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In all this talk of Career Average Pensions an important element has
been missed in all the media reports that women will come out worse when
the pension calculation is done. Hutton has not taken into account the
normal working life of women when making his proposals and the very act
of using Career Average Pensions is sex discriminatory.
Firas Ali, an Iraqi political
activist, was detained at the office of the Federation of Workers’
Councils and Unions in Iraq, Baghdad, at about 2pm on 13 April. A
protester, Haidar Shihab Ahmad Abdel Latif, is believed to have been
detained on 1 April on Tahrir Square, Baghdad. Alaa Nabil, another youth
leader of the February 25 Group, was also arrested on April 8, and
remains in custody. It is feared that they and other detained activists
are at high risk of torture.
These days, Iraqi authorities feel free to carry out
arbitrary arrests, physical assault and torture of Iraqi citizens who
participate in peaceful demonstrations. In fact, they have begun to
recruit and utilize of the expertise of the masterminds who were part of
the horrific Baathist regime of Saddam.
Come
to the Marxist Summer School June 17-19 for a packed weekend of
discussion and debate on what relevance the theory and programme of the
Marxists has in this epoch of world revolution.
The French army has bombed the residence
of Laurent Gbagbo, to "protect civilians" we are told. One is struck by
the wide variety of means used to achieve this so-called “humanitarian”
objective!
There is no future without the past.
An empirical, mechanistic and a pragmatic approach to the revolution
sweeping across the region from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea
would end up in a flawed analysis and a disastrous fate for the mass
upheaval.
What started as a genuine revolution
against Gaddafi, has been taken over by reactionary bourgeois elements.
In the Interim Council, and now the newly formed Interim Government,
direct representatives of imperialist interests have been promoted to
leading positions.
The announcement that the Irish banking sector needs another
€24 billion, that’s €24,000,000,000 in real numbers or another €5,500
for every Irish man, woman and child, is another sign of the capitalist
crisis in the state. Standard and Poor’s one of the main international
credit agencies has now downgraded Ireland by a further point.
In Belfast on March 26th, a twin demo to the London protest took place. Here is a report.
A new momentum has been reached by the
protest movement in Morocco. The call for a new Day of Action on March
20 was a test. Would the King’s shadowy reforms succeed in demobilising
the masses or on the contrary push the movement forward? As we predicted
the latter happened. Possibly twice as many people came out on the
streets than a month earlier.
500,000 march against the cuts, against the coalition, against big business. Here are the images of the day.