Month: March 2012

24 posts
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The euro patient: ‘Stabilised’ but still critical

The Greek bailout 2.0 has averted a default, for the moment. The new fiscal pact is a straitjacket that will aggravate Europe’s austerity-induced recession. Ireland’s referendum threatens to shake the EU and the eurozone. There is growing discord among EU leaders. Far from over, workers’ struggles against capitalist austerity will erupt on an even bigger scale.

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GAME over? Full support to GAME workers’ occupation

GAME Stores suddenly announced on Monday  the closure of all 14 of their stores in Ireland, resulting in 121 workers losing their jobs without warning. Many of the workers have provided considerable years of service to the games retailer. The workers have now courageously decided to sit-in 13 of the stores across the country, demanding  their back pay and other money their owed.

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Charles Dickens: the making of a great writer

This year is the bicentenary of Dickens’ birth. Biographies, reissues and TV and film adaptations have poured out showing he still has immense drawing power even 140 years after his death. Dickens was a towering figure who dominated English literature for nearly 40 years, from the early runaway success of The Pickwick Papers in 1836 to the cryptic murder story, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, left incomplete at the author’s death in 1870.

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Defeating the Household Tax

We are in a battle for the hearts and minds of people up and down the country. It is clear that a huge majority of people are opposed to the Household Tax and Septic Tank rip-offs. Can we beat the intimidation and threats from the Government who are trying to force people into registering and paying? Can the campaign trump the fear factor and help give people the confidence to make a stand on this issue and fight back?

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Sectarian parties will exploit Scottish referendum

The question of an independence referendum in Scotland has provoked rumblings on both sides of the sectarian divide here. Peter Robinson has said that Unionists must not “stand idly by”, but instead do what they can to convince the Scottish people to remain within the Union. On the other hand, Martin McGuinness has welcomed the SNP’s move and suggested that they would like to see a similar vote on a united Ireland take place in the near future – perhaps in 2016, the centenary of the Easter Rising.

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Net activism: The “Kony 2012” phenomena

Seldom before has an idea spread so quickly across the world. Within days tens of millions watched Invisible Children’s “KONY 2012” video as it went viral across the internet and social media. Shocked at the story of killing, rape and child soldiers, demands multiplied that “something must be done” against Joseph Kony and the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) he leads in eastern and central Africa.

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Obama’s USA: Millions struggle to survive

One in five American children lives below the poverty line today, while one in 50 is homeless. As unemployment rises and foreclosures increase, families are forced out of their homes into overcrowded shelters, motels, ''tent cities'' and even into the storm drains of great cities such as Las Vegas.