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From The Socialist newspaper, 15 December 2006

The Socialist quiz

OUR CHRISTMAS Quiz this year has 36 quiz questions, six quotes and six picture questions on famous people (or horses) for you to identify - they all died in 2006. Answers on this page, upside down, so try not to cheat.

Questions

1. Who was forced to resign following the US mid-term elections?

2. Where did the Socialist Party win an extra one million votes?

3. Which company cut off gas supplies to the Ukraine?

4. Whose liking for the bottle forced his resignation as party leader?

5. Which two countries refused to back down to US demands over their nuclear ambitions?

6. Who walked out for two days in January and again in May over Gordon Brown's job cuts?

7. Which country elected its first female president?

8. Why did 1.5 million French students and 1.5 million workers in Britain walk out on 28 March?

9. Where was the sixth World Social Forum held in January?

10. Whose election victory led to the US and EU cutting aid?

11. What publication caused outrage amongst Muslims worldwide?

12. Which Labour bill was passed in parliament this year only with the support of Tory MPs?

13. Which MP's hubby 'forgot' to tell her that he'd accepted a £350,000 'present' from a dodgy Italian businessman?

14. Where did millions of immigrant workers demonstrate for democratic rights?

15. Where did a general strike topple a dictatorial regime?

16. Which part of the NHS did the government privatise this year?

17. Name the four Socialist Party members elected as councillors in May.

18. Who won the 2006 World Cup Finals in Germany?

19. In which London district did the Met police shoot an innocent resident in a bungled anti-terrorist operation?

20. Why did Greek students occupy their universities this year?

21. In which constituency did New Labour lose to an independent candidate in July?

22. Whose film won plaudits at Cannes but was pilloried by the right-wing media in Britain?

23. Name the Mexican presidential candidate who was denied victory after suspected electoral fraud?

24. What event triggered a 34-day war between the Israeli Defence Forces and Hezbollah in Lebanon this year?

25. Which scrabble-playing MSP won £200,000 in damages from the News of the World in a defamation court case?

26. Whose lies led to a riot?

27. Which group of health workers won a victory against their low-paying privateer employer?

28. Name the journal that calculated 650,000 excess Iraqi deaths since the US-led invasion in March 2003?

29. Name the Mexican town where there was a five-month rebellion against the state governor?

30. Who is the Sandinista that lost the presidency in 1990 but was re-elected this year?

31. Which company in Wigan wouldn't play ball with its workforce?

32. What event originally cost £2.5 billion and will now cost an estimated £5 billion-£20 billion?

33. Name the US committee that challenged Bush and Blair's Iraq policy?

34. Whose cup of coffee/sushi lunch fatally disagreed with him?

35. Workers in Belfast marched through both catholic and protestant areas last February. Which union was on strike?

36. According to the UN Human Development Report the combined income (not wealth) of the 500 richest people in the world now exceeds that of how many poor people?

Were you listening?

1. Who told whom? "...what they need to do is to get Syria, to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over."

2. Name the genius who told an astonished world: "Russia's big and so is China."

3. Who told whom to "machine-gun the rioters"?

4. Who referred to the Israeli blitzing of Lebanon as the "birth pangs of a new Middle East"?

5. Who said: "Staff deserve to have the choice to work longer than 48 hours a week. And UK businesses need the flexibility to ask if staff can work more hours when things are busy."

6. Who said: "It's another defeat for the devil, who tries to dominate the world."

Picture quiz - Who died?

Answers

1. Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary and one of the principal architects of the Iraq war and occupation. And John Bolton, US ambassador to the United Nations.

2. The Netherlands, in the 22 November general election.

3. Gazprom, Russia's state-owned energy giant.

4. Recovering alcoholic Charles Kennedy of the Liberal Democrats.

5. Iran and North Korea.

6. PCS union members in the Department for Work and Pensions.

7. Chile. The social-democrat Michelle Bachelet.

8. Students fought and defeated, the government's CPE youth employment law. Local government workers struck for one day over attacks on their pension rights.

