June 2010

Violence Erupts in Kyrgyzstan

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Truck set on fire during the April 2010 riots in Bishkek

Truck set on fire during the April 2010 Riots in Bishkek

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.

CIA Propaganda Targets Western Europe

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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.

Public Service Agrees to Implement Austerity Program

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Public services are safe from the threat of a fair deal for four years. The kind of crippling cuts that were recently pushed through by ICTU, amounting to a 10% pay cut in some cases in the form of a "pension levy", are now almost certain to remain.

Kyrgyzstan: Ethnic Violence or Political Violence

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National Emblem of KyrgyzstanThe 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.

Dublin: Protest - Stop the Bailouts. End The Dictatorship The Markets

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Workers Solidarity Movement has called for support for the national protest against the Bank Bailouts and "the dictatorship of the markets" which will take place on Saturday 26th June (1:00p.m. Central Bank Plaza, Dame Street).

We urge everyone who is opposed to the government strategy of making ordinary people pay for the financial crisis to attend this protest and make your voice heard, joining with protests across the EU. 

The crisis highlights the bankruptcy of capitalism

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Capitalism as a way of organising our society is bankrupt. It is bankrupt in both a literal and moral sense. Capitalism is at odds with any progressive notion of democracy in the 21st century

Regressive Taxation

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Progressive taxation is a taxation system which seeks a higher tax rate for higher incomes.  It is a relatively common feature in the western democracies.  In Ireland however, its implementation is almost entirely nominal.

Revolutionary Experiments In Ireland 1917-1923 - Conor Kostick audio

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Connor Kostick author of Revolution in Ireland: Popular militancy 1917 to 1923 spoke at the 2010 Dublin anarchist bookfair about the wave of workplace occupations and 'soviets' as well as the general strikes that are forgotten by conventional nationalist histories of this period.


The audio is about one hour in length and was first published on indymedia.ie. 

About Us

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Radio Solidarity is show produced by the Workers Solidarity Movement and broadcast on NEARFM in Dublin. The aim of this show is to cover a range of issues and struggles that don’t get covered in the media.
 
We do not pretend to be unbiased. We actively engage in politics and struggles to bring about change in society. We hope to cover some of the issues which we think are live at the moment in Irish society. We engage in those struggles and talk to others who are actively attempting to bring about change.

What happened on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla - audio of Irish participants relating their experiences

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Platform at IPSC meetingAn 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.

A Day at the Dublin Anarchist Bookfair 2010

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Saturday the 29thof May saw the return of the Dublin Anarchist Bookfair to Liberty Hall. It is the 5th Bookfair to be held in the city (organised by the Workers Solidarity Movement),and from what started out as a small event in a community hall in the Liberties is now one of the landmark events in the calendar of the Irish left.

After the anti-capitalist blocs - fighting their crisis - audio from Anarchist Bookfair

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Recorded at the Dublin anarchist bookfair, three speakers look at the economy, what the real situation of the resistance is and what needs to be built and examples of what has been achieved in the unions to date. This is followed by contributions from the floor from a wide range of perspectives.

Union opposes mandatory IBEC recognition

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The unions have warned that any attempt to introduce mandatory IBEC (Irish Business and Employers Confederation) recognition would endanger working conditions, pay rates and general government policy.

After Croke Park: what to do now? - facing reality in our unions

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In mid-June the Irish Congress of Trade Unions Public Services Committee voted to accept the ‘Croke Park deal’. ‘Social partnership’, presumed dead and buried when the government unilaterally imposed pay cuts on public sector workers in the December ’09 budget, was revived and given a new lease of life. But this is ‘social partnership’ with a difference. Instead of the union leadership believing that ‘partnership’ gives them some input into government policy (as they have wrongly thought for the past 20 years), all they can now offer in its defence is that this is the “least worst deal” and that “it’s better to be inside the tent than outside.”

The reform movement in Iran and the million signatures - audio from Dublin anarchist bookfair

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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.

Faceless Resistance, Precarity and union organising - a reply to Andrew Flood

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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 crisis in capitalism and the anarchist response

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Starting at our Spring 2009 national conference the WSM has debated and voted on a number of documents on the capitalist crisis and the resistance to it. This text is the agreed collective position of the WSM and looks at the causes of the crisis, how it impacts workers in Ireland, what resistance there has been and what hope there is for the future.   Most recently this text was updated at the May 2013 Feb WSM national conference.

The Environment

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"The environmental crisis we are living through, encompassing unpredictable climate change, resource depletion, pollution and species extinction has primarily been caused by industrial capitalism. The origin of this crisis, and the ways in which the effects have been managed point to a real lack of democracy in society. False solutions to this crisis dominate debate. These include market-based cure-alls, "green" party electoralism, "power of one" style individual action and state regulation and taxation." WSM position paper on the Environment as introduced at November 2007 conference (this paper replaced our old "Environment and Animal Rights" Position Paper, last amended at the May 2010 conference.

Rossport Solidarity Weekend Radio Report

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Over the June bank holiday weekend the 5th successive annual Rossport Solidarity camp took place. Over the decade that this campaign as been running, this weekend has become a focal point for activists and the community to get together, have workshops and share in some activities.  Radio Solidarity took along a recorder and tried to capture a flavor of the events, and we asked people how come they'd become invovled in this struggle against one of the biggest conglomerates in the World.

IBEC dinner protest - Let’s talk about socialism

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A few hundred people took part in a protest last night at the Mansion house in Dublin where the Taoiseach Brian Cowen was going to dinner with the organisation of the domestic section of the capitalist class that instructs him. As various bosses and Cowen went into the venue protected by ranks of Gardai, with the riot squad on standby outside the back entrance of Anglo Irish Bank and mounted police across the road, they were jeered by the crowd with shouts of 'thieves', 'robbers' and 'scum.'