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.
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The Refugee Action Coalition released the statement below on March 11.
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Refugee advocates are warning of new dangers of attacks on asylum seekers if local staff are re-introduced into the Manus Island detention centre.
Local and national PNG staff and police have been excluded from the detention centre since the night of February 17 when 23-year-old Reza Berati was killed and at least 77 others brutally bashed.
Colombia's election results are all but in and one thing is clear: Álvaro Uribe, the first ex-president to run for senate, is the man of the moment. President Juan Manual Santos's U Party may have come out on top with 21 out of a possible 102 seats in Congress, compared with 19 from Uribe’s newly formed ultra-right party Democratic Centre ― Firm Hand, Big Heart, but it is clear where the momentum lies.
Events were held around the country on March 11 to mark three years since an earthquake and subsequent tsunami laid waste to the north-east coast of Japan. The earthquake and tsunami disasters killed 18,600 people and about 2700 bodies have never been recovered.
The disaster damaged the Fukushima nuclear power plant, whose cooling systems failed, leading to a series of explosions and catastrophic meltdowns in three reactor cores. More than 150,000 people who were forced to evacuate the area are still unable to return to their homes in the Fukushima region.
The older you get, apparently, the more you abandon the daft socialist ideas of your youth to become sensible and conservative. There will never be a greater retort to this miserable myth than the life of Tony Benn.
Because somehow he became more defiantly, inspiringly, stroppily, youthfully socialist every year up to 88. If he’d lasted to 90, he’d have been on the news wearing a green Mohican and getting arrested for chaining himself to a banker.
Victoria’s upper house passed the Summary Offences and Sentencing Amendment Bill on March 11. Debate was interrupted by protesters in the public gallery, who were removed by police.
About 30 Aboriginal people with intellectual impairments are locked up in Australian prisons without charges, ABC’s Lateline reported on March 12.
The report highlighted the case of Rosie Anne Fulton who has spent 18 months in a prison in Kalgoorlie without facing trial or being convicted of a crime. There is no specialist accommodation for people with disabilities in the Northern Territory.
Fulton wants to move to Alice Springs to be closer to her family, but an application to house her in specialist accommodation has been rejected.
Luca Belgiorno-Nettis resigned from his position as chair of the board of the Biennale of Sydney on March 7. Biennale organisers announced it was cutting ties with major sponsor Transfield, of which Belgiorno-Nettis is a director.
The divestment was the result of pressure from artists boycotting the Biennale, because of Transfield's connection to the detention of asylum seekers. The company has a $1.2 billion contract to run the Nauru and Manus Island centres.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that “everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.”
Yet one of the defining features of latter-day capitalism is the extraordinary levels of youth unemployment. Across the eurozone, youth unemployment is about 25%. In Spain it is almost 58%.
Another International Women’s Day passes. It’s been 157 years since working women first took to the streets. Back then, thousands of women textile workers marched through the wealthy boroughs of New York, protesting their miserable working conditions.
Community opposition may soon put fracking on hold in the Kimberley region of north-western Australia. This could culminate in the first big victory for the anti-fracking movement in Western Australia.
Buru Energy, partnered with Mitsubishi, intends to frack four wells east of Broome 34 times this year, starting in May. This is the largest single fracking proposal to be put forward in Western Australia so far. The area is a wetland used by Aboriginal owners.
I have been a single parent for 10 years now. My children are aged 13 and 16. I now face the challenges of raising teenage children on my own, which can leave me at times mentally and physically drained. They are good boys though and I am proud to be their mother.
As single parents we endure discrimination in numerous places, in the workplace, while applying for rental homes, obtaining loans, in the media, from the public and even from some friends and family, but worse still, at the hands of our politicians.
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