Over 30 years of anarchist writing from Ireland listed under hundreds of topics
Authoritarianism and the early Irish State
Date: Fri, 2012-12-07 17:22
Fin Dwyer looks at the latter years of Ireland’s first post independence government, which having successfully suppressed political opposition and the workers’ movement, went on to “attack women and enforce their moral and ethical values on wider society”. From the clearing of prostitutes from the Monto and the filling of the Magdalene laundries to the institutionalisation of child abuse, he describes how the state’s close association with the Catholic Church played a decisive role in forming attitudes to women and sex that have had a devastating effect on Irish society that can still be felt today.
Failing to unveil Capitalism at Occupy - Paulo Freire’s Theoretical Framework
Date: Fri, 2012-12-07 13:19
The Occupy movement may have come into our lives just over a year ago with a bang but it went out months later with a whimper. Cathal uses the benefit of hindsight to look at the phenomenon as it manifested itself on these shores and what anarchists could have done to make it work better. The difficulties as Cathal argues did not lie in making arguments for democracy has been the case in so many other campaigns but in that the occupiers “didn’t see this conception extending to the realm of economic production” and in developing the 99%/1% analysis into a deeper class analysis. Recognising problems with current modes of consciousness raising, he utilises Paulo Freire’s pedagogical framework in an attempt to subject “our own political strategies, methodologies and theories to critical scrutiny”.
Not Waving but Drowning: Precarity and the Working Class
Date: Fri, 2012-12-07 11:41
In ‘Not Waving but Drowning: Precarity and the Working Class’, Mark Hoskins takes a critical look at the idea put forward by some academics and even parts of the anti-capitalist movement that the “precariat” is the revolutionary subject of our epoch. After examining the subjective conditions of the precarious subject today and comparing its objective conditions to those of the working class of the last century, he goes on to explore how these conditions relate to our end goal, a communist society and what lessons that can teach us in our attempt to get there.
Rethinking Class: From Recomposition to Counterpower
Date: Thu, 2012-12-06 17:55
In Paul Bowman’s article ‘Rethinking Class: From Recomposition to Counter-Power’, he poses the question “Is class still a useful idea?” or “should we instead just dispense with it and go with the raw econometrics of inequality?” He draws a line between revolutionary class analysis and universalist utopianism and goes on to explore the history of different ideas of class and the elusive revolutionary subject. After exploring the intersecting lines of class and identity, he poses the challenge that we as libertarians face as we strive to create “cultural and organisational forms of class power [that] do not unconsciously recreate the... hierarchies of identity and exclusion” that are the hallmark of the present society.
Budget 2013 & the dark times to come
Date: Thu, 2012-12-06 15:05
Roughly 1,000 people protested at the Dail last night as yet another austerity budget was debated. As with previous budgets the new flat rate taxes, PRSI & excise hikes will mean workers & those on low income will be hit hard while the richest 1% will hardly notice any difference.
Political persecution continues in the North
Date: Wed, 2012-12-05 13:53
The arrest and detention without bail of prominent Eirigi member Stephen Murney in Newry on bogus terror charges last week is part of a continuous campaign waged by the status-quo and its armed wing against growing dissent in Northern Ireland.
Counting heads - 1000+ attend 'pro-life' rally
Date: Tue, 2012-12-04 23:01
Every now and again something winds you up a little too much and you find yourself being a little obcessive in response. On hearing RTE had reported a daft figure of 8000 as attending tonights anti-choice rally this happened to me. It was very clear this was a massive overestimate but then how to produce an actual calculation of an event in the past. But then the anti-choice movement gave a hand and posted a video of the entire rally, shot it appears from the roof of Buswells.
Despite huge spend anti-choice demo attracts only a couple of thousand
Date: Tue, 2012-12-04 21:11
Something in the region of 2000 people who demand that women in Ireland should have to carry to term unwanted pregnancies in any situation organised a demonstration at the Dail this evening. They were trying to prevent the government legislating for abortion in the very limited circumstances of the X-Case - some 20 years after the Supreme court told them such legislation was required.
Tonights demonstration seems to have united all factions of the anti-choice movement with speakers from both Youth Defence and the Pro Life Campaign. This in itself reveals how paniced they are over the public outrage following the death of Savita after she was denied an abortion in a Galway hospital. The semi spontaneous protests that followed saw well over 25,000 take to the street, over 15,000 on a single demonstration in Dublin alone. A weekend opinion poll showed 85% want X-Case legislation enacted leaving the bigots with a tiny but scary 15% of the population who would sooner see women die than allow abortion.
Beyond the 5 'errors' of the crusade against abortion
Date: Tue, 2012-12-04 16:46
Fintan O'Toole has an article in the Irish Times answering what he describes as the 5 errors of the 'Crusade against Abortion.' I want to go one further and look at what these errors tell us about the methods of those who want to control women's bodies. And more importantly how it is an error for pro-choice activists to allow the debate to be framed through responses to those errors.
Let us begin by recognising Fintan is not bringing any new facts to the table, simple assembling the refutations to these claim that everyone who has been following the discussions around abortion in any detail is aware of. This is important because the core point I want to make is that when the various aspects of the so called pro-life movement throw out these claims in interview after interview they already know them to be false. They also know they are relatively easy to contradict, as Fintan has done. So why do they consider asserting them over and over to be effective?
Growing support for women’s right to choose in latest Abortion Poll
Date: Sun, 2012-12-02 21:42
More than one in four people in Northern Ireland support a woman’s right to choose on abortion, an Belfast Telegraph poll has revealed. The findings come from a major survey commissioned by the Belfast Telegraph and carried out by LucidTalk, members of the British Polling Council (BPC). A weighted sample of 1,130 adults was surveyed between November 6 and 23; 90% were questioned by telephone and the rest interviewed face to face.