World

After eight years of secret negotiations, governments will sign the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement in New Zealand on February 4. The TPP encompasses Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam.

One of the most worst cases of environmental pollution in US history is taking place in Flint, Michigan — a suburb of Detroit that is majority African American. The citizens of this small city of 100,000 have been deliberately poisoned through their drinking water for more than a year. The worst exposure has been to lead, a known neurotoxin that, once in the body, cannot be removed. Lead harms everyone exposed to it, but it hits children especially hard. It causes permanent damage to the brain and other parts of the nervous system.

Two recent events — the victory of right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri in Argentina's presidential election in November and the win by Venezuela's right-wing Democratic Unity Roundtable in the December National Assembly elections — have radically altered South America's political map.

“Stop the blackmail: Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.” Paris, July 2014.

Bernie Sanders. Self-described democratic socialist and Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders used a January 5 speech to call for structural reforms to the US financial system, calling Wall Street's business model as fraudulent, TeleSUR English said on January 5.

Poisoned water in Flint, Michigan, has exposed residents to toxic levels of lead and caused drastically elevated levels of the element in children, TeleSUR English said on January 19. Michigan authorities declared a state of emergency in Flint on January 5.

Israel has arrested three human rights defenders amid what appears to be a concerted campaign to sabotage domestic groups documenting Israeli abuses of Palestinians, Electronic Intifada said on January 21.

For the first time in 40 years, tens of thousands of junior doctors took to their picket lines on January 12 to oppose government plans to attack Britain's public National Health System (NHS).

Venezuela's rate of extreme poverty has continued to decline despite what the government has described as an “economic war” by right-wing opposition-aligned business sectors. TeleSUR English said on January 17 that the latest official figures showed about 4.78% of Venezuelans now live in extreme poverty. That figure is slightly lower than those reported in November, which put the extreme poverty rate at 4.9%.

The manifesto below was developed to promote a vision for a “plan B” against austerity and the assault on democracy by European elites. It has been signed by dozens of activists, academics and political figures, including former Greek finance finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, Barcelona mayor and housing rights activist Ada Colau, former Greek parliamentary speaker Zoe Konstantopoulou, British film maker Ken Loach and renown intellectual Noam Chomsky.

The following statement was issued by Women's Freedom Assembly (KÖM) in Turkey/North Kurdistan on January 18. Translation abridged from Jadaliyya.com. * * * The Women’s Freedom Assembly is calling for your solidarity against the war and massacres that we have been living through for the past eight months.