Workers Solidarity Movement

Yesterday saw the tragic deaths of ten people that were killed in a fire that engulfed their home in a halting site for travellers in South Dublin. The people killed in the fire includes five children under the age of ten, and one of the children was six months old. The fire brigade was called at around 4am. The fire brigade took two adults and two children from the scene who are being treated in hospital. It is believed there were two families living in the halting site.

Last week some of the Ireland to Calais refugee solidarity convoy were on the road in the vicinity of the Calais migrant camp when they witnessed and recorded a pepper spray drive by attack by the French police on a group of women standing by the road side.

Graffiti has appeared at the site of the bomb explosion in Ankara yesterday that reads "It was not terror that killed us, it was the state." This is reflecting the widespread belief that the true origins of the bombing that killed around 100 people at the pro Kurdish peace demonstration are to be found in Erdogan's AKP party desperate attempt to intensify conflict in the hope of polarizing the electorate ahead of Novembers elections. The same process in other words that those killed yesterday were demonstrating against.

An interview with a couple of the people involved in The Barricade Inn, the squatted social centre on Parnell street, including a video tour of the interior.

The 8th Belfast Anarchist Bookfair takes place Saturday and WSM will be there. Call by our stall for a chat during the day.

BABF is at a new venue this year, Oh Yeah Music Centre, 15-21 Gordon Street, from Midday

Stalls by Solidarity Federation, Alliance for Choice, Abortion Rights Campaign, AK Press, Art n Anarchy, Anarchist Federation, Anti-Racism Network Ireland, Bundschuh Conspiracy (T-shirts), Die Rex, IWW, Just Books, Sex Workers Alliance Ireland, Workers Solidarity Movement, Queer Action, Rebel County Books.

About 10 days ago three van loads of riot cops arrived at the door to No 2 Gardiner Place at around 9am,  There they formed a Roman style tortoise shell shield formation and proceeded to start to batter the door down.  Once in they stormed through the building, arresting the residents and dragged them down to the High Court for an eviction / injunction hearing at which they were forced to agree not to try and re-enter the house.  No media outlet deemed any of this worthy of coverage.

Solidarity Times had been in the building the previous week, shooting some video in anticipation of a campaign in opposition to the eviction.  We’re assembled a video report on the space from that footage as yet another example of the vast amount of empty housing that is around even inner city Dublin. Homelessness is not caused by a lack of usable buildings but by deliberately leaving such buildings empty and boarded up in order to create the scarcity that is seeing rent hikes and a new property bubble.

One of our member is now at the refugee camp in Calais as part of the solidarity convoy that arrived from Ireland a couple of days back.  Before he left he filed this report for us.

Today the first of Ireland-Calais Refugee Solidarity’s convoys of basic aid is due to arrive in the French port of Calais. The aid is for distribution among the several thousand refugees living in deplorable conditions in makeshift camps outside the town, hoping to gain entry into the UK.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been lucky enough to be part of the ‘Ireland Calais Refugee Solidarity’ group, collecting and organising for refugee aid convoys, the first of which is being delivered to Calais today. The group was initially set up by one very impressive person from Cork, Tracey Ryan, who was planning on collecting donations and delivering them to Calais personally. Apparently though, interest in the solidarity action was so large that it grew into a cross-country action, focused in Cork and Dublin.

Rich people in Ireland as elsewhere are good at not paying taxes. When you give them a chance to prove you wrong we get figures that show that in 2013 just 15 of the super wealthy paid a total of €1.8m.

Who are these rich people and how do they do it? By rich we mean that you have an income of more than €1 million rolling into you from around the world, and that you have assets of more than €5 million here. That is some wealth right there. How they manage it is that whilst they might live here they register to pay tax in a low-tax haven like Malta or Monaco.

Sometimes the old ones are the gold ones. The attempt by the Irish state to damage the electoral chances of the Anti Austerity Alliance by hitting them where it matters - in the pocket - reminds us of how shallow parliamentary democracy is. The Anti Austerity Alliance is the political front the Socialist Party runs under but for the next elections its unified with the SWPs People Before Profit as the rather lengthy AAA - PbP.

It's broadly understood that cash determines who wins an election more than any other factor. Indeed with the US presidential election, for almost a century, the winner has always been the candidate who had the most money behind them. So in terms of influencing the outcome of an election denying a party the right to fundraise is probably the single most effective tactic short of banning them outright.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Dublin Saturday 26th September on the warmest, sunniest day in quite some time, to demand the fundamental right to abortion services on this island. The 4th annual March for Choice, organised by the Abortion Rights Campaign, began with a gathering at the Garden of Remembrance on Parnell Square.