First off, new article to mark the 170th anniversary of anarchism as a named socio-economic theory. It concentrates on Proudhon’s ideas and how they fit into the evolution of anarchism in the mid-nineteenth century socialist and labour movements. It was written for the new Black Flag magazine (which is itself 40 this year!).
Archives: Blog entry
A <em>blog entry</em> is a single post to an online journal, or <em>blog</em>.
Another brief, unfinished piece. This time on the evolution of the condition of labour under capitalism from simple commodity to asset, into "human capital" as they would have us believe.
Below is the text of a talk that I preprared for a meeting of activists in August- and the theme of this talk was around the Trade Union fight back to the imposition of the austerity measures, i.e. Cuts.
When asked to do a talk about Trade Union fight back – the running joke was that it would be a pretty short talk – so let’s work this into a short format – what better way than 17 syllables – of the Haiku.
We vote up to Strike.
Leaders say, steady more talk;
End with less than zero
The myth of the “Ground Zero Mosque” and the Islamophobia that surrounds it are media-generated products of a state at war during campaign time. The myth represents some of the worst kinds of “Othering” associated with the hyper-patriotism that followed 9/11 in the United States. At a recent protest against the proposed center in New York City, protestors could be seen jeering, yelling at, and threatening one dark-skinned worker for being “Muslim”—even after he explained to these (largely white) protestors that he was not [8]. The problems here are obvious. We need to be countering these media-generated myths.
The NAMA bailout of the property speculators bank, Ango Irish Bank, is now costing the rest of us 25 billion euro. Twenty five billion euro is a figure that is almost meaning less to almost all of us. A worker earning the minimum wage would have to work for 1.4 million years to earn 25 billion (before tax). The economist Ronan Lyons listed 100 things that 25 billion could have been spent on in, some flippant but others which give a real sense of just what the real cost of the 25 billion that the richest 1% have robbed off the rest of the population through NAMA is.
Well, it has been a while since I blogged. In fact, I’ve added two articles since then. Once is a review of “The Coming Insurrection”, a book I was not particularly impressed by (as the review testifies). Ultra-leftist nonsense, to be honest. It was strange reading it on the way to work and contrasting its vision of contemporary reality with what I actually experience.
In what was described ahead of time as the most "important bond auction of the year" the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) sold 1.5 billion in bonds, a result which may steady the international markets at whose whims workers in Ireland have discovered their employment and living standards are subject to. There was nervousness ahead of the sale due to the rise in the cost of servicing Irish debt in bond sales last week. Meanwhile thousands of bank workers are losing their jobs.
A la memoria de Matías Katrileo.
These three articles chart the continued resistance to Shell in Erris in the west of Ireland where over the last couple of weeks Shell has been drilling 80 test holes in the Sruwaddacon bay Special Areas of Conservation. I spent the June bank holiday at the Solidarity camp before this latest round of construction started and swam in Broadhaven bay on a surprizingly warm Sunday morning at the start of June
Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) members at St James were on strike yesterday against management breaking agreed procedures in out sourcing work that includes the resetting and repair of fire alarms. The electricians have already held two half day stoppages with todays actions following the failure to reach agreement at the Labour Relations Commission last week.