January 2006 Archive 

Natural Nursery The Natural Nursery offers tips on how to do without all that useless paraphenalia for parents, proving that less is definitely more when it comes to bringing up baby the eco-friendly way

Stopping the Wall ‘Through our hands, the wall will fall!’ Under this slogan, the third ‘Week Against the Apartheid Wall’ (held during 9-16 November 2005) saw a fresh upsurge of popular resistance to Israel’s so-called ‘security wall’ in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Wherever Israeli bulldozers are destroying and isolating Palestinian homes, lands and water resources through the wall’s construction, people are standing up against the ghettoisation of their communities and the destruction of their livelihoods. From Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley, in Eizarya, Aboud and Anata and throughout Palestine, grassroots campaigners are mobilising in continuous protests against the wall and the occupation.

Singling out Israel Its supporters constantly laud Israel as the ‘only democratic country in the Middle East’ with the ‘most moral army in the world’. Why single it out for criticism, they ask.

Elections without a state Palestinians will be going to the polls in January not to prepare for an independent state but to steel themselves against a crushing defeat

What can you do? Convinced by the arguments on the Palestinian issue? Want to do something about it? Here’s some suggestions.

Together Chile’s left can do more On 15th January 2006 Chile decided to elect its first female President Michelle Bachelet of the New Labour style Concertación coalition. Dario Kenner interviewed the radical left Presidential candidate Tomás Hirsch to discuss the nature of the left wing alternative offered by the Juntos Podemos (Together we can do more) coalition to the current domination of free market politics. Juntos Podemos is a coalition of fifty five organisations, including the Communist and Humanist Parties, that criticises the neo-liberal model and argues for the redistribution of wealth, participatory democracy and full justice in human rights.

Chile’s Copper Lady and her detractors The Socialist candidate Michelle Bachelet is close to becoming the first woman elected to lead a major Latin American country, after winning more than 45 per cent of the vote in the first round of the country’s presidential election on 11 December 2005. But some on Chile’s left are not rejoicing, writes Justin Vogler. He spoke to Thomás Hirsch, who was a presidential candidate for the left-green coalition Juntos Podemos Más (together we can do more).