Over 30 years of anarchist writing from Ireland listed under hundreds of topics
International
If Ireland was treated like Palestine - An alternate history
Date: Sun, 2014-07-27 21:20
For the size of its population Ireland has seen very large Gaza solidarity demonstrations. It is also one of the few places in the world outside the USA where there has been public displays of support for the Israeli military assault. Internationally there are many variations of this map where activists present to their population what the expulsion of the Palestinians from much of the land they once occupied would look like in a local context. One of our members prepared this but we soon realised its an impossible image to post without some reflection on our own settler colonialist past.
Expelling the Israel Ambassador (not) and abstaining on UN War Crime investigation
Date: Thu, 2014-07-24 14:29
People in Ireland have been protesting the Israeli assault on Gaza in every city and many towns across the country. Online polls show a majority want the government to take action through expelling the Israeli ambassador. Yet the southern government abstained on a crucial UN vote to set up an investigation into Israeli war crimes. We’d suggest when you include a look at the map above it becomes very clear that this is yet another example of the Irish state putting its alliance with the imperialist countries that have imprisoned the majority of the worlds population in misery ahead of the wishes of the population.
This isn’t new. During the American invasion of Iraq over 100,000 marched through the streets of Dublin demanding an end to our participation yet the government continued to allow US warplanes to refuel at Shannon. When hundreds of people threatened to physically enter Shannon to stop the refuelling ‘our’ same government deployed riot police and even the army against ‘their’ people’. Last month they sent 80 year old Margaretta D’Arcy to jail for a second time for refusing to stop protesting against that same refuelling, a decade on. And a few days ago they even arrested two TD's for daring to try and inspect a clearly visible US military plane that was on the runway for weapons or prisoners.
Warsaw 1942 to Gaza 2014 - Walls, fences and ethnic cleansing
Date: Tue, 2014-07-22 19:54
On this day in 1942, the Nazi's began the mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the death camps, putting into practice the policy known as "the final solution". Over the next two months, over 250,000 residents were sent to Treblinka.
The ghetto itself, was established in 1940, while Warsaw was occupied by Nazi forces, and 400,000 Jewish people lived here, in an area of 3.4 square kilometres.
If Gaza was in Ireland how much of Dublin would Israel be bombing?
Date: Fri, 2014-07-11 13:18
When we hear of '400 Israeli airstrikes' against Gaza we don't necessarily understand just what a tiny area this constant bombing is happening in. A lot of people are probably thinking its the size of a smallish country like Ireland when in fact as the map below shows its more similar in size to the greater Dublin area.
Gaza Under Attack: Emergency actions for Palestine this Saturday 12 July!
Dublin – 2pm @ The Spire, O’Connell Street
Derry – 2pm @ Guildhall Square
Limerick – 2pm @ Thomas Street
Cork – 2pm @ Daunt Square
(map comparison concept from Mark M, @soundmigration on Twitter, make you own for local use at http://mapfrappe.com/?show=20150 )
Gustavo Esteva Interview
Date: Sun, 2014-07-06 19:45
Gustavo Esteva is an independent writer and grassroots activist. He has been a central figure in a wide range of Mexican, Latin American, and international nongovernmental organizations and solidarity networks, including the Universidad de la Tierra en Oaxaca and the Zapatistas. The WSM's Tom Murray caught up with Gustavo at a recent public lecture at the Kimmage Development Centre to discuss hope, friendship and surprise in the zombie-time of capitalism, and how people are taking initiatives, reclaiming control of their lives and creating vibrant, autonomous alternatives here today.Review: Iain M. Banks' The Culture series.
Date: Mon, 2014-06-30 21:11
When Iain Banks shuffled off this mortal coil in June of last year, sci-fi geeks in general and lefty sci-fi geeks in particular, mourned the fact that there wasn't a backup copy of his personality stored somewhere. In the universe he created in his acclaimed The Culture series of sci-fi novels, that almost certainly would have been the case. Transplanted into a new body, biological or artificial, or even brought back in virtual reality or as an adjunct to the mind of a Culture ship, he could have continued writing the books we've come to know and love for another few hundred years.Review: David Graebers ‘The Democracy Project’.
Date: Mon, 2014-06-30 20:39
Many of us have an Occupy story. Mine took place in New York on March 17th of 2012, the six-month anniversary of the first occupation of Zuccotti Park, and the three-month anniversary of its eviction. I joined about five hundred or so Occupiers who had gathered after dark on the Manhattan side of Brooklyn Bridge. As we marched the three blocks or so to reclaim Zuccotti Park, NYPD’s finest, fully armed, literally lined the street each step of the way. And in the park itself a surveillance tower loomed overhead. Where to next for the anarchist movement in Australia?
Date: Sat, 2014-06-14 18:51
An Irish anarchist and migrant worker in Sydney, Sean reflects on the recent Sydney anarchist bookfair, the anarchist movement more broadly and the relevance of the platform in terms of building a popular movement. First published by Anarchist Affinity:
‘At a time when the intensity of the ruling class attack on our living standards, on our wages and conditions, on free speech and assembly, are increasing at a frightening pace, Australian anarchism must heed the wake-up call. Either it undergoes a renaissance, with the possible emergence of grass roots struggle and relates to that struggle, or it consigns itself to continued irrelevance.’
Review of Gustavo Esteva’s talk on Anarchy and Buen Vivir at Kimmage - All Power to the Imagination
Date: Fri, 2014-06-13 14:35
It does not prove difficult to persuade an anarchist to go to a meeting with the subtitle ‘ Anarchy and Buen Vivir (Good living)’ and more especially when the speaker, Gustavo Esteva, has direct links with the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (EZLN) who inspired the world with their uprising in 1994.
Gustavo was invited to speak by the Kimmage Development Studies Centre (DSC) as part of their 40th year celebrations. Gustavo addressed the gathering in the parish hall and started with the position that Development was counterproductive. Considering this was the Kimmage DSC’s raison d'être is to facilitate education and training for development practitioners, this was a sharp starting point.
An Anarchist Critique of Horizontalism
Date: Mon, 2014-05-26 19:13
Horizontalism is an emerging term used to describe the key common characteristics of the waves of rebellion of the last decade. Occupy in 2011 was the peak to date but the term Horizontalism itself appears to originate the rebellion in Argentina after the 2001 banking crisis there. Marina Sitrin in her book on that rebellion says the term was used to describe the neighborhood, workplace & unemployed assemblies that emerged to form “social movements seeking self-management, autonomy and direct democracy.”
