Workers Solidarity Movement

One in eight people in prison in the 26 counties left school at age 12 or younger. Less than 17% stayed in school until age 17 or older. According to the Prison Adult Literacy Survey released in September, 52% of prisoners are functionally illiterate. Yet the government prefers the option of jailings rather than putting the necessary resources into the schools - which would doubtlessly reduce the incidence of petty and anti-social crime.

The last year or so has seen a hectic period for activists in Ireland. From the May 6th Gardai attack on Reclaim the Streets in Dublin, through the anti-war campaigns, people have been coming into conflict with the state. In Dublin, we are now in the middle of a struggle with local anti-bin tax groups across the city taking action to defeat the councils refusal to collect rubbish.

In Britain the 'Effects of Taxes and Benefits on Household Income' report revealed that, under Thatcher, 1979-90, the fifth of the population with the lowest incomes had their share of post-tax national income cut from 10% to just 6%. The richest fifth increased their share of post-tax national income from 37% to 45%.

Every day nearly US$2 trillion changes hands on the money markets (i.e. is gambled by speculators). It can be hard to get a handle on just how much a trillion is. If you stacked a million dollar notes on top of one another it would reach about six foot high. If you stacked a trillion dollars the same way it would reach to over 40 times the height of Mount Everest! Yet the rich tell us there is no money for health care, affordable housing and modern school buildings.

Social spending is plumetting in the USA, leading to some strange things happening. The budget for the United States is going to run to a deficit of £180bn of spending over income.

According to the Financial Times of February 22nd, the after tax income of the richest 1% of Americans rose 115% between 1977 and 1999 while the incomes of the poorest 20% fell by 9%.

At the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Montana, production is at its highest rate in 15 years - higher than during the Gulf War. They recently received a $92 million contract to produce 265 million rounds of small-caliber ammunition for the US Army. Why so many bullets? There are approximately 24 million people living in Iraq, thus it seems it is either lunatic overkill, or the excess is for use against other peoples living within Bush's "axis of evil", or it's a cash gift to his arms business pals.

The campaign against double taxation bin charges is reaching a critical point. As the number of people joining the non-payment campaign continues to grow, and as an election grows ever nearer, councillors from all political parties are jumping on the bandwagon of opposition to the charges. No doubt by the time of the election, they'll all be proclaiming their steadfast opposition to the charges, and hoping that the voters will have forgotten their past actions in voting for them.

It may come as a surprise, but the mystery around aeroplane crashes isn't what it used to be. In the mid- 1980s, research by the US navy on its fighter aircraft picked up on a problem with the electric wiring that was used, known as Kaptan. Kaptan was once thought to be safe but US Navy investigations discovered otherwise.

In certain circumstances - not uncommon in aircraft flying conditions - Kaptan can actually explode in a ball of fire. So what did the US Navy do?

Speaking at the World Trade Organisation meeting in Washington, the foreign minister of Brazil lamented that if the next WTO meeting had to be held in an out of the way place, he preferred that it be held on a cruise ship instead of in the middle of the desert. He then gave an impassioned speech in which he opposed writing core labour standards into the WTO agreement and defended child labour. He went on to describe how in one region of Brazil, more than 5,000 children "help their families earn a little extra money" by hauling bags of coal from a dump yard to a steel mill.