Yesterday, March 5, at 4.25 pm local time, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez died after battling cancer for the last two years. This was announced by Vice President Maduro. We publish here a short statement by the Hands Off Venezuela campaign.

In Ireland a deal has been reached about another round of redundancies and pension and wage cuts called Croke Park II. Over the next few weeks the debate within the unions and in the press will be fierce. All of the forces of the ruling class and the government will be unleashed to try and sell this deal through the press and the media and through management pressure. We publish here two articles from the Fightback website on the question.

Two years since the Egyptian revolution and we have seen many killed on the streets of Cairo in clashes between the revolutionary youth and workers and the Islamists of the regime. This is an indication of the situation as it stands today in the Arab world. The revolution brought down the Mubarak and Ben Ali regimes, but did not solve any of the underlying social problems that were the fundamental cause of the revolution. We publish here a statement on the Arab revolution based on a discussion at the International Executive Committee of the International Marxist Tendency from its meeting in January 2013.