Workers Solidarity Movement

In this program, Podcast available here on Near podcast site, we bring your a report from the Walking tour undertaken by the 1% network through the Golden Circle in Dublin 2,4.  A map is contained here.

With the IMF in Ireland, a WSM member has written a song of 'welcome', a recording of which and the lyrics of which are below.  For international readers "céad míle fáilte" means "A Hundred Thousand Welcomes" and is a traditional greeting now strongly associated with the tourist industry.  You can read WSM articles about the IMF intervention and the economic crash that led to it in our Capitalist Crisis article listing.

Céad míle fáilte - To the IMF 
We hope we meet you on the streets - To fight you to the death. 
And we know how you got here - Back room deal and open arms 
As you try to suck the life from us - With your structural reforms

The only way to stop cuts is to stand up now

I was disappointed to read that the editorial of this paper (Belfast Telegraph November 11) has pinned the blame of the student riots in London on ‘anarchist elements’. Firstly this assumption is based on a misguided view that students are incapable of acting in there own interests and underestimates the genuine anger and frustration out there.

The government is to launch an all out attack on the living standards of the working class. The four year plan outlines a cut in the minimum wage, water charges, a household tax, a 5% cut in welfare payments, taxing of low wage workers, an €1000 increase in college fees, and cutting of 20,000 jobs.

Technical, Engineering & Electrical Union (TEEU) call for a campaign of civil disobedience. Union members overwhelmingly endorsed the emergency motion at their conference this morning.

Why is the director of the IMF complaining that the rate of progress of the IMF negotiations in Dublin is going too slowly? What's wrong with this picture? The answer is nothing, so long as you understand that the IMF are not the driving force in these negotiations.

Despite the newpaper headlines, what is happening is not an IMF bailout. This is a European debt restructuring process in which the IMF are playing a merely supportive role as consultants. This is a Eurozone process and although the political masters of the Eurozone, through their EU Commissioners, have the final say on passing or vetoing the final agreement, the true driving force behind this process is the ECB.

It's now official, the Irish state is in talks with the EU and the IMF about a so called 'rescue plan' to bail out the Irish capitalist class from the disaster created by the international crash of the capitalist economic system. A crisis that was magnified in Ireland by the corruption of local crony capitalism on the one hand and the dependency of the economy on 'globalization' on the other. Trapped between such a cast of crooks and idiots it is perhaps not surprising that many in Ireland hope things will be improved when the running of our lives will be handed over to those who many hope might have a clue.

An article from 1980 that details the available information on extensive prospecting taking place in the Wicklow granites in the context of the succesful campaign  against the plan to build a nuclear reactor at Carnsore that this issue of the Contaminated Crow mostly dealt with.

Last Friday we reported on the mounting crisis of Ireland's sovereign debt bond yields. Particularly how the announcement of Lenihan's "Shock and Awe" 6 bn cuts plan had failed to move the markets.  This week, as bond yields have moved from the business pages onto the front page, the search for an explanation for this failure began. By the middle of the week, the story was set - blame the Germans!

November - December 2010 Edition of the Workers Solidarity freesheet.

PDF of Workers Solidarity 118 Web Edition 2.28 Mb

1% of the Population, 34% of the Wealth
Democracy in Brazil
Attacks on Welfare Continue
Sacking of Socialist Nurse Overturned
That's Capitalism!
Thinking About Anarchism: Dual Organisation Film Review: Made in Dagenham

PDF of Workers Solidarity 118 Web Edition 2.28 Mb