Upcoming EventsNo upcoming events. AKBELEN FORESTS ARE CALLING EVERYONE FOR RESISTANCE 15:47 Jul 30 14 comments USA cambió su política migratoria respecto a inmigrantes endureciendo leyes 23:15 Jul 03 7 comments espero 7 – Die neue Sommerausgabe 2023 16:58 Jun 25 7 comments Internationalist Manifesto Against the War 07:38 Apr 15 26 comments War and Anarchists: Anti-Authoritarian Perspectives in Ukraine 19:25 Feb 22 12 comments more >> |
ireland / britain / gender Friday February 02, 2018 - 18:43 by Emilia & andrew 1 image
The announcement that there will be a referendum to decriminalise abortion in Ireland is the product of decades of active campaigning. Pro-choice campaigners built for repeal ever since the hated 8th amendment was entered into the Constitution in 1983, putting a ban on abortion, which was already illegal in the country, into the constitution. If at first this seemed like a distant demand now repeal looks by far the most likely outcome in May. The story of how this happened illustrates how change comes in general. That is not through elections but through people getting organised to demand that change, regardless of which politicians happen to be running the show in any particular year. ... read full story / add a comment
ireland / britain / community struggles Friday July 21, 2017 - 00:26 by andrew
The outraged media reaction to a jury doing its job and finding the Jobstown defendants not guilty is quite extraordinary. Rather than do the right thing and launch an investigation as to how 180 cops could produce evidence that was directly contradicted by video evidence, the media have gone on a rant against Twitter! Rather than finding it suspicious that nearly 3 million in public funds was spent by the DPP on a case that any proper check of available evidence should have indicated was never likely to convince a jury, the media suggest instead that the problem lay in the exact charges brought. The trial was part of a large scale state operation to suppress a mass anti-austerity community campaign. ... read full story / add a comment
ireland / britain / the left Thursday June 15, 2017 - 20:24 by andrew Flood 4 images
Corbyn’s strong showing in the June 2017 UK elections has given a big morale boost to the left. A considerable youth vote, self-mobilising in larger part as a reaction to the ‘me and mine’ selfish society revealed by the Brexit vote seriously set back Tory plans for a fresh wave of Brexit required austerity. Activists used social networking to overcome what had previously been seen as an all powerful smear machine of the billionaire print press. Very few outside the radical left expected this outcome, what drove it and more importantly where can it lead? [ This is a long read so you can also listen to an audio of the text ] This piece is not going to answer that in terms of assumptions and assertions but as far as possible through hard numbers. 66% of 18-24 year old’s voted Labour, only a quarter of that, 18% voted Tory [p4]. 27% of those 18-24 year olds said the NHS was the most important issue for them, even though they are least likely to need it [p40]. For the over 65 age group this was flipped, only 23% voted Labour and over twice as many (58%) voted Tory [p4]. In fact, given the way the UK election system works, if only 18-24 year olds had voted, Labour would have been heading for 500 seats. If it had only been those over 65 voting the Tories would have had over 400 seats. ... read full story / add a comment
international / economy Thursday March 30, 2017 - 18:56 by andrew 1 image
Our global society is broken. Donald Trump & Brexit are symptoms along with the rise of the far right elsewhere in Europe. In an old pattern, fundamental economic crisis often results in society becoming very much more brutal for most people. In the age of nuclear weapons this current crisis could be our last. And with a somewhat longer countdown to disaster we are also facing climate catastrophe. ... read full story / add a comment
north america / mexico / migration / racism Tuesday December 06, 2016 - 18:36 by andrew 1 comment (last - thursday december 15, 2016 - 05:48) 3 images
Once it became clear that Trump was going to become the president of the USA, my Facebook feed became cluttered with attempts to understand how that could possibly happen. How could a white supremacist, misogynist and utterly transparent snake oil salesman accumulate so many votes? Those on the left both inside and outside the borders of the USA struggled to understand what had happened.
[Listen to the audio of this entire article]
A common conclusion in too many of these pieces is that the left needs to reach out, and listen to the concerns of, those who voted for him as a priority. In a similar fashion to how sections of the left evaluated Brexit, they see a working class anti-establishment rebellion in the Trump vote from what they term the ‘white working class’. They believe that component was won by Trump because it has been neglected by the left - often, they will assert, because the rest of the left was distracted by what they call identity politics.
