Socialist Party (Ireland) Struggle, Democracy, Socialism

Economic crisis - cracks appear in bosses’ EU

Danny Byrne, CWI London

The international capitalist crisis, which has unfolded over the last months, has served to completely discredit the free market policies and ideology of the boom period, of the last twenty years or so. An element of the ‘un-challengeable’ arguments put forward by the supporters and ideologues of the free market was the idea that capitalism had entered a new phase of peace and harmony, characterised by the co-operation and ever-increasing integration of national capitalist economies and governments. The European Union was heralded as a prime example of the setting aside of national rivalries. The introduction of the Euro, ten years ago this month, as a common currency, in particular, was put forward as evidence of the new-found unity of European capitalism.

The nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank is an indication of the abject failure of the Fianna Fail and Green government to deal with the banking crisis, but also that the crisis has reached a new and dangerous level. In the wake of the nationalisation, the shares of the two main banks, Allied Irish Bank (AIB) and Bank of Ireland (B of I), plummeted.

By Matt Waine

NO ONE was happier to see 2008 come to an end than Greek Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis. The brutal shooting in cold blood of a 15 year old school student by police in Athens on 6 December unleashed an enormous wave of anger that threatened to bring down his New Democracy government.

DURING HIS end of year address Pope Benedict spoke of the destruction of the rainforest and an apparently equally sinister threat. Pope Benedict said that saving humanity from homosexual or transexual behaviour was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction!

OVER 200 students protested against fees at the University of Ulster on 2 December 2008. Protests supposed to be organised on the same day by Queen’s Students’ Union and NUS-USI (Student Union organisation) were called off for an Assembly “review” on fees.

BUSH, OLMERT, CIA, how many kids did you kill today? was one of the chants heard outside Belfast City Hall as over 150 people protested their opposition to Israel’s merciless slaughter of Gaza’s civilians. Many of the protestors came from local schools and colleges

The first volume of a film directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Benicio del Torro is in the cinemas that depicts the life of Che Guevara, legendary leader of the Cuban Revolution is in the cinema. Viewers of the first film, despite some moments of insight, may well be left underwhelmed by a film that deals predominantly with the period in time in which Che is engaging in guerrilla action in the harsh Sierra Maestra hills of Cuba in the period up to the January 1959 victory of the revolution.

By Stephen Boyd, Editor, the Socialist

2008 will be remembered for the credit crunch and world financial crisis. But as 2009 begins we can safely predict this year will be remembered as the year when the "real economy" of countries all around the globe went into meltdown.