Cutting Child Benefit
Like Taking Candy from a Baby

Children face a 'Black Christmas' as Minister Lenihan slashes child benefit by 10% in the 2010 Budget. Family incomes are being attacked from every side in this Budget, but the Government has chosen to target children for the biggest cut of all. Parents' group PACUB is horrified by the Budget, and predicts that more and more families will fall into poverty as the new decade begins.

Related Links:

Protest Against Child Unfriendly Budget - PACUB's Website | PACUB's Facebook Group | Demo Against Cuts to Child Benefit on Budget Day

Obama - Hope, No!

A critique of the Obama Presidency from taking office in January of this year to now.

Criticism of the Obama Administration in the United States (and around the world) is more noticeable as is the slide in the opinion polls for the young president. This may seem predictable given the unrealistic levels of global expectation that accompanied him as he swept into the Oval office with the words ‘hope and change’ ringing around America. However, just over nine months on, commentators and supporters alike are disappointed at Obama’s apparent inability to deliver on his campaign promises. The polemicist, Gore Vidal, in several recent interviews went as far as to say that Obama will be a ‘one term President’ who is ‘completely overwhelmed’ by the challenges that confront him.

This unease and anger seem to galvanise after the Administration’s decision to bailout the major US banks and financial institutions in the form of a ‘stimulus’ package, which is pushing close to $1 trillion dollars. The Nobel Prize winning economist, Professor Joseph Stiglitz, commented on RTE’s Primetime programme that this amounted to a massive “theft of the American taxpayer”. The ill feeling surrounding this package intensified when it was revealed that part of this enormous sum of money was used to pay the annual bonuses of senior banking executives who had largely caused the crisis. This was against a backdrop of economic decline with millions of Americans losing their jobs, millions more facing home foreclosure while the dispossessed are filling the growing number of tent cities which are becoming an increasing feature on the outskirts of major American cities.

Newspaper headline from the examiner

The Raybestos Manhattan Corporation moved to Ireland in the mid-70s. A campaign opposing their operations here began almost immediatly. It was a long and protracted struggle but eventually ended in victory. This article examines the campaign against the mulitnational and the lessons that can be learned from it today.

Related Links:
More about RM | Wikipedia on asbestos | asbestosis | Asbestos: a matter of time (clip) | Full video | Asbestos disease awareness organisation | Book: the environmental movement in Ireland | US EPA info on raymark industries plant | Asbestos.com site | Dail question related to the issue | WSM site

This is a table of what public sector workers
in Ireland really earn based on the data given in the
reply to a Dail question in Feb 09.

The cancellation of today's strike is a blow to the developing movement against the cuts on the scale of the cancellation of the March 30th strike at the start of the year. The so called compromise ICTU have been negotiating for is a further blow, it seems designed to drive a wedge between workers and fails to answer the main problem public sector workers have, the inability to take further cuts. But the strike that did happen on 24th November has brought 250,000 workers into their first experience of the power we collectively hold and points towards an alternative

The announcement from ICTU while we were picketing during the national strike on the 24th that a second strike had been set for December 3rd caught most strikers by surprise. Initially workers, most of whom were on strike for the first time ever, were concerned that we would be going out again so soon. But once the news sunk in the idea of having a second strike before the budget cuts made sense, its much easier to stop cuts happening then reversing them.All over the country union sections and branches began the work of organising for a second day of striking and effective pickets.

Bush First, Obama Second

After more than three months' deliberation, President Barack Obama has finally decided to commit more than 30,000 US troops to the Afghan war. The ‘Afghan surge’ is to be fast tracked over the next six months with a large bulk of the troops arriving before Christmas. The deployment will cost approximately $1 million dollars per soldier, per year, some $30 billion overall. This price tag is on top of the considerable costs (running into the hundreds of billions of dollars) of keeping over 100,000 US soldiers ‘in-country’, while maintaining other US global military operations as well as the on-going fiasco in Iraq. The combined deployment of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is close to 250,000 service personnel, which is augmented by the greatest number of private military contractors/mercenaries ever seen (some 100,000 in Iraq alone).

Related Links:
Response to obama Statement "Guantanamo will not close by January 2010" | Award of Nobel Peace Prize to President obama | Vid/Photoes/Report-61 Arrested at White House on 8th. Anniversary of Invasion of afghanistan | Refuelling War ongoing at Shannon airport | Making War through Shannon airport | Open letter to new Ambassador to Ireland Dan Rooney