This is a simple explanatory story that is particularly attractive to those sections of the left that have a nostalgic yearning for an imagined past of pure class struggle, shorn of internal concerns around oppression. But the concept of masses of otherwise progressive working class voters opting for Trump on economic grounds is a myth. The attractiveness of that myth and its promotion has more to do with the hostility of that section of the left towards the influence of intersectional feminism than anything more substantive. That hostility has caused them to seek out anecdotes and exceptional regions and present them as the typical story that defines the election just as liberal Hillary Clinton campaigners have focused in on Facebook false news stories as the cause of her defeat. ... read full story / add a comment
ireland / britain / imperialism / war Sunday June 26, 2016 - 01:06 by andrew 6 comments (last - tuesday february 27, 2024 - 17:55)
An anarchist analysis of the Brexit vote ... read full story / add a comment
ireland / britain / anarchist movement Tuesday May 03, 2016 - 19:42 by andrew 1 image
Here are 9 video and audio recordings from the Dublin anarchist bookfair. So whether you were far away or were there but had to miss one session in order to attend another this is your chance to catch up. ... read full story / add a comment
ireland / britain / history Wednesday April 20, 2016 - 22:31 by andrew 3 comments (last - thursday april 28, 2016 - 21:41)
Almost a century ago, an armed insurrection took place in Ireland to end British rule and to establish an independent Irish Republic. The 1916 Rising was soon accompanied by major popular revolts against World War One across Europe and later emulated by anti-colonial movements across the Global South.
When it comes to remembering the 1916 Rising, why do conservative politicians and historians want to convince us that it would have been better for us if Pearse and Connolly had stayed at home? Why did the state parade lots of military equipment and personnel down O’Connell Street to mark the centenary? Why did so many people turn out to watch it?
This panel attempts to think through the meaning of 1916 for us today, and the politics at stake in how these events are remembered, forgotten, and mis-remembered.
... read full story / add a comment
international / the left Friday February 19, 2016 - 20:20 by andrew Flood 1 image
Why can’t the 99% simply vote in a government that acts in their interest and not that of the 1% At a simple level parliamentary elections sound like the ideal way for the mass of the ‘have nots’ to use their numbers to overcome the power and influences of the tiny number of have’s. Occupy talked about this division in the language of the 1% and 99%; a crude approximation that does reflect a reality where the number of wealthy decision makers is actually very tiny, indeed less than 1%. So, why can’t the 99% simply vote in a government that acts in their interest and not that of the 1%? ... read full story / add a comment
international / anarchist movement Tuesday February 16, 2016 - 17:33 by andrewNFlood 2 comments (last - wednesday january 11, 2023 - 06:14) 1 image
What if we build it and they don’t come? That was the experience of the left during the crisis - decades had been spent building organisations and a model of how crisis would create revolution but when the crisis arrived the left discovered that the masses weren’t convinced. The expected pattern of crisis leading to small strikes and protests, then to mass strikes and riot and then perhaps to general strike and revolution didn’t flow as expected. Under that theory the radical left would at first be marginal but then as conditions drove class militancy to new heights the workers disappointed by reformist politicians and unions leaders would move quickly to swell its ranks. ... read full story / add a comment
ireland / britain / environment Saturday January 02, 2016 - 22:59 by andrew Flood 1 image
We awake to news that more towns in Ireland are under water due to storm flooding. And that perhaps the sea ice at the north pole might melt due to temperatures rising above zero. The first story is given a lot more prominence in Irish media than the second but strangely at the same time another story is being celebrated. The start of yet more greenhouse gases being pumped out of their safe place far below the sea off the Irish shore to be processed and then released into the atmosphere via the Corrib refinery (The refinery was sold off by the Irish Government to the Shell company for a fraction of what it is worth). ... read full story / add a comment
ireland / britain / history of anarchism Friday October 23, 2015 - 18:15 by andrew Flood 1 comment (last - thursday october 29, 2015 - 08:06) 1 image
One of the key foundation documents for the Workers Solidarity Movement is the ‘Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft)’ This text was written in Paris in 1926 by a group that included exiled Russian and Ukrainian anarchists and was very influenced by the lessons they drew from the Russian Revolution. Three of the authors -- Nestor Makhno, Ida Mett, Piotr Archinov -- were then and now very well known anarchists, the remaining two -- Valevsky and Linsky -- I know relatively little about. ... read full story / add a comment
greece / turkey / cyprus / repression / prisoners Tuesday October 13, 2015 - 18:45 by andrew Flood 1 comment (last - tuesday october 13, 2015 - 20:04) 1 image
