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Article from 1998 looking at where the Celtic Tiger came from. This bit is obviously relevent today "Lower taxes would be great if they were funded by higher taxes on the rich but in the last budget the rich gained the most from tax cuts. This means that in a future slump money will not be available to maintain or improve social welfare, or public health/education without again raising PAYE taxes".
Continue reading “The origins and early years of the Celtic Tiger”
I arrived in occupied Erris on Friday evening having travelled down to take part in a national meeting of Shell to Sea groups. It had been a busy week for the campaign as the state had reacted to the ongoing resistance to Shell in Erris by seizing fishing boats, sending 7 people to jail without trial and banning two more from Co. Mayo. Not only had hundreds of state forces including the police, navy, air force and possibly the army been deployed to suppress protest in Erris but those of us doing solidarity work elsewhere had found from time to time that we were being followed by the secret police.
Pic: Irish Navy gunship in the Bay
In any country with a half way critical media, the last few months would have been disastrous for Shell. In Shell’s imposition of a
n experimental gas pipeline on the people of Erris it emerges that Michael Dwyer, one of the security guards on this project, was part of an attempt to trigger a civil war in Bolivia. Soon after that it became clear that at least three others who had worked as security guards at the Shell compound had travelled to Bolivia with Dwyer and were wanted there for questioning. Some, it emerged, had links to fascist organizations in Eastern Europe.
Pic: Michael Dwyer posing with pistols in Bolivia
Continue reading “The Shadow over Erris: Shell, IRMS and Bolivia – Sometimes monsters do exist”
Over the last week the Gardai have repeatedly turned up on occasions where the Dublin Grassroots Network has been attempting ton inform the public about the Mayday protests. On each occasion they have demanded the names of the people there in what can only be a crude attempt to intimidate the protest organiser and reduce their ability to inform the public about the protesters. What are they afraid of you finding out?
Continue reading “Gardai harassment of Mayday protest leafleting continues”
General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pluto Press, 1989 (Translated by John Beverly Robinson (1923))
This year marks the 200th anniversary of Proudhon’s birth, the person who first used the word “anarchist” in a positive light. This was in his 1840 book What is Property? so making anarchism as a named socio-economic theory and movement 170 years old next year.
Continue reading “Review: Proudhon’s General Idea of the Revolution”
A series of letters sent to the Weekly Worker on anarchism and Marxism. Most were printed as they were sent, although letter one was cut in half (letter two, which aimed to include the material cut when the first one was published was not if I remember correctly). The letters end up, as usual, discussing the Russian revolution and the Makhnovists).
Two letters sent to the RCG’s paper Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! a few years back in response to a disgraceful review of an anarchist pamphlet and their lies on the Makhnovist movement. Neither was published, unsurprisingly.
Two letters on why class analysis is important for anarchism, as well as trying to dispel common misconceptions of what such an analysis means and implies.
Nicholas Walter
David Goodway (editor), Five Leaves Publications, 2007 (£9.99)
Continue reading “Review: The Anarchist Past and Other Essays”
Bloody Brilliant! This pamphlet does a remarkable job in summarising the basic ideas of Bakunin, the founder of revolutionary anarchism. It covers his analysis of modern class society, the state, bourgeois democracy and Marxism. On every count, Bakunin has been vindicated.