Workers Solidarity Movement

A Irish emigrant to Australia and WSM supporter gives his story about working on building sites, unions and audio conversation with IWW. - The Industrial Workers of the World from the Americas to Australasia have historically formed the bedrock of a radical revolutionary tendency in the labour movement, fanning the flames of class war fighting for a radical union where power resides in at its base asserting the need to abolish wage slavery where workers take full control over their labour.

Jura  Books in Sydney recently hosted  'Anarchism in Bulgaria as I see it' by the 88 year old exiled anarchist Jack Grancharoff. Around a dozen people listened intensely to Jack as he described his upbringing and his involvement in anarchism and challenges faced by both fascism and Stalinism.

A conversation with Sydney anarchist Sid, co-founder of the Jura books Collective on the history of anarchism in the city and how he became involved in the various phases of the movement. He describes the early debates, conferences and initial projects of opening bookshops and radical spaces. He talks a lot about Jura books whose formation and ongoing maintenance he is centrally involved with.

A Dublin anarchist bookfair meeting at which two speakers - Milton Sánchez Cubas (President of the Celendin Interinstitutional Platform (PIC), a network of 40 grassroots organisations from Celendin Department of Cajamarca, Peru) and Aida Julieta Quinones Torres (a member of the Environmental Committee for the Defense of Life which monitors the socio-environmental impact of the La Colosa mine, in the department of Tolima, Colombia) –looked at the impact on their communities of exploitation by mega-extractive multinational corporation and explained how they organize to face this threat

A few thousand took part in the annual mayday parade in Sydney this year with organisers claiming it was the largest in years.  This years event theme was a 'a proud past, a fighting future' which certainly matched the range of trade union banners on display and political groups of all shades including the James Connolly Society involving recent Irish migrants.

Anarchism in Barcelona in the lead-up to the 1936 Spanish revolution.  This is the audio and video of the  talk given at the 2013 Dublin anarchist bookfair by Chris Ealham (author of 'Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-revolution in Barcelona, 1898--1937')

Back before many people had discovered the internet a small group of anarchists including this writer began work on the Anarchist FAQ. We were tired of having to provide the same basic explanations over and over as new people joined the news net group, alt.soc.anarchism, so we began the FAQ so newcomers could be referred to it.

This is a glimpse into a process of investigation into ourselves and each other. It’s neither the beginning nor the end and so it’s open to change. It’s never static. For now, at least, it’s the culmination of a year of conversations around what it might look like to be part of a movement that cultivates an environment of collective and self-care, support, revolutionary love and self-determination. The opinions that will follow are my own but i will use the word ‘we’ throughout this piece to reflect that these ideas were inspired by others and created through conversation and dialogue. I take responsibility for them but am open to suggestions and the possibility that they will change where better versions replace them.

Ever wondered why the lexicon of global finance seems so complicated?  Why so much of what passes for economic debate seems impenetrable?  Do your eyes glaze over as commentators wander into discursive mazes comprised of derivatives, subprime lenders, credit default swaps, and toxic assets?  Does talk of liquidity, quantitative easing, or collaterised debt obligations send you reaching for the remote control or the off-switch?  Is it possible we are just too economically illiterate to understand anything about the world of global finance?

Unless you're a economics geek you've probably never heard of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. But that doesn't mean their work isn't affecting your life. A paper by these two prestigious Harvard economists has been a key justification for post-2008 austerity policies, with its oft-repeated claim that a national debt level of over 90% of GDP is fatal to growth. Yesterday we found out that paper was based on a spreadsheet that doesn't add up. Epic maths fail.