Basque Country: Movement for sovereignty and socialism on the rise
For more coverage of the Basque struggle, click HERE.
Anti-fracking movement goes global, climate-change mafia warns
More than 2000 people protest against coal seam gas in the Illawarra, NSW, Australia, October 2011.
By Farida Iqbal
February 10, 2013 -- Green Left Weekly -- The shale gas industry-commissioned white paper, The Global Anti-Fracking Movement: What it Wants, How it Operates and What’s Next, makes for some very interesting reading. It was produced late last year by Control Risks, an “independent, global risk consultancy specialising in helping organisations manage political, integrity and security risks in complex and hostile environments”.
The white paper focuses on shale gas, but it also discusses coal seam gas. Shale gas is what features in the film Gasland by Josh Fox, which details the destructive effects of “fracking” on communities in the US.
A global movement has emerged to combat the risks to water and air quality, health and farmland that shale gas mining poses. Australia has both shale and coal seam gas reserves.
Michael Lebowitz: Working-class response to devaluation measures in Venezuela
By Michael A. Lebowitz
Fiji: New workers' party formed
Fijian Trade Union Congress secretary Felix Anthony.
By Byron Clark
Zimbabwe socialists: 15 reasons to vote ‘No’ to the draft constitution
The COPAC constitution is a negotiated and elitist peace charter by the three parliamentary political parties and their W
Excerpt from new book, 'Race in Cuba: Essays on the revolution and racial inequality'
The following is an excerpt from Esteban Morales Domínguez's new book, Race in Cub
Tunisia: Activist leader assassinated as left re-unites to provide alternative
More than 1 million people mobilised to protest the assassination of Chokri Belaid.
50 years since ‘The Feminine Mystique’
By Suzanne Weiss
January 31, 2013 -- Green Left Weekly -- Fifty years ago, on February 13, 1963, the publication of US writer and activist Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique sparked a new awakening in the thinking of women across North America. Friedan denounced the repression women suffered in the aftermath of World War II, when they were forced out of wartime jobs and convinced to accept the role of keepers of the home.
Profiteers of the market launched an unrelenting but subtle propaganda campaign to venerate women as wife and mother. This role, Friedan said, was the “feminine mystique”.
This domestic existence became, Friedan wrote, “a religion, a pattern by which all women must now live or deny their femininity”. In submitting to this concept of womanhood, women gave up their self-respect, recognition of their talents and abilities, and — most importantly — their identities. Fundamentally, Friedan said, this was a scam to sell more consumer goods to women, who were to be the major purchasers for home and family.
Chris Williams: What must be done to stop climate change?
For a moment he lost himself in the old, familiar dream.
The demand for shorter working hours with no loss in pay has been a key transitional demand.
By Doug Lorimer