Newsroom

A piece written for the WSM web site and quickly edited by our newsroom

Minister Alan Kelly Says Water Protesters are False Revolutionaries Chasing Utopia up a Hill

Date: Sat, 2015-02-28 18:00

Comical Alan strikes again. Who could put it better, that Labour are a shower of 'false revolutionaries who believe in leading people up to the top of the hill and then they'll blatantly abandon them, like they have done on many issues before'? Who are more utopian than Labour, who believe that endless electoral compromises could ever bring us 'a society that is fair, prosperous, and sustainable [Labour Party, General Election 2011]'?

It's amusing to see a Labour minister echoing Thatcher's declaration that 'There Is No Alternative'. But he couldn't be more wrong. There is an alternative. It is revolutionary, and funnily enough involves things being free.

In this massive uprising against the water charges, more and more people are realising that nothing much will change without fundamentally overhauling, or revolutionising, the system we live under.

Labour Minister Kelly claims Protesters Make 'No Contribution to Society'

Date: Thu, 2015-02-26 23:28

Minister for the Environment, and 2nd in command of the Labour Party, Alan Kelly has dared to denounce protesters as not contributing to society, despite his own status as grand leech.

Without a hint of irony the minister accused some in Sinn Fein and 'the hard left' of being jobless and not making a contribution to society despite being politically active.

Though Kelly is virtuous enough to have a job - because remember, you're a bad person if you don't have one - he and his party's contribution to society is much like a bullet's contribution to the healing process, despite the fact that he is very politically active.

Although Kelly was keen to point out that these comments were totally unrelated to the campaign against the water charges, we all know they are part of a long line of government smears designed to rip apart our movement.

Indeed many of us wait with hands to our ears for the next damning fiction to slop out of a Labour or Fine Gael politician's mouth. What will it be next time? We're already dole scrounging terrorists, how much further can they push it?

Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Thinks Own Government’s Policies may be ‘Morally wrong’ – Vows to Continue

Date: Thu, 2015-02-26 17:30

Speaking at the launch of the government’s Low Pay Commission, Kenny said that “It is morally unacceptable for families with people in work to be experiencing poverty”. He did not however announce the abolition of the water charge, the property tax or that the bondholders would not be paid back in order to address this problem. Neither did he, nor Joan Burton, who accompanied him at the launch announce the end of the Jobbridge indentured servitude scheme, where unemployed people get fifty euro for a full week’s work.

Neither was there an announcement that clerical workers in public services would see an end of the pension levies and the universal social charge that have driven so many to the point where they were forced to claim family income supplement.

It is also noteworthy that Enda only thinks it’s morally wrong for those in paid employment to experience poverty, and it is quite clear from looking at government policy over the last four years, that this is the consensus amongst the cabinet. You only have value if you are making a profit for someone else or if you are working to ensure the cogs of government keep turning – though, not that much value.

Labour Pinkwashing is Cynical Seat-Saving Measure

Date: Wed, 2015-02-25 14:00

In a desperate attempt to save a few liberal seats the Labour Party have been engaged in trying to suggest the water charge movement is some sort of homophobic mob. It's an argument based o

n the worst Dublin 4 prejudice and snobbery. Joan started the slander after Jobstown, Aodhan continued it in the Irish Times in a piece whose only outcome if believed would be to win election votes at the cost of equality votes.

Aidan writes "As a queer and a participant in the anti-water charges movement, I regard Aodhán Ó Ríordáin's comments as a rather cynical and desperate attempt to paint one of the most promising movements for progress in this state as somehow regressive, and to staple together some progressive credentials for himself by co-opting LGBT demands and organising.

Water Charges & Civil Disobedience: Unjust Laws are to be Broken

Date: Fri, 2015-02-20 13:00

What is important is that we do what is right, not what is legal. Sometimes these things overlap, often they are in conflict. What the struggle against the water charges has shown clearly is that a slave mentality of blindly obeying the law will never lead to a better world. We must attend to real justice, not the judicial system.

There's a famous quote from US historian, author, and activist Howard Zinn:

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders …and millions have been killed because of this obedience …Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves … [and] the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”

Housing Activists' Cases Dismissed From Court

Date: Tue, 2015-02-17 21:33

Today 8 housing activists from An Spreach Housing Action Committee and from D8HAC were up in court. All 8 were charged with trespassing on the 29th of July 2014 in a vacant flat in Charlemount Street in Dublin’s south inner city. All charges were dismissed by the court. This is a small victory for the housing groups, but the struggle continues it is not the end of the campaign to highlight the homeless and housing crisis.

Water Charges Protesters are Living 'Anarchy Fantasy' Says Irish Catholic Editor

Date: Sun, 2015-02-15 14:00

On Newstalk's Pat Kenny show Michael Kelly, editor of the Irish Catholic, said: 'There are some people who are kind of living ... anarchy fantasy through a lot of this, these ... kind of ... Irish Water protesters. There's no question of that'.

Mr. Kelly is surprisingly correct. The principles of anarchism are to be seen everywhere you turn in the struggle against the water charges.

People coming together in solidarity, building community spirit through the initiative of individuals, practising real democracy to organise against the injustice of the powerful, so that we may free ourselves from the burden of toil and arbitrary authority and live contentedly - this is the anarchy fantasy.

Shame on Labour for Opposing Fatal Foetal Abnormality Bill

Date: Tue, 2015-02-10 20:00

Tonight members of the Labour Party voted against a bill which would allow abortion in situations where the foetus has no prospect of survival.

Once again, the Labour Party vote against abortion legalisation on petty political grounds. Once again they promise that they will introduce legalisation. The first time they did this was in 1991, 22 years before the promised legalisation had not materialised. Labour lie, women die.

The second time they did this was after Savita Halappanavar died in October 2012. Within months of this they again voted against abortion.

Burton Trapped in Car, Generations Trapped in Banking Debt

Date: Mon, 2015-02-09 14:00

We have had months of outrage from media & politicians over the last months about the 2 hours Joan Burton spent stuck in a luxury car. This morning we saw a wave of Garda raids at dawn on political activists involved in that protest, one of whom faced 8 Garda barging into his house to arrest him while he tried to get his two young kids ready for school.

That's the nature of policing in this country, one law for the rich and powerful, and another for anyone who dares to stand up to the powerful. The laws are written to protect those with wealth and power, to allow them to keep the rest of us down and desperate. It fast it turned out almost none of their scams that caused the crisis were even illegal (under the laws they paid politicians to draft).

The French proto anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon wrote over 150 years ago that
“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.

Right to Plunder the Economy, Not Right to Protest

Date: Mon, 2015-02-09 12:00

This morning squads of Garda around Dublin mounted dawn raids on the houses of water charges protesters over a sit in 3 months ago in Jobstown. At the same time across the city bankers and other speculators named in the HSBC Geneva Private Bank leaks slept soundly in their beds knowing no one was going to be knocking down their door. If you want to understand the nature of power the contrast provides an excellent example.

The raids this morning were all about what the politicians' spin doctors like to call optics. Politicians, media and the Gardaí are on a drive to criminalise and marginalise those resisting the imposition of water charges. Sit ins and blockades have been part of political protest in Ireland for decades, the IFA routinely has far more militant protests.

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