A month after a Japanese distributor decided to stop carrying Ahava cosmetic products because of the company’s fraudulent practices and its profiteering from Israel's occupation, a major Norwegian retail chain announced it would also stop sales of Ahava products.
Ahava products are made in the illegal West Bank settlement of Mitzpe Shalem, with resources taken from the Dead Sea in the West Bank. The cosmetics line profits that settlement and the settlement of Kalia, both of which are co-owners of Ahava.
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The killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a self-appointed "neighborhood watch captain" has provoked anguish, rage and now, at long last, resistance.
We've seen rallies, demonstrations and walkouts at dozens upon dozens of high schools in Florida alone.
Even more remarkably, this resistance has found expression in the world of sports. An impressive group of NBA players, from Carmelo Anthony to Steve Nash to the leaders of the NBA Players Association, have spoken out and called for justice.
In what has been described as New Zealand's most high-profile and bitter industrial dispute since the early 1990s, waterside workers went back to work, after a four-week strike. Auckland's port company agreed to end its lockout of 235 workers on March 30, and pay workers a week's wages for being illegally locked out.
The New Zealand Herald reported that Maritime Union president Garry Parsloe told a huge workers' meeting: “You'll all go back to your jobs and until you go back you'll all get paid.
“Everything we have done has fallen into place, thanks to your solidarity.”
George Galloway, running for the anti-war and anti-austerity Respect party, won a sensational victory in the Bradford West by-election on March 29.
The scale of Galloway's win, turning a safe Labour seat into a 10,000 vote majority, is without precedent in modern British politics. All those who oppose austerity and war should be walking a little taller.
Galloway and Respect fought a campaign on two simple premises: opposition to wars abroad and opposition to austerity at home.
A huge rally was held at Paris's Bastille monument in support of Left Front presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon on March 18, the Morning Star said the next day.
More than 100,000 trade unionists, members of the French Communist Party (PCF) and disaffected former members of the Socialist Party (PS) marched under red balloons and flags.
Melenchon said: "We're going to make this election on April 22 a civic insurrection.
"The insurrection is ... the most indispensable of duties in this France disfigured by social, territorial, cultural and gender inequality."
We mustn't panic, but according to a front page headline in the Daily Mail we're being "HELD TO RANSOM BY 1,000 TANKER DRIVERS".
What bad luck, that 1000 tanker drivers have become Somali pirates. I suppose they had to re-train because of redundancies in the piracy trade due to new technology, such as email ransom notes and digital planks.
But they've perfected a new method of ransom, which is holding a strike ballot and counting the votes.
Portgual's largest trade union confederation staged a 24-hour strike on March 22 in defence of workers' rights and against European Union-mandated austerity, the Morning Star said that day.
Tens of thousands of trade unionists and their allies rallied in the centre of Lisbon in the afternoon.
Hamza has memories that no 17-year-old should have.
Last year, he was arrested in the middle of the night on suspicion that he threw stones at Israeli settlers near his school in the West Bank. He was handcuffed, blindfolded and beaten on the way to interrogation.
“They asked me when did I throw stones, and how, what time exactly, at night or in the morning, and who was there with me,” he said.
“When they took me to the prison they put me in a small cell. They used to throw the food through the space between the door and the floor.
The general membership of Carleton University’s Graduate Students’ Association voted overwhelmingly on March 21 and 22 in support of the Ottawa university divesting, via its pension fund, from companies complicit in the illegal military occupation of Palestine.
The plebiscite question, which has provisionally passed by 72.6%, marks the first time in Canada, and what is believed to be the second time globally, that a student union has taken a position via a direct vote in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli violations of international law.
Phil Harrington is an economist, climate change policy analyst, consultant and activist with Climate Action Hobart. Green Left Weekly’s Susan Austin asked him about his views on the federal government’s carbon pricing package and how to respond to it.
What do you think of the carbon pricing scheme that is being introduced?
It’s way too little, way too late. It is designed to give the appearance of action and is being used by the government to justify the position “we’ve fixed that now” — but in fact nothing is fixed.
On the afternoon of March 30, Friends of the Earth campaigner Cam Walker said on Twitter: “This has been the week from hell for climate change politics in Vic. There's still a few working hours, maybe a nuke power plant is next?”
Climate targets, standards abandoned
The death of 21-year-old Brazilian student Roberto Laudisio Curti in a central Sydney street, after six police tasered him at least three times, has highlighted the rising use of Tasers by police and security in Australia and worldwide.
The deadly confrontation with Curti on March 18 has now been revealed as a case of “mistaken identity” over the theft of a packet of biscuits. Curti was also capsicum sprayed, and was running from police when he was tasered multiple times in the back.
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