Workers Solidarity Movement

Why is the director of the IMF complaining that the rate of progress of the IMF negotiations in Dublin is going too slowly? What's wrong with this picture? The answer is nothing, so long as you understand that the IMF are not the driving force in these negotiations.

Despite the newpaper headlines, what is happening is not an IMF bailout. This is a European debt restructuring process in which the IMF are playing a merely supportive role as consultants. This is a Eurozone process and although the political masters of the Eurozone, through their EU Commissioners, have the final say on passing or vetoing the final agreement, the true driving force behind this process is the ECB.

It's now official, the Irish state is in talks with the EU and the IMF about a so called 'rescue plan' to bail out the Irish capitalist class from the disaster created by the international crash of the capitalist economic system. A crisis that was magnified in Ireland by the corruption of local crony capitalism on the one hand and the dependency of the economy on 'globalization' on the other. Trapped between such a cast of crooks and idiots it is perhaps not surprising that many in Ireland hope things will be improved when the running of our lives will be handed over to those who many hope might have a clue.

An article from 1980 that details the available information on extensive prospecting taking place in the Wicklow granites in the context of the succesful campaign  against the plan to build a nuclear reactor at Carnsore that this issue of the Contaminated Crow mostly dealt with.

Last Friday we reported on the mounting crisis of Ireland's sovereign debt bond yields. Particularly how the announcement of Lenihan's "Shock and Awe" 6 bn cuts plan had failed to move the markets.  This week, as bond yields have moved from the business pages onto the front page, the search for an explanation for this failure began. By the middle of the week, the story was set - blame the Germans!

November - December 2010 Edition of the Workers Solidarity freesheet.

PDF of Workers Solidarity 118 Web Edition 2.28 Mb

1% of the Population, 34% of the Wealth
Democracy in Brazil
Attacks on Welfare Continue
Sacking of Socialist Nurse Overturned
That's Capitalism!
Thinking About Anarchism: Dual Organisation Film Review: Made in Dagenham

PDF of Workers Solidarity 118 Web Edition 2.28 Mb

We spoke with Vincent O’Malley, a community sector employee who advises and advocates for social welfare applicants and recipients, about the effect the recession is having on the operation of the social welfare system.

Crime has always been a prevalent factor across societies for millenia; today it helps to sell newspapers and get politicians elected, and wars against it consume vast amounts of public resources. Some believe that crime will never be eradicated from our social fabric, whilst others believe our social fabric to be the main propagator of crime. In the 6th Rethinking Revolution talk, Julian Brophy will be looking at different perspectives on crime, assessing the power relations that exist within modern criminal justice systems, and addressing questions like: Would a society without crime be possible?

James McBarron was a long time activist in Sinn Fein before becoming an anarchist in the aftermath of the Good Friday agreement. In this opinion piece he wrote for publication on republican discussion forums he argues that although it is "completely understandable that most thinking republican activists are angry and enraged at how they were duped and used by the former IRA and current Sinn Fein leadership … this does not excuse people from properly examining their own roles and politics and the politics and conditions that have lead to the current situation." He then points to four areas which he thinks represent fatal weaknesses of 'dissident' Irish republicanism in general.

The markets have spoken and the verdict is that Brian Lenihan's 6 billion euro package of public sector cuts and extra taxation on ordinary workers is not going to work. The confidence in Ireland's future in the international money markets is reflected in the yields in Irish sovereign bonds. These bonds are the IOUs the government issues to borrow the money to plug the shortfall from income to spending. They vary from 2 to 14 years in duration before the money borrowed has to be repaid, the 10 year being the one most closely followed by market watchers. The yield on a bond is the interest rate the state has to pay the lenders. In these last few days increasingly urgent stories in the business pages of the papers have been warning about the dangers of increasing bond yield spreads.

Students from Free Education for Everyone (FEE), who organised todays occupation of the Department of Finance, have released the following statement detailing why they organised the occupation, who took part and the giving some details of the brutal Gardai attack on the occupiers.  A WSM member who was present and whose arm was injured in the Gardai assault revealed that as soon as the Gardai entered the occupation they started punching people in the face despite the face that the students were telling them it was a peaceful protest and they were not resisting them.