Danni Perry’s flag display at the Royal Opera House sparked 182 performers to sign a solidarity letter that cancelled the Tel Aviv Tosca production, while Leonardo DiCaprio invests in Tel Aviv hotels, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Fifty years since the Carnation Revolution
In part one of two articles, JOHN GREEN recounts his experience covering the fall of Portugal’s 41-year-old dictatorship in 24 hours, a remarkable moment of unity and hope, as the masses embraced freedom
FREE AT LAST: Huge crowds at May Day 1974
YANA PETTICREW explains what’s behind the strike and how the entire sector rests on super-exploiting an unorganised workforce
STEPHEN ARNELL casts a critical eye over the sudden rash of challenges to the two-party system on both sides of the Atlantic, noting that today’s performative populist politics sadly lacks Roosevelt’s progressive ‘Bull Moose’ vision of the early 20th century
BILL KIDD MSP says increasing Britain’s nuclear arsenal at this time is dangerous and expensive folly
ROGER McKENZIE asks whether the US’s shift to targeting everyone at once will instil greater co-operation among rising powers
ON APRIL 25, 50 years ago, Portugal was hit by an earthquake. It wasn’t like the geological one of 1755 which razed the capital Lisbon to the ground and killed around 50,000 people; this one was a political earthquake and there were only four victims, shot by the fascist secret police.
It sent shock waves around the world: Portugal’s 41-year-old dictatorship, the oldest in Europe, had been overthrown in just 24 hours. Working for GDR television at the time, I was sent to cover events as they unfolded.
We touched down at Lisbon airport on the morning of the 27th, immediately unpacked our camera and started filming. We hardly put the camera down from then on. Already at the airport, the atmosphere was charged: large groups of people waited for their loved ones to arrive, exiled for years by the dictatorship. There were ecstatic embraces, laughter and tears of joy.
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