After the trade unions overwhelmingly rejected the original Croke Park 2 proposals, new proposals have been made that are more or less the same as the original ones. The proposals include extensions on the distances people can be redeployed, longer hours, cuts in pay for newly qualified nurses and cuts to teacher’s allowances, as well as alterations on overtime payments. The trade unions must mobilise to defeat these attacks.

As the Syrian revolution remains locked in civil war for a third year, regional powers have begun to use the conflict as an opportunity to advance their own imperialist agendas. Syria has become a battleground for a proxy war between Iran, Israel, and the Arab states of the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Reza Mohammadi looks at the devastating effects of imperialist meddling in the Syrian civil war.

In the wake of the recent Pakistan elections, which saw a victory for the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and its party leader Nawaz Sharif, we publish here an article written before the elections by Fred Weston, editor of www.marxist.com, who takes a wider look at the economic, social, and political contradictions in Pakistan – a society pregnant with revolutionary potential.