IV387 - March 2007

Emergency legislation by the British parliament this week confirmed the power-sharing deal made on Monday by the loyalist and republican leaders, Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams.

"They make you pay for bread, the sky, the earth, the sun and the misery of your life." — Paul Eluard.

What we are seeing is an ongoing process in which the movement becomes stronger and takes on a mass character: if we take the demonstrations as a barometer, we can see today several demonstrations of 30,000 to 40,000 participants, and almost all the university departments are occupied.

Public interest in the climate change crisis has risen dramatically. Much too inactive on this terrain, the left should get involved in the international movement emerging around the idea that rescuing the climate - in a spirit of social justice - takes precedence over profit and necessitates a significant redistribution of wealth.

After several years of turmoil and in some instances right out battles in the streets, there is now just an empty piece of land, where there used to be a house filled with initiative and creativity, a house that was also a symbol of both the workers and the womens movements history - the 1910 International Women’s Conference which called for March 8 to be recognised as International Women’s Day was held here.

The bipartisan consensus with which the US ruling class had approved of the military campaign of the Bush administration after September 11, 2001, including the invasion of Iraq, has crumbled in the face of the setbacks suffered during the occupation of that country.

“Noting the petition campaign launched by the British section of the FI on the Tamil National Question in Sri Lanka as most appropriate and valuable, this assembly agrees to carry out similar action in all countries where sections of the FI are present.”

PRC’s decision to expel Franco Turigliatto has opened up a dire wound in the history of Rifondazione, which had never before now taken similar measures. Due to the closeness and solidarity we feel in relation to Franco and as we share in his political outlook, we perceive and experience the party’s decision as a collective ousting of our tendency and will obviously oppose this act.

Unfortunately, according to Gilbert Achcar, the new sectarian divisions in Lebanon look increasingly like the Sunni-Shi’ite divide in Iraq.

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