Workers Solidarity Movement

In Issue 1 of the Irish Anarchist Review, Andrew Flood put forward a critique ('Capitalist crisis and union resistance in Ireland') of two of the other articles in the same magazine, my article on Faceless Resistance and James R's interview with Alex Foti. His critique centers around the experience of the radical left in Ireland around workplace organising since the anti-globalisation movement and the experience of workplace activism since the economic crisis. In his article he attacks what he sees as an unbalanced concern with marginal sectors of employment on the part of the radical left since the turn of the century. He argues that the experience of the crisis shows that radical efforts to organise 'precarious' workers do not pay off. Instead, radicals should focus on organising where there is a greater chance of having a serious influence - i.e. within large mainstream trade unions.

The audio is from the Dublin anarchist bookfair and has two speakers talking about the reform movement and feminism in Iran in general and the million signatures campaign in particular.

An IPSC meeting on Saturday saw some of the Irish participants on the Freedom Flotilla talk of their experiences, and discuss what practical steps Irish people can help take to bring about the end of the siege of Gaza and Israeli apartheid as a whole and secure self determination for the people of Palestine. This is the audio from the meeting.

The current violence errupting in the southern region of Kyrgyzstan is deeply troubling.

If we are to go by the news reports given by the BBC, the violence is the culmination of long standing ethnic tensions.  If we are to believe the Economist's recent article "Stalin's Harvest" we are seeing the inevitable fruits of Stalin's labour. 

According to The Economist the ethnic violence is to be attributed to Stalin based on his inefficiency in drawing borders.  Any ethno-geographer of the region would acknowledge that drawing effective borders, even if based on language groupings -  is effectively impossible for Central Asia as populations are organised as consistently by elevation as by region.  Uzbeks typically being in more sedentary populations at lower elevations, while the Kyrgyz historically lived in pastoral highlands.  When ethnicity is brought into the equation things become even more complex.  The result is a maze of populations where borders are abitrary by necessity.

A recently leaked report, which appears to have been produced by the CIA's Red Cell, aims to shore up support for the war in Afghanistan by manipulating public opinion in Western Europe.  The report targets France and Germany as regions which need specially designed messages to stem an eroding popularity for the war.

The BBC has reported that at least 23 people have been killed and 300 injured in violence which has erupted in the city of Osh, Kyrgyzstan. It is not yet clear what forces are responsible for the violence.

Until recently Kyrgyzstan's head of government was President Kurmanbek Bakiyev who was forced to flee the country after riots erupted in April 2010.  Bakiyev's power base is largely in the southern area of Kyrgyzstan including Osh.

Pentagon investigators "are desperately searching" for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, to try and prevent the publication of over 260,000 diplomatic cables that were allegedly leaked by intelligence analyst Bradley Manning.

Despite the efforts of the Israeli military and propaganda machine which stole all the footage they could find on board the Freedom Flotilla some footage activists succesfully snuck past the jailers has started to emerge.  The Isreali propaganda team has already released out of context fragments obviously taken from stolen equipment to try and bolster its case, the fact that only a few seconds (that show a firework being thrown) could be found speaks volumes.

The state is a central concept in the political philosophy of Anarchism. Anarchism is often defined as being an anti-state ideology. While this is sometimes a useful way to distinguish anarchists from other state socialists it also leads to a fair bit of confusion. We will look at the source of this confusion with the aim of showing that anarchism is in its essence opposed to rulers and is not a naive or idealistic form of anti-statism.

One of the main myths of those who support the Zionist state of Israel is that all Jews, inside and outside of Isreal support that state.  In fact there is small but significant opposition to the oppression of the Palestians from people of Jewish background inside of Isreal.  Since the Israeli military attacked the Freedom Flotilla there have been onging demonstrations agains the attack in Isreal itself, demonstrations that have been largely ignore by Israeli and international media.