the mass protests that brought down an unpopular government and the new regime, featuring fascist forces, that has taken its place.
The dangers of global warming due to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is well-established. But there is more damage done by the capitalist system of production, including the release of toxins into the atmosphere, water and the rest of the biosphere. Two notable examples have occurred in the first months of this year in the United States. In January there was a huge spill of 10,000 gallons of crude MCHM, a chemical mixture used in the coal production process, into the Elk River near Charleston, West Virginia.
As the 1000th issue of Green Left Weekly rolled off the printing machines last week, a Green Left TV crew was there to film the historic moment. GLTV's Jill Hickson, John Reynolds and Paul Benedek filmed the production of the 1000th issue from the planning stage and they incorporated this footage into a new You Tube video just released: Green Left celebrates 1000 issues.
Modestly describing herself as “Australia's richest intellect”, Gina Rinehart has launched a new intervention into Australian politics that is calling for a cut in government spending and other measures to make private corporations “thrive”. True, she is not calling for an end to government subsidies to the mining industry. She is not calling for an end to corporate welfare and she's not calling for a reduction in wasteful military spending.
Western Australia will go to the polls on April 5 to re-elect its federal Senators. The election was called to fix a mammoth electoral bungle, which left many Western Australians questioning the democracy of the political system. Greens Senator Scott Ludlam appealed for a recount of the Senate vote when it looked like he had narrowly lost his seat to the Palmer United Party in the September federal election. During the recount, it came to light that 1375 votes had gone missing, and the result of the election was declared void. Six seats are up for re-election.
A New York judge has overruled the US$9.5 billion (A$10.5 billion) in compensation for toxic waste dumping that Chevron had been ordered to pay to Ecuadorian villagers. The oil company, the world’s third largest, was found guilty in 2012 by an Ecuadorian court of causing huge environmental damages in the Amazon Basin. At the time, it was the largest environmental damages lawsuit ever. Texaco oil company, which merged into Chevron Corporation in 2001, operated in the Sucumbios province of Ecuador, in the uppermost headwaters of the Amazon Basin, from 1964 to 1992.
The global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement has come of age in the past 12 months. Since Palestinian civil society groups made the call for the boycott in 2005, it has become a significant tool that has allowed people around the world to protest against Israel’s relentless and persistent violations of human rights and international law.