Working on getting the site live again
The saga of Denis O’Brien trying to stop the media reporting on his relationship with IBRC continues this evening. A short while ago a story reporting on what was said about the deal in the Dáil today vanished from the Irish Times website. Our picture is the screen grab of that story.
Continue reading “This is the story Denis O’Brien is trying to kill”
I remember being in a tent at Electric Picnic perhaps 3 years ago when Christy Moore belted out the Pogues ‘Thousands are Sailing’ to 15,000 very emotional people. For sure there were other sources but a good part of the emotion was the sense that it was all happening again.
Continue reading “Thousands are sailing #HometoVote for Marriage Equality referendum”
Homelessness in Ireland could be solved at a stroke by allowing people without homes to move into the 302,602 empty houses in the country.
That figure comes from the National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis. It’s equivalent of half the homes in Dublin, many of the vacants being in ghost estates that developers have been deliberately allowing to fall apart.
May 22nd offers an opportunity for many of us in Ireland to strike a blow against homophobia in voting for Marriage equality.
Continue reading “Marriage Equality – Vote Yes to defeat the bigots”
Drug criminalisation claimed another tragic victim last night 17 May) with the death of 18 year old Ana Hick. From press reports it appears hers was yet another preventable death caused by taking toxic PMMA that is sometimes substituted for MDMA due to prohibition and ruthless gangster capitalism.
Continue reading “Drug criminalisation and the tragic PMMA deaths it causes”
On Friday 22nd Ireland goes to the polls for a referendum to introduce Marriage equality, when it is passed Ireland will be the first country to introduce Marriage equality by popular vote. In the final days of campaigning the reactionary anti-equality crowd are becoming increasingly open about their homophobia as they become increasingly desperate in the face of defeat.
Continue reading “Migrants Call for Vote for Marriage Equality”
My “Sages and Movements”[1] attempted to fill a gap in our understanding of the contribution of Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) to the anarchist press. As well as discussing the importance of situating important thinkers (“sages”) within their wider movement, the article also included a bibliography of Kropotkin’s works. While incomplete, this bibliography showed that Kropotkin wrote far more than is usually assumed based on his works that are readily available in English.
Continue reading “Kropotkin, Woodcock and Les Temps Nouveaux”
Revolutions are seldom made in favourable circumstances. Russia 1917 emerged from the mass slaughter of WWI and the disintegration of an economy under the pressure of the supply demands of that war. Spain 1936 emerged from a well planned and executed fascist coup amongst a powerful military backed and armed by international fascism. Schemas for revolution that depend on quiet times and plenty may well be doomed from the start.
That said it’s hard to imagine more impossible conditions for revolution than that of Rojava. A brutal civil war, 3 small areas of territory that were kept in a state of low development by the previous regime and are not even linked to each other. A fanatic army of barbaric religious extremists armed with captured looted US heavy weaponry attacking from one side, a hostile state quietly backing that army and closing its borders to the good guys on another and waiting in the wings the old regime and its long history of brutal counter insurgency. And above all this the tactical and strategic intervention of an imperialist power whose manipulations have devastated the land to the South East over a period of almost three decades.
Continue reading “Rojava – Revolution Between a Rock and a Hard Place”
Thank’s to the unpopular property tax we at least know slightly more about the super wealthy in Ireland. The government is normally very careful to neither collect information about this group nor to publish it in a way that would reveal the enormous gap in wealth and power between us and them. It would not do to have Joe or Josephine Worker realise that they could work for 10,000 years and still never approach the wealth of the Denis O’Briens.
Continue reading “Capitalism in Ireland – Many of us have no home, a few have 500 plus”
“Ed, that’s soldier’s headed our way, we’re gonna have to move”. Sure enough the soldier is trudging down the road towards us, unshouldering his rifle and looking, even from this distance, distinctly narked. Ed doesn’t directly acknowledge my warning, except with a barely discernible movement of the head, focussed as he is on his camera shot. He knows I know that he’s heard me and he knows that as I haven’t yet added the “…now!” intensifier, that he has a few more precious seconds to finish the shot, as the camera pans over the ruins of Eastern Kobane against the backdrop of Mishtenur Hill. It’s 2:30 in the afternoon of Thursday 19 March on the Turkish side of the border with Syria and Kobane.
Continue reading “A Grand Day Out – an attempted visit to Kobane”