Selma James, the activist and political writer, spoke in Ireland during the week. She has been active since the time of the Spanish revolution in a number of countries and across many struggles but is possibly best known for the International Wages for Housework Campaign and her writings around gender, class and racism. I got to her 'Defending Caring and Welfare in Careless Times' meeting for the School for Social Justice in UCD where I tweeted notes to the WSM Twitter feed. The video of her talk (but not the more controversial Q&A session) has also been uploaded as has her entire talk 'How Can Women Defeat Austerity?' at CERSA, NUI Maynooth.

Picture: Theresa O'Keefe, used with permission 

Last night saw hundreds of pro-choice activists blockade the gates of the Dail after TD's once more refused to pass X-case legislation. Twenty years after the X-case and one month after the death of Savita Halappanavar women in Ireland were told once more that the politicians had not had enough time. The political parties, in particular the Labour Party, were once more engaged in a cynical game of playing politics - a game that leaves pregnant women at continued risk in Irish hospitals.

A huge secretive Garda security operation Sunday night swung into operation in Dublin Port as Shell's Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) left the port as part of a huge convoy of Garda vehicles.  News of the operation had leaked at the last minute meaning that with only an hours notice a handful of Shell to Sea campaigners managed to get down to the port entrance despite the pouring rain.  Most of us were pulled over and questioned by Garda at least once and the Garda helicopter stayed overhead as various Garda vehicles including a van load of riot cops with the door open drove past us repeatedly.

I was on the panel for the 2012 Dublin Anarchist bookfair discussion of the continued usefulness of old / print media.  It was a well set up panel with a good range of people from publications following quite different models of print and distribution.   I've included the write up of the session and the audio and video I recorded and edited of it below.  For the curious the video was taken by a Go Pro Hero2 camera which I'd placed on the edge of the table as an experiment which turned out to be 'good enough' to use.