net of poor families, especially in times of disasters or difficult times.
Far from being productive, remittances increase inequality, encourage consumption of imports, increase domestic prices for education and health, and create dependency.
They increase the profits of foreign banks and, have led to the proliferation of money transfer and exchange businesses.
Much more money goes to the financial markets and on consumer spending than
in the domestic households, because they do not have to pay for the reproduction of the labour force. This is especially the case with undocumented migrants, whose monetary compensation is low and who have no social benefits
care, sick pay, retirement pensions, paid holidays.
A campaign is underway for the recognition of overwhelmingly female domestic labour as real work, and for the regularization of migrant domestic workers. It is vital that these workers receive the full support of the left and the workers' movement. Liam Mac Uaid "The left that is in goverment has completely broken its relationship with the social movements".
That is the verdict of Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (PRC) parliamentarian Salvatore Cannavò. Cannavò is a member of Sinistra Critica and a PRC deputy in the Italian parliament's lower house, the Chamber of Deputies.
Speaking about the events of "No Bush Day" on June 9th, when George W. was in Rome to meet Prime Minister Romano Prodi and the Pope, he pointed out that the march of 80 000 showed that there is now an opposition on the left of Italian politics.
Cannavò argues that Rifondazione has failed as an leaders are inadequate and their project of being in Prodi's government is wrong. While Cannavo headed the demonstration opposing Bush Rifondazione leaders were almost alone at a partyorganised demonstration in Piazza Del Popolo.
Prodi now heads a coalition that reaches from Rifondazione Comunista to the right wing Partito Democratico, a procapitalist party explicitly based on the US Democrats.
The government's programme includes the retention of Italian troops in Afghanistan and a package of neo-liberal reforms.
Rifondazione is playing an impossible game by trying to be both part of the government
page 16 of the scan
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's recent refusal to renew the licence of a private television company Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) for using the public airwaves has triggered a new polarisation, and something of a debate over how media freedom and democratic access to the media can be achieved and maintained in the process of socialist revolution. Here we carry three initial responses to the events and the hysterical bourgeois response to Chavez's action.