Archives: Blog entry

 The province of Oaxaca in Mexico has seen a massive revolt led by the teachers union in recent weeks. In the course of the repression of the protests police have already killed 12 people, overnight we have heard that they have killed another, the anarchist Salvador Oleos Garcia.

He has been described as journalist, community activist, defender of the lands, singer and pioneer of the anarcho-punk movement in Huajuapan. Reports indicate that after a police tip off he was found at the road side with injuries to the limbs, head and torso, he later died in hospital.

Belfast saw a fantastic Rally for Choice march July 2nd 2016  – by far the biggest pro- choice demonstration in the north in many years, perhaps ever.

Despite being organised on a shoe string is was also bigger than the annual anti – choice march. Even though the organizers of that have access to so much money they had billboard vans driving around the city advertising their event.

Well, I’ve posted a review of Social Democracy & Anarchism in the International Workers’ Association 1864-1877 by René Berthier. It is, in general, a very good book — I only disagree with his position that revolutionary anarchism (communist-anarchism) marked a break with Bakunin’s ideas.

Presentation given by Davide Turcato about the ideas and contributions of Italian Anarchist Errico Malatesta

 I was recnetly on a holiday trip to Lisbon where I was listening to Roger Crowleys ‘Conquerors’ as I toured many of the historic sites paid for by the slaughter and plunder he describes.  After visiting Belem I recorded and uploaded this video blog to the Anarchist Writers Facebook, this version if the 1080p version of the same video.

Belem was where the ships of the brutal Portuguese colonial conquest of the Indian open trade cities departed from.

Dublin saw a day of protests in solidarity with the Kurdish Freedom struggle today. The video shows the protest at the GPO, site of the 1916 rebellion against British colonialism 100 years ago. During that rebellion British forces destroyed much of the center of Dublin and murdered civilians much as the Turkish state has been doing in Bakur (SE Turkey) over the last months.

Apologies for the long delay in blogging – much has changed in my live (all for the better I must add!) and had to concentrate on that. So new job, new location, new life. The net effect on this is no commuting (so probably less time to read) and a concentration on my day job – but also a break from being a union rep (back to being an active member for a while).

The last year has left me a confused state between optimism and pessimism which made it quite difficult to work out what I had to say tonight on the topic of how are social movements doing in Ireland and what are the prospects for real change. 

As you may have noticed we were down for just over a week and its only in the last couple of days that we even had a visible error notice rather than an blank screen when you tried to visit. If you are following us on Twitter or Facebook you will have seen some earlier somewhat paniced messages as for a time there it looked like we might have lost it.