Im writing on May 13 at 5:19am from the city of Wanzhou, Chongqing Municipality, China. Ive just re-entered my apartment after the latest aftershock sent everyone onto the streets once more. Its been a long 15 hours since the initial earthquake yesterday afternoon that so devastated Wenchuan and surrounds, such as the beautiful city of Chengdu. At this moment, my understanding of the scope of this disaster is only what I have been able to garner from international news websites and secondhand reports from my Chinese friends.
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“First World countries are the leaders in carbon emissions, and it is the Third World who faces the consequences”, Bangladeshi Professor Anu Muhammad told a crowd of 50 at public forum on May 14. “A one-metre rise in sea level would displace 40 million people and would submerge 30% of our country.”
Below is a May 10 article from the Earth Times. It is reprinted from http://rawa.org.
An expanded form of this article first appeared in Revista Corriente Alterna. The translation of this extract is by British group, Socialist Resistance.
A casual glance at the ALPs federal budget would have you believe that there will be a net loss of 1224 public sector jobs over the next financial year. That figure, derived from an actual cut of 5061 jobs, balanced by 3837 new jobs, belies what will happen.
The federal Labor government says it is not homophobic. Yet it agrees with its Coalition predecessor that marriage is a “union between a man and woman”. Regardless of opinion on marriage, the legal rights afforded this institution should be available to all couples regardless of gender.
In May and June of 1968, a movement erupted in France that threatened not just the survival of the government of President Charles De Gaulle but the system that it represented capitalism.
Below is abridged from a May 12 post to . Nadia Hasan is a Chilean-born Palestinian activist, who maintains the blog http://palestinaresiste2.blogspot.com.
In the May 1 local council elections in England and Wales, the ruling Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, suffered its worst election defeat in 40 years.
Israels 60th birthday caused quite a stir in Leichhardt (Sydney). To mark the 60th anniversary of what Palestinians call al Nakba (the catastrophe), on May 8 the Leichhardt Public Library allowed a local peace activist group to install Hebron and al Nakba.
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