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Given the media barrage surrounding Venezuela’s “humanitarian crisis”, recent tensions on the Venezuela-Colombia border, and talks of “military options” and coup attempts, it was hard to know what to expect on returning to the country for the first time in five years, writes Federico Fuentes.

Vigils and protests were held across Australia in the wake of the Christchurch terrorist attack on March 15. Speakers strongly condemned far-right  Senator Fraser Anning’s justification of the massacre and called for an end to Islamophobia and racism perpetrated by the Coalition and Labor parties.

In early March, Green Left Weekly's Federico Fuentes travelled to Venezuela as part of a fact-finding mission. He visited Caracas’s poorer neighbourhoods, rural and border states to hear from those voices deliberated excluded from the media discussion on Venezuela.

While wading through the feverish swamps and fetid cesspits of the internet, you will likely come across the contemptuous and accusatory snarling phrase “cultural Marxism”.

On March 15, students organised the biggest global strike for real action on climate change ever seen. More than 80 countries took part. In Perth, 3000 students and supporters marched through the CBD, joining an estimated 150,000 people around the country. Green Left Weekly’s Chris Jenkins caught up with Mandurah high school student and protest organiser Chaela King about the strike and what is being planned next.

Chemist Warehouse workers have succeeded in blocking trucks from entering or leaving the company’s Somerton and Preston distribution centres since beginning an indefinite strike on March 12. Workers at a Chemist Warehouse distribution centre in Eagle Farm, Brisbane, are also on indefinite strike.

The future of the controversial Wallarah 2 coalmine will hinge on the outcome of the March 23 New South Wales election.

More than 100 people joined an emergency protest in Sydney’s Inner West on March 18 to demand an immediate halt to the $17 billion WestConnex tollway project while its social and environmental impacts are fully investigated.

You may not know that coking coal, used in steel making, is mined in the Greater Sydney drinking water catchment.

Three days before 150,000 students organised the biggest national school walkout in Australian history to demand politicians act on climate change, Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) deputy governor Guy Debelle sounded a warning about the drastic effects of climate change on the economy.

When students and an RBA governor agree on the urgent need to stop the devastating impact of climate change on society and the planet, you know the movement is starting to bite.

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) met on March 18 to investigate the human rights situation in Palestine and issued a report that focused on the impact of the occupation on the environment and natural resources, the ongoing use of excessive force by Israeli security forces against demonstrators in Gaza, and the near-humanitarian catastrophe in the territory caused by the blockade.

The US administration intends to forge ahead with a plan to open up the Atlantic Ocean to oil and gas drilling in the coming weeks.