Over 30 years of anarchist writing from Ireland listed under hundreds of topics
International
Kobane: YPG/J have ISIS on the Back Foot
Date: Sat, 2014-11-29 13:56
The latest news from Kobane indicates that the YPG/YPJ have continued to slowly push ISIS out of the town and are now conducting regular ambushes in the surrounding towns including one 10 km south where the YPG reported that "Our forces ambushed &killed ISIS emir [leader] Abu Khansaa & bodyguards in Tel Ghazal south of Kobani."
The Fight in Detroit and the Cost of Water
Date: Sat, 2014-11-29 13:34
In the spring of this year, Detroit started to disconnect people who were behind with their water bills.
Review: Silvio Federici's Caliban and the Witch – Women, the body and ‘Primitive Accumulation’
Date: Sun, 2014-11-09 13:08
This piece of work is undertaken from the viewpoint of the seemingly invisible struggles of women against authoritarian rule, the historical erasing of women as being part of the wider social struggles for liberation against oppression, and indeed, providing a different type of revolutionary struggle in their own right instead of examining the effects of social reproduction and labour of women.
Futurism or the Future: Review of the Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics
Date: Fri, 2014-10-24 14:59
The proliferation of computerised surveillance and security systems across workplaces has had the effect that now, in offices across the world, workers’ toilet usage is continuously monitored. You swipe your ID card to get in and out, producing a data event with a time and duration, which is quietly recorded by some computer.
Upstairs, some horrendous bureaucrat ponders over all this data: How long does a shit take? How many shits is too many? Does she have a medical condition, or is she just slacking? Copropolitics: a new technology of discipline and a fresh form of indignity that was inconceivable as anything other than a cyberpunk nightmare (and a dull one at that) a couple of decades ago; the kind of technological revolution that no-one wanted, and nobody is particularly excited about, but which nonetheless happens.
Syrian Kurdistan takes a different route to the Arab Spring – a first hand experience- audio
Date: Wed, 2014-10-22 11:23
Zaher Baher of the Kurdistan Anarchists Forum spoke at the 2014 London Anarchist Bookfair about the two weeks he spent in Syrian Kurdistan in May 2014, looking at the experiences of self-management in the region, experiments that have become more widely discussed as the result of the defense of Kobane against ISIS. Zaher is also a member of Haringey Solidarity Group
Anarchist Eyewitness to self-management in Kurdish Syria / West Kurdistan by Workers Solidarity on Mixcloud
Anarchist Eyewitness to self-management in Kurdish Syria / West Kurdistan
Date: Wed, 2014-10-22 11:01
Zaher Baher of the Kurdistan Anarchists Forum spent two weeks in Syrian Kurdistan in May 2014, looking at the experiences of self-management in the region, experiments that have become more widely discussed as the result of the defense of Kobane against ISIS. This account tells in some detail what he saw and what conclusions he draws. Zaher is also a member of Haringey Solidarity Group and spoke at the 2014 London Anarchist Bookfair about his experiences. This account was originally published as 'The experiment of West Kurdistan (Syrian Kurdistan) has proved that people can make changes'
Hope, Friendship and Surprise in the Zombie Time of Capitalism: An interview with Gustavo Esteva
Date: Tue, 2014-10-21 19:38
Gustavo Esteva is an independent writer and grassroots activist. He has been a central contributor to a wide range of Mexican, Latin American, and international nongovernmental organizations and solidarity networks, including the Universidad de la Tierra en Oaxaca and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. The WSM's Tom Murray caught up with Gustavo at a recent public lecture at the Kimmage Development Centre to discuss hope, friendship and surprise in the zombie-time of capitalism, and how people are taking initiatives, reclaiming control of their lives and creating vibrant, autonomous alternatives here today.
Irish Anarchist Review Issue 10
Date: Tue, 2014-10-21 19:26
Welcome to the tenth instalment of the Irish Anarchist Review, published for the 2014 London Anarchist Bookfair.
Five years ago, the Irish Anarchist Review replaced Red and Black Revolution as the magazine of the Workers Solidarity Movement. It’s mission was to fill a vacuum in Irish radical circles, to be a publication that raised questions and provoked debate, rather than laying out blueprints for success, as had been the norm in the more theoretical work of the left. It was established at a time where a fightback was believed to be imminent, when the expectation was that as the (economic) beatings continued, morale would improve.
The intervening years produced a series of false starts. The big ICTU demonstrations in the infancy of the crisis proved to be safety valves for the expulsion of steam from the rank and file, and were tightly controlled by the bureaucracy. The Occupy phenomenon was a reaction against that type of protest, and it did release a wave of creative energy, but it’s structurelessness ultimately had the same effect, and that energy escaped into the ether. There have also been strikes and occupations, the Unlock Nama campaign, the campaign against household and water taxes (CAHWT) and a massive resurgence in the campaign for abortion access.
Did you know Oscar Wilde was an anarchist?
Date: Thu, 2014-10-16 14:00
Happy Birthday to Oscar Wilde! Born this date - the 16th of October - in 1854 in Dublin, he studied at Trinity, then Oxford, moved to London, living mostly there, and died in penury in Paris 1900. He was a very successful playwright (as well as a journalist, poet, and lecturer), a London celebrity, and is most famous for his play 'The Importance of Being Earnest', novel 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', epigrams, and, sadly, his persecution for being gay which was his ruination.
Though eminently quotable, there was more to Wilde than his turn of phrase and artistic flair. Many know his remark that 'to live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all', but few know its proper context. It is quoted from an essay entitled 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism' in which Wilde espouses his politics - those of libertarian socialism. Commonly understood as an apolitical aesthete, Wilde's radical political views are quite a well kept secret - like George Bernard Shaw's socialism, and to a lesser extent George Orwell's socialism. In fact, he signed Shaw's petition for a pardon of the anarchists arrested, and later executed, after the Haymarket Affair in Chicago, 1886. Wilde was a huge admirer of the famous Russian anarchist communist Peter Kropotkin, describing him in De Profundis as 'a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ which seems coming out of Russia'.
WSM International Secretariat on the defence of Kobane
Date: Wed, 2014-10-15 20:13
The WSM considers the struggle for Kobane and the autonomous zones of Rojava to be crucial for the development of a political alternative for the region. We view Daesh as the toxic excrescence of the results of global and regional imperialist intervention in Syria and Iraq.
