Workers Solidarity Movement

We spoke with Vincent O’Malley, a community sector employee who advises and advocates for social welfare applicants and recipients, about the effect the recession is having on the operation of the social welfare system.

Crime has always been a prevalent factor across societies for millenia; today it helps to sell newspapers and get politicians elected, and wars against it consume vast amounts of public resources. Some believe that crime will never be eradicated from our social fabric, whilst others believe our social fabric to be the main propagator of crime. In the 6th Rethinking Revolution talk, Julian Brophy will be looking at different perspectives on crime, assessing the power relations that exist within modern criminal justice systems, and addressing questions like: Would a society without crime be possible?

James McBarron was a long time activist in Sinn Fein before becoming an anarchist in the aftermath of the Good Friday agreement. In this opinion piece he wrote for publication on republican discussion forums he argues that although it is "completely understandable that most thinking republican activists are angry and enraged at how they were duped and used by the former IRA and current Sinn Fein leadership … this does not excuse people from properly examining their own roles and politics and the politics and conditions that have lead to the current situation." He then points to four areas which he thinks represent fatal weaknesses of 'dissident' Irish republicanism in general.

The markets have spoken and the verdict is that Brian Lenihan's 6 billion euro package of public sector cuts and extra taxation on ordinary workers is not going to work. The confidence in Ireland's future in the international money markets is reflected in the yields in Irish sovereign bonds. These bonds are the IOUs the government issues to borrow the money to plug the shortfall from income to spending. They vary from 2 to 14 years in duration before the money borrowed has to be repaid, the 10 year being the one most closely followed by market watchers. The yield on a bond is the interest rate the state has to pay the lenders. In these last few days increasingly urgent stories in the business pages of the papers have been warning about the dangers of increasing bond yield spreads.

Students from Free Education for Everyone (FEE), who organised todays occupation of the Department of Finance, have released the following statement detailing why they organised the occupation, who took part and the giving some details of the brutal Gardai attack on the occupiers.  A WSM member who was present and whose arm was injured in the Gardai assault revealed that as soon as the Gardai entered the occupation they started punching people in the face despite the face that the students were telling them it was a peaceful protest and they were not resisting them.

This afternoons Radio Solidarity show on Near FM will talk about the 1% Network tour of the Golden Circle heartland of Dublin 2 & 4.  If you click on the this 1% Map - you will have a guide to the walking tour .  This will prove helpful when you listen to our report on this walking tour in Radio Solidarity Program 8 - on Resistance going out this afternoon (2 Nov) at 15.30 on NEAR FM. An audio will be available for download later this week.

An issue that’s been put on the back burner since the economy has fallen through the plug hole.  We talk in Program 7 of Radio Solidarity to two women Jerrieann Sullivan and Molly Walsh who’ve been to the forefront of activism in ensuring that this issue has not disappeared off the agenda. They’ve both been involved in the recent Climate Camps amongst other campaigns and actions. 

Confirmation that a large amount of wealth remains concentrated in the hands of a tiny number of Irish people has come from an analysis of figures by Tom O’Connor, Lecturer in Economics in Cork Institute of Technology. O’Connor has analysed the figures contained in the Bank of Ireland’s ‘Wealth of the Nation’ report which stated that there were 33,000 millionaires in Ireland in 2006.  The total ‘net worth’ of these individuals (i.e. excluding the value of their principal residences and allowing for any borrowings) in 2006 was €156.21 billion.

Through a 'Freedom of information' request the pro-choice campaigning group Choice Ireland have revealed that over a thousand desperate women were denied an abortion last year because customs seized the medicine that they had ordered over the internet. In many cases these women were unable to travel to Britain because of poverty or because they were immigrants who felt unable to risk leaving Ireland lest they be refused readmission.

Zombie developers….. Vampire bankers….. Ghost estate creators….. Black holes that swallow tens of billions of Euros…. They sound like characters from a particularly eerie Hallowe’en tale of horrors. However while they might be spooky, there’s nothing fictional about this array of characters. They stalked our land during the era of the recently-departed Celtic Tiger. But now they’ve gone to ground. They’ve disappeared, they would have us believe. And if they themselves haven’t actually physically disappeared, then their wealth most definitely has.