IV385 - January 2007

February 11th will be a major day in Portuguese political and social life. A second national referendum will take place around the issue of abortion.

A strong local shop stewards movement needs to be consciously built. In a climate of defeat this is no easy task. Only a real upsurge can present the basis for building a movement to approach those of previous generations. But that does not mean we do not have concrete tasks we need to take forward now.

As the recent murders of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya and former spy-in-exile Alexander Litvinenko make clear, anyone who attempts to expose the political subterfuge and corruption in Russia today can pay with their lives. And Russia’s new bourgeoisie looks likely to demand an ever more authoritarian state.

The United States and Israel are trying to strengthen the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas (Fatah), at the expense of the Prime Minister, Ismaïl Haniyeh (Hamas). Consequence: inter-Palestinian confrontations have multiplied, and the risks of a civil war have increased.

Conditioned by centuries of feudalism, victim of totalitarian regimes, prey to political banditry, this is the situation of Ethiopia today. The current regime has not brought democracy to the country or settled ethnic problems. The great powers only see the Horn of Africa as a strategic zone. Since 9/11 the will of the US to co-opt Ethiopia to control terrorism has borne fruit.

Supporters of the right to legal abortion are accused of supporting the ‘holocaust of innocent, unborn children’, while women still undergo back-street abortions, risking their health or even life. Every year the police register several dozens of instances of infanticide or abandoning of babies just like in the 1930s. Poland has managed to travel back in time.

As the war become ever more unpopular in the US Iraq, George Bush is making a desperate gamble, trying to pacify Baghdad by sending more than 20,000 extra troops. This could lead to a bloodbath and result in a further political defeat for the failing ’war on terror’