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. ... read full story / add a comment
ireland / britain / economy Thursday September 24, 2015 - 22:51 by andrew
How many could we house, educate and care for with 19 billion? The Irish government is currently furiously fighting the European Union to prevent Apple paying us back taxes it owes us. There has been a lot of ‘concern’ about government plans to spend 48 million looking after 4000 people fleeing warfare in Syria and Iraq. The government and the media defend there ‘our own’ is first - the super rich in Ireland and elsewhere! ... read full story / add a comment
ireland / britain / gender Saturday May 23, 2015 - 00:33 by andrew 1 comment (last - saturday may 23, 2015 - 04:39) 2 images
Southern Ireland is voting toward on whether to allow Marriage equality, that is to extend marriage to couples of the same gender. Young migrants have flocked back to the country in the last 24 hours to help insure the referendum passes. If it does Ireland will be the first country in the work to introduce Marriage equality by popular referendum yet it was one of the last countries in Europe to decriminalise sex between men. In that sense the referendum is about much more than the issue of Marriage but it also a battle against the 'old Ireland' of clerical control and an authoritarian state that sought to control all aspects of the lives of those under its control. The articles that follow are some of the many that the Workers Solidarity Movement have published, for the most part via their Facebook page. ... read full story / add a comment
mashriq / arabia / iraq / the left Wednesday May 13, 2015 - 23:14 by andrew 1 image
Revolutions are seldom made in favourable circumstances. Russia 1917 emerged from the mass slaughter of WWI and the disintegration of an economy under the pressure of the supply demands of that war. Spain 1936 emerged from a well planned and executed fascist coup amongst a powerful military backed and armed by international fascism. Schemas for revolution that depend on quiet times and plenty may well be doomed from the start. ... read full story / add a comment
ireland / britain / community struggles Friday February 20, 2015 - 23:24 by andrew
A WSM talk about the development & future of the campaign against water charges, a mass campaign of resistance to privitisation of water and an austerity tax that has emerged in southern Ireland involving hundreds of thousands of people. ... read full story / add a comment
greece / turkey / cyprus / economy Thursday February 05, 2015 - 23:04 by andrew 1 image
Do we live in an economy or in a society? Last night Europe's central bankers sent the clear message they expect us to be the well behaved slaves of an economy rather than equals in a society. Less then two weeks after the Greeks had elected an anti-austerity government the ECB in effect told them they intended to block the promises of change that government was elected on. ... read full story / add a comment
north america / mexico / history of anarchism Friday August 22, 2014 - 19:46 by andrew 1 image
A 30 minute talk by Mark Bray, author of Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street followed by an hour of discussion. Translating Anarchy tells the story of the anti-capitalist anti-authoritarians of Occupy Wall Street who strategically communicated their revolutionary politics to the public in a way that was both accessible and revolutionary. ... read full story / add a comment
international / the left Monday February 24, 2014 - 20:51 by andrew Flood 3 comments (last - sunday april 13, 2014 - 01:38) 1 image
Horizontalism is an emerging term used to describe the key common characteristics of the waves of rebellion of the last decade. Occupy in 2011 was the peak to date but the term Horizontalism itself appears to originate the rebellion in Argentina after the 2001 banking crisis there. Marina Sitrin in her book on that rebellion says the term (in Spanish obviously) was used to describe the neighborhood, workplace & unemployed assemblies that emerged to form "social movements seeking self-management, autonomy and direct democracy."
Image by Author:Meeting in Gezi Park, June 2013 ... read full story / add a comment |
Front pageSupport Sudanese anarchists in exile Joint Statement of European Anarchist Organizations International anarchist call for solidarity: Earthquake in Turkey, Syria and Kurdistan Elements of Anarchist Theory and Strategy 19 de Julio: Cuando el pueblo se levanta, escribe la historia International anarchist solidarity against Turkish state repression Declaración Anarquista Internacional por el Primero de Mayo, 2022 Le vieux monde opprime les femmes et les minorités de genre. Leur force le détruira ! Against Militarism and War: For self-organised struggle and social revolution Declaração anarquista internacional sobre a pandemia da Covid-19 Anarchist Theory and History in Global Perspective Capitalism, Anti-Capitalism and Popular Organisation [Booklet] Reflexiones sobre la situación de Afganistán South Africa: Historic rupture or warring brothers again? Death or Renewal: Is the Climate Crisis the Final Crisis? Gleichheit und Freiheit stehen nicht zur Debatte! Contre la guerre au Kurdistan irakien, contre la traîtrise du PDK Meurtre de Clément Méric : l’enjeu politique du procès en appel |