Socialist Party (Ireland) Struggle, Democracy, Socialism

This week the tragedy that is mass unemployment was intensified further with the official rate rising to 14.9%, a total of 440,600 people and the highest since 1994. This week, also, the Troika is in town to make sure that the Irish people continue to wear the suffocating straitjacket of austerity in the interests of salvaging the fortunes of the failed property gamblers from the European financial markets. Last week a further €1.2 billion was paid out to unsecured bondholders.

• McKenna judgement important to safeguard democratic debate

• Tax payers’ money must not be used to fund government side in referendum campaigns
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Rank and file SIPTU members in Dublin Airport take unprecedented step of writing to Jack O'Connor demanding right to ballot

World records will not be the only things broken at this year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games. Promises for a lasting legacy – affordable housing, decent jobs, increased sports participation, etc – are being broken, too. The greatest sporting show on earth has been dragged down by crass commercialisation, and become a test-bed for increased state repression. socialistparty.net reports on the neo-liberal Games.

This week may see a rare occurrence in the European Parliament - the defeat of a key item in the big business agenda pushed by European Commission. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is set to be voted on by the full plenary of the European Parliament today, despite some last minute chicanery by the European People's Party to try to delay the vote.

Independent Newspapers attempt to manufacture an artificial controversy over Socialist Party and some other Left TDs’  travel allowance being used to attend anti House Tax meetings around the country is a transparent attempt to smear those who are engaged in a major fight against destructive austerity policies in general and the Household Tax in particular.

Independent Newspapers attempt to manufacture an artificial controversy over Socialist Party and some other Left TDs’ travel allowance being used to attend anti House Tax meetings around the country is a transparent attempt to smear those who are engaged in a major fight against destructive austerity policies in general and the Household Tax in particular.

Now that the Fiscal Treaty referendum is out of the way, the government is preparing to attack the Household Tax nonpayment movement by using the power of the state.

Capitalist leaders are in disarray as they strive and fail to get to grips with the eurozone crisis and its threat to the global economy. Neither the G20 summit in Mexico, nor crisis talks in Rome offered any solutions, as politicians and economists desperately try to hang on to the eurozone roller-coaster.

One of the major divisions within environmentalists is on the issue of population and ‘overpopulation’, with many claiming that a key cause of environmental damage is too many people. The British Royal Society recently released a report, People and the Planet, which argued that, to avoid "a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills", the world’s population needs to be stabilised. Ian Angus and Simon Butler’s book, Too Many People, examines these claims and explores their implications.