Workers Solidarity Movement

Fine Gael and the Labour party are engaged in a desperate attempt to pass the Fianna Fail/Green party budget into law. A budget containing billions in cuts attacking the poorest sections of Irish society. A budget they loudly opposed only a few weeks ago.

On Saturday December 18th last, the Tunisian police stopped Mohamed Bouaziz, an unemployed university graduate, and seized the hand cart of fruit and vegetables he had been selling to support himself and his family. Enraged by the injustice and despairing of any escape from destitution and starvation in Tunisia’s impoverished economy, increasingly ravaged by rising food prices, the young man set fire to himself in protest outside the town hall in Sidi Bouzid, 200km south-west of the capital Tunis. The young man was later to die in hospital.

In the aftermath of the European court of Human Rights finding that the Irish state had violated the rights of a woman who was unable to get an abortion in Ireland a poll in the Sunday Times has confirmed that almost 9 out of every 10 people want abortion available in such cases. This result is a massive defeat for the well funded anti-choice movement that spent hundreds of thousands in an anti-choice advertising campaign in advance of the ruling.

It is no great surprise that An Board Pleanála has granted permission for the final phase of the experimental Shell pipeline in North Mayo. The remaining 5 kilometers of pipe will be laid up the centre of Sruwaddacon Estuary, through Broadhaven bay, a place of great natural beauty and also an area which has been listed as a Special Area of Conservation [1] and a Special Protected Area for Birds,[2] along with being an E.U. protected Natural Heritage Area.[3] These sort of protections are now obviously meaningless when it comes up against multinationals like Shell.

I attended a public launch of the ULA in Cork city on Wednesday 16th of January. There was a real sense of purpose in the attendance and a fairly high level of energy , anger and enthusiasm.  It was clear from the start in the packed hall that people had come to not just listen but many to join up and play a role in the emerging organisation.

After a dramatic 24 hours when Tunisia's dictator president Ben Ali first tried promising liberalisation and an end to police shootings of demonstrators and then, this evening at 16:00, declaring martial law, he has finally fallen from office. While the rumours are still swirling, one thing is clear, Ben Ali has left Tunisia and the army has stepped in.

A mass wave of riots by ordinary people against the government have swept Tunisia for the last three weeks under a near-total media blackout in the West. We look at what's been happening and why it's being kept off our TV screens.

There are now 569 people on trolleys in Irish hospital emergency wards. This is a new record.  The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation released the figures today.

Jimmy Kelly the Regional Secretary of the Irish region of Unite has formally written to ICTU General Secretary David Begg and ICTU President Jack O’Connor proposing a  Campaign against Austerity Cuts.

  AFRI calls for Ireland to default on banks debt. Development group asks "why should ordinary Irish citizens now pick up that tab?"

Andy Storey, AFRI chairman, is highly critical of the IMF intervention. He urged that the lessons of the IMFs behaviour in the other countries be learned.  The IMFs intervention had left increased poverty , social inequality and reduced spending on education and health. He gave the example of Argentina as a country that had rejected the IMF after a deep crisis and had a sustained recovery afterwards.