Fight for a Real Alternative – Join the Socialist Party

It’s just two months into this new Dail and the character of the new government is clear. Its the same as the old one, kneels before the ditaks of the EU/IMF, with the Labour Party in particular, arrogantly lecturing working class people to accept austerity cuts. As someone on the radio said, "Same circus, just different clowns!"

In the Sunday Independent newspaper on 4 August, Labour Party councillor Richard Humphreys had this article attacking an interview in which I called for a new intifada, similar to the first intifada. I contacted the Sunday Independent, requesting my right to reply through an article of similar length ( approximately 750 words) to Humphreys’. This request was rejected, and instead I was offered the opportunity to write a short letter to their letters page.

The threat from Minister Lenihan yesterday in the Dáil that public sector workers face further cuts in their wages unless public service cutbacks are implemented quicker demands a fighting response from the trade union movement.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, a Russian political activist and member of the punk group Pussy Riot, was jailed in August 2012 for hooliganism and blasphemy. Her crime was to stage an anti-Putin protest, along with two other performers, inside Moscow's Orthodox Cathedral. Despite claims that Russia has made steps towards becoming a more open society, those in power took immediate steps to silence the band’s radical feminist message.