The arrival of the Euro in its ‘real’ form of notes and coins is a key step along the path towards European unification. In Ireland, at least, it was virtually unopposed save for a few nostalgic articles about missing the artistry of the old notes and coins.
Our government has become more and more open about their plans for us. Cowan wants to drive down our living standards 12% and has already cut all our wages through the tax levy and slashed the wages of workers in the public sector further through the so called ‘pensions levy’. He openly talks of “four more years of even steeper cuts”. He is so confident of us taking this lying down that he had the cheek to announce his intention to drive down our living standards at what even RTE referred to as the “Dublin Chamber of Commerce’s lavish AGM dinner which cost €160” a head.
Article from July 2001 calling for the creation of what was to become the Grassroots Gathering. Beyond this though we see the need for those of us who have a common anti-authoritarian vision of a future society to work together to promote this view. There are many within the general movement whom we are close to, who we feel in a greater or lesser way are fighting for the sort of society we are fighting for. Often we use quite different language to describe it but in the most general terms we are talking of a society where workplaces and communities are run by those who live and work there.
Has it ever struck you as a little odd that the same governments that claim to stand for globalisation are busy erecting expensive fences along their borders to keep people out? Or that the collapse of the Berlin wall has been followed a decade later by new and longer walls being erected a few hundred miles to the East running down the Polish and Czech frontiers?
The second Grassroots Gathering was held over the Easter weekend in Cork. Some seventy people from all over Ireland took part. Areas represented included Cork, Dublin, Limerick and Belfast as well as a scattering of other counties including Kildare, Kerry, Clare and Sligo.
In June 2002 I travelled with a group of Irish anarchists to the protests against the EU summit in Seville. This article reports on the protests and end with a look at the post-Genoa summit protest and a look forward to the Mayday 2004 Summit protest that was to happen in Dublin.
The WEF is not democratic in any sense, being composed of representatives from selected corporations who pay 30,000 plus a year for the privilege. Yet it is one of the key bodies which decide how life will be for the 6 billion of us who inhabit the globe.
George Bush may have declared major combat operations over in Iraq on May 1st but resistance to the US occupation forces goes on. The killing today of one more US soldier at a petrol station in Baghdad means 42 have been killed in combat since that date, almost one per day. And every week US soldiers coming to and from Iraq continue to fly through Shannon airport.
Report on the 12 April 2003 Shannon demonstration which was only attended by about 470 people, many of these being from the political parties that make up the IAWM. The movement that could mobilise 100,000 ends up leading 467 into a protest pen at Shannon as in the background military flights taxi for take off.
Report written in the aftermath of the attempted March 1st 2003 Direct Action at Shannon airport which looks at what happened and what it means for the anti-war movement.