9. Caracas, Venezuela.

10. The Islamist Hamas won a majority in January's Palestinian Authority elections.

11. A disparaging cartoon image of the prophet Mohammed as a suicide bomber reprinted in various European newspapers.

12. Education Bill.

13. David Mills, now estranged husband of culture secretary Tessa Jowell. Mills was rewarded after getting former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi off a corruption charge.

14. The USA. They marched against a draconian anti-migrant worker bill going through Congress.

15. Nepal. King Gyanandra's rule collapsed after two weeks of protest.

16. NHS Logistics. The contract was awarded to DHL/Novation.

17. Ian Page, Chris Flood (Lewisham Rob Windsor (Coventry), Jackie Grunsell (Huddersfield).

18. Italy

19. Forest Gate, Newham, east London. Abdul Kahir was shot and spent a week in custody along with his brother. Both were released without charge.

20. To protest at the government's education bill which among other things will force universities to seek private funding.

21. Blaenau Gwent, Wales. Won by Dai Davies of Blaenau Gwent People's Voice who succeeded the late Peter Law.

22. Ken Loach's film The Wind That Shakes The Barley. Set during the struggle for Irish independence and the subsequent civil war 1922-23.

23. The left-populist AndrŽs Manuel L-pez Obrador of the PRD.

24. The capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas. The subsequent conflict killed 1,500 people, mostly civilians.

25. Tommy Sheridan

26. Hungary's PM Ferenc Gyurcsany. Hungarian radio played a tape recording of the PM admitting that he had lied about the state of the economy in April's general election.

27 Ancillary workers at Whipps Cross Hospital in east London, in October.

28 The Lancet, the medical journal.

29. Oaxaca. The struggle to remove Ulises Ruiz Ortiz was led by APPO.

30. Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, having abandoned his past revolutionary baggage.

31. JJB Sports. The workers won a victory after striking. Now they're fighting company victimisation of union activists.

32. The 2012 London Olympics.

33. The Iraq Study Group headed by former secretary of state James Baker.

34. Ex-Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko who died after unwittingly ingesting the radioactive substance Polonium-210.

35. Communication Workers' Union (Postal workers)

36. 416 million people.

Were you listening? - Quotes answers

1. Bush told Blair his considered response to Israel's attacks on Lebanon.

2. It's Bush again!

3. That was David Blunkett's loony advice as Home Secretary to the then director-general of the prison service, Martin Narey, following a disturbance in Lincoln jail in 2002. Narey's claim in The Times in October was in response to the publication of Blunkett's memoirs, The Blunkett Tapes.

4. US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

5. The bosses' CBI supporting Blair's decision to opt out of EU working hours legislation.

6. Hugo Chavez after being re-elected president of Venezuela on 3 December. The "devil" refers to George Bush.

Who died? Obituaries answers to the picture quiz

1. Desert Orchid The steeplechaser that won a string of prestigious races in the late 1980s including the Cheltenham Gold Cup (1989) and the King George IV chase 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990. Died on 13 November, aged 27.

2. Pierre Gemayel - the right-wing Maronite Christian anti-Syrian politician assassinated in Lebanon on 21 November. Gemayel's grandfather was an admirer of Hitler who established the Phalange party. Its militia massacred 3,000 Palestinians in Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps in 1982.

3. Milton Friedman The right-wing economics guru of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

4. Anna Politkovskaya - Russian journalist known for her human rights campaigning in Chechnya, she was assassinated in a suspected contract killing.

5. The 'Butcher of Chile', General Agusto Pinochet.

6. Robert Altman The US film director died 5 December 2006, aged 81. He directed the 1969 anti-war classic movie MASH and was a fierce critic of George Bush.

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In The Socialist 15 December 2006:

NHS Crisis: Turn anger into action