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The title of Adam Hochschild’s marvellous book on the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War is taken from French author Albert Camus’s requiem for that doomed struggle: “Men of my generation have had Spain in our hearts … It was there that they learned … that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, and there are times when courage is not rewarded”.

Chile’s new president, Sebastian Piñera, of the right-wing party National Renewal (RN), has announced that he plans to “modernise” the country’s Anti-Terror Law.

Visionary physicist Stephen Hawking, a leading explorer of the cosmos and champion of progressive causes, died early on March 14 at the age of 76.

Green Left Weekly hosted a screening of the film Kurdistan: Women at War on March 9 to celebrate International Women’s Day. The film, directed by Mylene Sauloy, follows the historical development of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) and other similar groups defending and transforming their communities across Northern Syria.

Protester speaking on microphone

Afrin, a city within the canton of the same name in northern Syria , is under siege by the Turkish military, supported by right wing jihadist forces, including al-Quaeda, al-Nusra and the remnants of ISIS. Fifty-two days after the invasion began, more than 290 civilians had been killed.

Amid several controversies in the voting process, Colombians went to the polls on March 11 to elect 166 legislators to the House of Representatives and 102 senators.

Colombia’s Revolutionary Alternative Force for the Commons (FARC) said on March 8 it was cancelling its presidential election bid.

At the time of writing almost 60,000 people had signed a change.org petition asking immigration minister Peter Dutton to allow a young family of Tamil asylum seekers, snatched from their home at 5am and detained by the Australian Border Force, to stay in Australia.

The family, Priya, her husband Nadesalingam and their daughters, 9-month-old Dharuniga and 2-year-old Kopiga, were woken on March 5 at their home in Biloela, central Queensland, by police, Border Force officers and Serco guards.

Exxon has not paid a cent in corporate income tax on a total income of nearly $25 billion over a three-year period, and it has not broken any rules.

Santos, which is fighting to get its controversial 850 coal seam gas wells approved in the Narrabri in NSW, paid no corporate tax in 2014-15 and 2015-2016. It only paid $3 million in corporate tax in 2013-14 when, over those years, it reported revenue totalling $11.2 billion.

How can this be the case?

A series of submissions to a long-running Senate inquiry into corporate tax avoidance are asking this very question.

Within hours of the NSW Land and Environment Court decision on March 9 quashing new land clearing laws, the NSW government produced a new Land Management (Native Vegetation) Code.

The code was created to exempt land clearing from the usual development assessment processes. It was introduced after the government overhauled the state’s conservation laws in 2016, making land clearing easier for farmers.

During the Greens/Labor battle for the Batman byelection, the mainstream media has characterised opposition to the Adani mine as an inner city/trendy/lefty issue.

However, recent polls have shown this is not the case. Support for the project is just as likely to lose votes for the Liberal and Labor parties as it is to win votes for the Greens.

A new ReachTel survey commissioned by the Australia Institute found the Adani mine is unpopular in inner city electorates around the country.

As the newly-elected Queensland state parliament met for the first time on February 14, a small group of dedicated Protectors from Families Against Fossil Fuels and Standing with Sandi held their regular #StandAgainstCSG protest outside its doors.

Sandra Bamberry (Sandi) is the mother of two little girls who have experienced negative health impacts, including ongoing nosebleeds and nausea, from the many coal seam gas (CSG) mines that now surround their home on the Tara gasfields.