Over 30 years of anarchist writing from Ireland listed under hundreds of topics
ISIS Jihadism and Imperialism in the post Arab Spring period- an anarchist analysis ( Audio & Video )
Date: Wed, 2014-09-17 14:51
Following on from the rapid spread of Isis in Iraq & Syria Paul Bowman presented an update intended to inform on the contemporary politics of Jihadism and its entanglement with regional and global imperialist power plays.
He starts by looking in detail at the ideological / religious background of the Salafist movements including ISIS and how such movements differ from those of the Muslim Brotherhood / Ikwanite.
Revolutionary organisation in the digital age - audio from a speaking tour of Norway
Date: Thu, 2014-09-11 16:32
It is a confusing time to be on the revolutionary left as everything that was once certain turns to smoke.
Technology has overturned and remade what constitutes effective communication and the construction of networks.
Quite how to organise is no longer clear, while old reference points of 1917, 1936 or even 1968 no longer provide definitive models.
The Minister, Sex Work and Asylum Seekers in direct provision centres in Ireland
Date: Tue, 2014-09-09 15:17
Minister Frances Fitzgerald claimed to be shocked at reports that some women in direct provision centres felt compelled into sex work by the poverty they are kept in. How can that be, it's Minister Frances Fitzgerald who actually operates this direct provision system that creates such circumstances.
As the Minister she does not allow asylum seekers to work, leaving them to exist on €19.10 per week, often for periods measured in years. Who can imagine living month after month with such a minuscule amount of spending money? And while she now wants to suggest she has concern for such women the reality is that she is the one who signs deportation orders, orders which will very often send the same women to very much more difficult circumstances.
Dub: March For Choice
Date: Thu, 2014-08-28 16:01
Third Annual March For Choice in Dublin
The 3rd Annual March for Choice will be 27th of September in Dublin, marking International Decriminalisation of Abortion Day.
2.00 The Garden of Rememberane, Parnell Square, Dublin, Ireland
Further info and travel details to follow in coming weeks. For now: we just can't wait to see you all there!
Legalise Cannabis protest marches through Dublin August 2014
Date: Thu, 2014-08-28 16:00
Saturday evening August 23 saw over a 1000 people take part in a demonstration in Dublin demanding the legalisation of Cannabis organised by Legalise Cannabis Ireland. The front banner read ‘Medication - Taxation - Industrialisation - Civil Liberties’ and “We will raise awareness and demand change to Irish legislation for the benefit of every person in Ireland. The time is now to end the hypocrisy’
The message of the march as expressed by the front banner was very much a demand for capitalism as normal rather than the gangster capitalism of illegality. That’s obviously a very limited demand - indeed it’s already been won or partly won in a number of European countries and more recently states in the USA.
Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street - talk by Author Mark Bray
Date: Fri, 2014-08-22 11:52
Talk by Mark Bray, author of Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street followed by an hour of discussion.
Translating Anarchy tells the story of the anti-capitalist anti-authoritarians of Occupy Wall Street, who strategically communicated their revolutionary politics to the public in a way that was both accessible and revolutionary.
Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street - talk by Author Mark Bray in Dublin by Workers Solidarity on Mixcloud
Migrant X refused an abortion and forced to have a C-section - a story of abuse at the hands of a racist, sexist authoritarian state
Date: Thu, 2014-08-21 15:26
This is as complete a story about what happened to 'Migrant X' that we are aware of. Migrant X is a young migrant women who it emerged was refused an abortion by the Irish state despite apparently meeting the grounds of the X-case legislation and instead forced to carry the pregnancy and agree to a C-section. The pregnanacy itself was the result of rape, Migrant X attempted suicide after being refused the abortion and later went on a hunger and thirst strike. Once what had happened to her became known there were sizeable pro-choice solidarity demonstrations called across Ireland and at Irish embassies overseas.
We have been given information that the migrant woman at the centre of the current forced pregnancy was 'committed' to a psychiatric hospital following her initial request for termination. It’s already known that the initial request was made when she was 8 weeks pregnant. It was this crucial period in which she was being held incommunicado which led directly to the Caesarian option being possible to impose as an ‘alternative’ to allowing her to access the abortion she had asked for.
Youth Defence massively undercount numbers at another pro-choice protest
Date: Thu, 2014-08-21 15:07
Long time followers of this site will be familiar with these posts. For rather transparent reasons to do with North America funding the bigot brigade ridiculously exaggerate numbers who attend their anti-choice protests and then massively under estimate the numbers who attend pro-choice protests. They have to keep the yankee dollar convinced after all that the people of Ireland are with them rather than running as fast as possible in the opposite direction. No dollars, no full time paid positions, offices and very expensive advertising campaigns.
Kurdish "Terrorists" Rescue Yezidis
Date: Thu, 2014-08-14 22:43
The US special forces finally sent to Mount Sinjar in Northern Iraq to assess a mission to rescue the threatened Yezidis this morning, reported that most of the displaced population had already been rescued in the previous days. What is not being widely reported is the identity of the Kurdish forces who secured the northern side of the mountain and opened a safe passage for the threatened Yezidi civilians, through the Syrian territory they control to Dohuk in the north of the Kurdish Autonomous region in Iraq.
Embarrassingly for the US, arriving on its white charger to save the day, only to discover they are far too late, the saviours of the Yezidis are the Turkish Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and their Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) allies. The PKK are officially on the US and EU “terrorist” lists and the autonomous Syrian region defended by the YPG is subject to blockade by ISIS to the South and West, Turkey to the North and the corrupt Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) regime in Kurdish Northern Iraq to the East. The PKK’s pariah status dates from the war which it fought in the 1980s and 90s against the Turkish state, first under the the dictatorship, then the civilian government, for independence for the mainly Kurdish region of South East Turkey. Since late 2012 peace talks began with the Turkish government and a ceasefire was declared in March 2013.
Iraq, Syria and the Islamic State
Date: Thu, 2014-08-14 19:34
The desperate plight of tens of thousands of Yazidi people stranded for the past week and a half on Mount Sinjar in Northern Iraq, having fled their homes in the nearby city, has focussed the world’s attention on what has been happening in that region.
Threats of airstrikes from U.S. president Barack Obama in a region where U.S. intervention in such recent memory has already been responsible for the killing of up to a million people and the injuring and displacement of many more causes alarm bells to ring in the minds of all who care about a fair and just world. This is further exacerbated by the knowledge that it is the stoking of sectarian tensions as a result of U.S. policy in Iraq that is largely responsible for the emergence of the fundamentalist and ultra-reactionary Islamic State organisation.