Workers Solidarity Movement

Dublin protested last night against ISIS and the support it has received to date from the Turkish state. The protest was called by Lookleft in the aftermath of the Suruc bombing. 32 humanitarian volunteers on the way to help in the rebuilding of Kobane were killed in the bombing, at least 2 anarchists were amongst those killed.

The bomb went off on Monday at a community centre in Suruç a small mostly Kurdish town just across the border in the Turkish state. The Amara Culture Centre which was where 300 people on a Federation of Socialist Youth Associations stayed on their way to Kobane. 32 of them were killed by the bomb including at least two anarchists and over 100 injured, some critically.

A couple of hundred people came to the pro choice solidarity rally in Dublin last night. It was called to protest against the prosecution of a women in Belfast for supplying her daughter with the abortion pill.

Banners reading Drop The Charges and Free Safe Legal Abortion had been prepared the previous evening for the protest which had been called by the Workers Solidarity Movement and (Re)al-Productive Health. There were speakers from both these organisations but also from the Abortion Rights Campaign and ROSA whose banners were also brought to the protest.

Bertie's 'testimony' to the banking enquiry could hardly have provided a better example of the way politicians in this country understand they are protected from any consequences of their wrongdoing. Apparently we are to believe that he hardly knew any developers. Even the Mail is outraged, but what will be done about it?

It turns out that when the Irish public are asked about the treatment of undocumented migrants here in Ireland in the context of being asked about undocumented Irish migrants in the USA the racist hostility that is too often expressed almost evaporates.

This was the finding of a RedC poll commissioned by the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland. The MRCI estimates there are between 20,000 and 26,000 undocumented people in Ireland, including thousands of children.

The Bolt Hostel is a building occupied by community & housing activists in order to provide emergency accommodation for homeless families. The video shows progress from when the occupation first happened to the kitting out of individual rooms for use.

A trailer for our new Facebook page for people in Ireland that provides coverage of struggles here. 

Anything of interest to an international audience is also posted to the WSM Facebook page so if you are outside Ireland you should just follow that one at http://www.facebook.com/WorkersSolidarityMovement

The Bolt is an abandoned hostel for the homeless that has been occupied and brought back into use by an alliance of 6 housing groups in Dublin.

In this video Solidarity Times interview one of the organisers in some detail about the building, support from local residents and what has been going on with the council.

Over two years after the last major mass direct action against Shell in Erris the state continues to pursue a vindictive prosecution against some of those arrested that day. In June 2013 at the culmination of a week of action around 70 people entered the Shell compound at Aughoose where the final section of the experimental high pressure raw gas pipeline was being connected.

The local community have been resisting the pipeline and refinery for a decade. During that resistance hundreds have been arrested or injured and several have spent periods in jail. Millions was spent every year deploying hundreds of Garda and at times the airforce and navy to make effective protest impossible. Despite this the protests meant that the project has finished years late and at 3 to 4 times the original projected cost.

Austerity was never going to be defeated by the vote. We don't live in an economic democracy, we live in an economic dictatorship where only those with vast wealth determine its course. Parliament provides a useful illusion, one that limits our dreams and stops us acting to make them a reality. The real defeat in Greece will not be the capitulation of Syriza but rather if that capitulation is broadly accepted as the end of the road of struggle.

 The new Greek finance minister has tweeted that "Greece reforms' proposal sent to the Institutions and Eurogroup's Dijsselbloem" well ahead of the midnight deadline. If media reports are to be believed it appears the Syriza led government is offering massive further austerity cuts of 13 billion in return for some debt relief and a further 50 billion bailout.