Last
Thursday’s elections in the North saw a further swing towards both the
DUP and Sinn Féin. This reflects a drawn out process that has gradually
eroded the support for the Ulster Unionist Party and the SDLP since the
signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Alan Woods, Political Editor of the In Defence of
Marxism website and a leading cadre of the International Marxist
Tendency, and Muayad Ahmed a leading cadre of the Worker Communist
Party of Iraq & Editor of the ‘Alsheoiya Al-Omalya’ (Worker
Communism) monthly paper, spoke on the way forward for the Revolution
in the Arab world at a meeting in London.

The arrest
in Venezuela of Colombian political refugee Joaquín Pérez Becerra and
his hand over to the Colombian authorities by the government of
president Chávez has raised deeper questions about the strategy of the
Venezuelan revolution.