Rossport & Choice audio from 2006/7

 I’ve recovered some more of the first audio I recorded back in 2006/7.  These consist of two pro-Choice audio’s recorded at protests in Dublin and several Rossport ones.  The pro-choice ones are a picket of a rogue pregnancy advice agency and a solidarity rally with ‘D’ who had been injuncted to prevent her traveling to England for an abortion. There are also 7 audio’s related to the Rossport struggle, mostly done by Skype and mobile phone with people on the ground in Erris during protests.

Audio recordings from the 2007 Dublin anarchist bookfair

Poster for 2007 Dublin anarchist bookfairYestereday while replying to a query from a friend about audio recording devices I realised that I’d none of the recordings I did before the North American tour on this site.  So I’m going to start seeking them out and posting them here.

Climate Change and agreeing with George Monbiot!

 I’ve just listened to a rather good introduction to some of the major issues of Climate Change from someone I normally have little time for, George Monbiot.  In this audio though he scores some points in terms of the dangerous distraction of peak oil panic and the economics of climate change.  He also lays out why fossil fuels have been so incredibly useful in the development of civilisation to date and why the COP strategy is no strategy at all when you look at the underlying science.

Some Anarchist Writers visitor stats

Some stats for Anarchist WritersI was about to do an update when I noticed one of the authors is logged in so rather than risk have them lose whatever it is they are writing I’m going to hold off and fill the time by giving some details of visitor numbers, most popular articles, search terms etc.  The site has existed in some form for two years and our peak traffic so far was this October when we broke 10,000 unique visitors (10296 to be exact) and over 17,000 individual visits (the difference being due to some of the unique visitors coming here more than once in that period).  Our most popular article rather unsurprizingly is the Anarchist FAQ index page which has now had around 25,000 views since its creation a little over a year ago.

Working hours: Who is “we” paleface

"It’s just another manic Monday
Wish it were Sunday
That’s my fun day
My I don’t have to run day
It’s just another manic Monday"

(The Bangles)

 

Listowel – echo’s of the dark days of the 1980’s and the Kerry babies

Bishops hid priests who raped childrenI was half listening to the radio at breakfast this morning when some priest came on to defend a handshake. Which sounded strange so I started to pay attention. And suddenly found myself back in the dark days of Ireland of the 1980’s. The story on the news was simple if a little unbelievable. The previous day, Danny Foley, a nightclub bouncer had been sentenced for a sexual assault outside the club in Listowel where he worked. He’d been caught lying to the court and there was even CCTV evidence of his guilt. The Judge noted that "little or no remorse had been shown, nor any apology given to the victim" yet on conviction at least 40 or 50 men including the local priest had lined up to shake his hand.

 

Chasing Enda Kenny into the shadows at the ICTU budget protest

Unfair placard at ICTU protestI went along to the ICTU protest against the budget (called almost a full week after the budget!) last night.  While we were there we spotted opposition leader Enda Kenny and some of the Dublin Shell to Sea crew chased him up the street in order to ask him a a few questions.  I followed with the iPhone and shot some very dark video of him trying to evade the discussion.  The rally itself was crap, not much more than a thousand people and only two quick speeches from David Begg the general secretary of ICTU and Sheila Nunan the president of the INTO.  Neither said very much. Jack O’Coonor from SIPTU lurked in the corner of the platform looking at his feet but apparently he had lost his voice.

Seomra Spraoi, Automous Social Centre Project in Dublin

Thought id get back into the saddle of writing again, and to help motivate i’d try and pull together some previous work. This thread is about the social center project Seomra Sproai.

Working Eight To Eight

It was Budget Day last week. I wrote this blog while finding it difficult to concentrate what with the sense of impending doom.

In the weeks leading up to today’s budget the government had been in talks with the representatives of most of the Irish unions on how best to cut public sector pay.

Property is despotism

Well, something strange happened last week. Bill O’Reilly (right-wing talking head on Faux News), by accident I am sure, said something I agree with. Moreover, he agrees with those far-left people Noam Chomsky and Proudhon…

As part of his somewhat insane "War on Christmas" theme (yes, really, I know given that we are deluged by Xmas at this time of year), O’Reilly stated the following ( as reported here):