Since the new year Belfast has been in the midst of a violent spree of car hijackings across the city mainly targeting vulnerable women. Behind the media spotlight and PSNI spin machine is a deeper context, one where where theose if power are quite contented to confine and manage ’crime’ in working class areas as long as it stays there.

We meant to have this report out a while back, but you know, things just keep happening. It seems we've been pounding the roads of Aghoos and surrounding areas quite a lot at the moment and trying to keep warm by hugging trucks – our, not so new, favourite sport. And there are a lot of trucks to be stopped. They are coming up to every five minutes, so we don't even have to get up that early.

Hello! In Spain there is a very bad situation with the Free Radios in Asturias. We need your support !! ;) Can you send this Comunicado to the Jefatura Provincial de Telecomunicaciones de Asturias and help to make international presion? Please speak about this in the Assembly. And if you can send this Manifiesto to other people much better. Thank you!

Achi

This is the address

Arriving at 6.45 to help set up the room Mick informs me there have been 22 phone calls to the hotel to ask what time the meeting is starting. The room has capacity for 290 sitting. We know there is going to be a problem. By 8 the room is full beyond capacity, people are all along the aisles, backed against the walls and spilling into the corridor, an overflow room is full. 500 at least. Campaign activists are collecting names and distributing literature.  Almost 200 people sign up for membership, over 100 for activity in local groups and another 300 put themselves on the contact list. Hundreds of window posters, car stickers and newsletters are taken.

Mid-December saw the eventual publication of the long-threatened household tax legislation. The first three months of 2012 will present every household in Ireland with a choice: whether to succumb to this new home tax, which along with the proposed water tax will rise to approx €1,200 per annum within a couple of years, or to refuse to register, refuse to pay and make a stand against the costs of bailing out bankers and developers continuing to be hoisted on our shoulders.

Occupy Belfast held a protest outside the city hall yesterday in a campaign against evictions/re-possessions and an end to homelessness. Campaigners have also located an empty building in the city centre and hope to re-possess the centre as a self-managed space in the next couple of weeks beginning the process of building a movement against house evictions.

Factory-gate rally draws large support ahead of LRC talks next week

This afternoon, the workers of Vita Cortex in Cork accompanied by several hundred supporters attended a rally at the factory gates on Kinsale Road, which was organised by the Cork Council of Trade Unions. Among the attendance showing their support for the Vita Cortex workers were several former staff from the La Senza lingerie store chain, who themselves were in dispute with the liquidator of their former employer KPMG until this Friday. They were made feel very welcome by the crowd, and the speakers from the impromptu platform in the factory carpark drew inspiration in their speeches from the result achieved by the La Senza workers who were in a similar situation to that facing the 32 Vita Cortex employees. The platform was compered by Pat Guilfoyle of the TEEU, and other speakers were Vita Cortex shop steward Seán Kelleher, president of Cork Council of Trade Unions Ann Piggott, and Joe O'Flynn, general secretary of SIPTU and Cork native. Mr. O'Flynn spoke of the efforts being made by SIPTU headquarters in pursuit of a resolution of this situation, and he castigated runaway employer Jack Ronan for refusing to pay the €1.2m owed to his former employees, a sum described by Mr. O'Flynn as 'not a king's ransom'. He also spoke of the union's determination to support the Vita Cortex workers in their dispute 'for the long haul, if it takes 30 days or 30 weeks, with the support of trade union members across the country'. The rally ended with a long peal of applause as the names of all 32 Vita Cortex workers were read out from the podium.

The regressive household tax is yet a further embodiment of the government’s will to make us pay for a crisis we did not create.

Globally, 2011 was marked by a surge in grassroots resistance movements that highlighted the inherently disparate nature of global capitalism, from Tahrir Square to the #Occupy movements that mushroomed their way across the globe.

At home however, the sad highlights of 2011 were job losses, another cruel budget that savages the living standards of honest workers, and a rate of emigration that is comparable only to that of several decades back.

Three occupations in Cork highlight the ideas of direct action, self-organisation and solidarity

At a time when Ireland's rich class and their government are relying on passivity and apathy from the country's working class to push through their austerity agenda with the minimum of resistance, the presence of three separate occupations of workplaces and vacant NAMA commercial property in Cork is a hopeful sign that 'the powers that be' are not going to have it all their own way, as they attempt to make everyone else pick up the tab for the economic carnage their actions have unleashed upon this society. Although each occupation is separate and different in origin and potential outcome, each one shows that people do understand the necessity and the effectiveness of direct action in this time when bosses and property owners are trying every trick in the book to slough off their debts and evade public accountability while doing so.

The past two weeks have seen growing momentum in the Campaign Against the Household and Water Taxes in Cork city and county. A further 6 public meetings have been held to initiate local organising groups to build the campaign: Dunmanway and Skibbereen in West Cork , Bishopstown and Gurranabraher in the city, and Ballincollig and Blarney. They join Cobh in East Cork, Ballyphehane, Mahon and South Parish/Greenmount on the citys southside and Ballyvolane, Farranree and Mayfield on the northside.