A selection of this week's celebrity news...
Lady Gaga Recovers From Hip Surgery in Gold Wheelchair http://eonli.ne/X4Peop
Fifty Shades of Grey Porn Film Lawsuit Settled http://eonli.ne/X4A0jr
Giuliana Rancic Teams Up With Nonprofit Bright Pink for Fab-U-Wish™ Initiative to Help Women Battling Breast cancer http://eonli.ne/X4votx
That Taylor Swift Fan Letter You Spent Hours Glitter-Gluing? Well, It Ended Up in the Trash! http://eonli.ne/12NcbV0
Rihanna gets naked for a good cause http://eonli.ne/15L034B
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On Tuesday 5 March, at the age of 58, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez lost his almost two-year battle with cancer and passed away. Within seconds of the news being announced, the wheels of the global media bandwagon went into overdrive, with largely unsurprising results, in both the US and British media.
The dominant media narrative about the two-day all-India strike, called by trade unions for February 20 and 21, was one of “hooliganism” by workers and inconvenience caused to the “public”.
As usual, the main demands of the striking workers found little space in the media's discussion of the strike. The working class — usually invisible, both at the workplace and where they live — attained visibility on TV screens only as a “mob”.
Workers, whose labour is, after all, the source of all production, are seen and shown as a source of wanton and mindless destruction.
On February 3, Artists Against Apartheid Australia (AAPA) sent an email to the organisers of WOMADelaide 2013 with a request to reject funds it received from the Israeli embassy for the upcoming show of the Alaev Family.
The call is part of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign, initiated by a wide range of Palestinian groups.
It targets Israel in a bid to force it to abandon its apartheid policies against Palestinians.
When Hugo Chávez triumphed in the 1998 presidential elections, the neoliberal capitalist model was already floundering. The choice then was whether to re-establish the neoliberal capitalist model — clearly with some changes including greater concern for social issues, but still motivated by the same logic of profit seeking — or to go ahead and try to build another model.
When Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante (ASSÉ) announced that it would be breaking ranks with its more moderate colleagues in the student federations and boycotting the new government's education summit, it was clear that they were taking a huge risk.
When they called a mass demonstration for the last day of the education summit and publicly announced that it would be the largest demonstration since the end of last year's unlimited general strike, and that they expected in the neighborhood of 10,000 students to show up, they were doubling down with reckless abandon.
Hugo Chavez cut a wide swath on the international scene, more than that of any other leader in the recent history of Latin America, putting forth a vision of a world based on equitable relations among nations and peoples.
His rise to hemispheric prominence began at the third Summit of the Americas in April 2001 in Quebec, Canada when the newly inaugurated George W. Bush attempted to ram through the Free Trade Area of the Americas that was to extend from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego in South America.
Overdress: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion
By Elizabeth Cline
Penguin, 2012, 244 pages
$37.95 (hb)
Every year, Americans buy 20 billion garments, mostly from mass market clothes-makers such as Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, Wal-Mart and Target. They then throw away 13 million tons of it says a reformed clothing-addict, Elizabeth Cline, in Overdressed.
Charity shops can’t soak up the excess with less than 20% of thrift-shop clothing donations sold on. Most of the rest goes to landfill.
Global Capitalism & Climate Change
By Hans Baer
AltaMira Press, 2012
The science says it is now far beyond sensible doubt that we can’t keep dumping greenhouse gases into the sky without terrible results. These range from more extreme floods, droughts and storms, to the disappearance of the Arctic ice cap, dramatic cuts in food yields and the drying out of the Amazon rainforest.
Despite this knowledge, the problem is being made worse. US oil production is booming again. World gas production is surging. World coal production is reaching new highs.
The central European nation of Slovenia is being shaken by the first huge uprising since it became an independent country in 1991. The protests are directed against all political elites, austerity measures, and the capitalist system as a whole.
US Senator says drones killed 4700
“A high-ranking US senator has estimated America's use of drone strikes has killed about 4,700 people, including civilians.
“Republican Lindsey Graham is the first US government official to offer an estimate on the total number of fatalities in America's secretive drone war.
“'Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that, but we're at war ...' Mr Graham told the Easley Rotary Club ...”
“The strikes have been condemned by rights groups as extrajudicial assassinations.”
The Refugee Action Coalition released the statement below on March 13. The day before, ABC Online said five asylum seekers had escaped the centre, but were returned quickly.
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The Nauru Director of the Department of Immigration has told a meeting of asylum seekers in the Nauru detention camp that their refugee assessments will begin “in about 10 days” [on March 18].
The initial refugee assessments are expected to be finalised in about six months.
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