A <em>blog entry</em> is a single post to an online journal, or <em>blog</em>.
This audio consists of 10 brief interviews with public sector strikers made during the national strike on 24th November. Picketers at various locations across Dublin talk of what the strike is about, the effects of the cuts and how their unions organised for the strike.
A spectre is haunting the Left, the spectre of orthodox Marxism. In order to fully exorcise this pernicious spirit it is necessary to first understand it’s true nature. The orthodox interpretation of Marxism arose after Marx’s death through the work of Engels and the founders of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), most significantly, Karl Kautsky
Every time I write a new blog I send a link to my Facebook friends, typically 10-20% will then look at the blog post. Use of Facebook is a minor bone of contention among activists with (at least in Ireland) a small minority who refuse to use it. They have a point, Facebook is structured in such a way that using it gives vast amounts of personal and political information out to anyone with access. The scary thing is that it turns out that even if you are careful with privacy settings that ‘anyone’ includes any random person who puts a quiz or another app together(see below) . Despite this I still use it both for political purposes but also for the intended social networking ones, in this blog I’m going to muse about why this is so.
A good while back I blogged that I’d set up a personal twitter account but wasn’t really sure how useful it would be. In the last months though I’ve been developing a system for using twitter to provide ‘almost live’ news from protests through iPhone apps like Tweetreel, pixelpipe and tweetmic. This allows us to post photos, audio and video as well as simple text updates when we have someone with an iPhone (or similar smart phone) at a protest.
Back in June I published ‘The Shadow over Erris‘ an expose of the role of Shell, their Irish security company IRMS and the killing of Irishman Michael Dwyer during an attempt to start a civil war in Bolivia. In the period since some further facts have emerged from Bolivia and from some journalists digging for information in Ireland. The vast bulk of the media have however either ignore the story or even worse joined in the cover up attempts, Pat Kenny in particular should be singled out for mention. I’ve been updating the comments section of the indymedia publication from time to time, this blog entry is published in the aftermath of the RTE ‘Death in Santa Cruz’ documentary. This turned out to be better then expected, I mention it last in these updates.
El estado actual de violencia y represión contra las comunidades autónomas, no sólo en Chiapas, ahora también de manifiesto con la militarización de Guerrero[1] y el asesinato de dos jóvenes locutoras de la radio comunitaria triqui en San Juan Copala[2], nos invitan a reconsiderar el papel histórico que estas organizaciones autónomas representan, al rebasar no solamente los marcos de funcionamiento del estado, sino también la lógica misma del capitalismo, perfilándose como verdaderos movimientos antisistemicos.[3]<
Cerca de seis millones y medio de los indígenas que viven en zonas rurales en México son mujeres que sufren la violencia más cruel: la pobreza[1].
Several hours later (from previous entry) and I’m now somewhere over the atlantic. The plane is new fangled which means that the films are no longer tapes / dvds but running off a hard disk so there are lots of them and each individual can control the play rate. Clint Eastwoords Flag of our Fathers seemed the most promising of the movies on offer so I went for it fearful of some jinogistic justification for the current wry – Eastwood having a reputation as a right winger.
There are no direct flights in winter so my route to Canada takes me via London. I’d guess I have taken this flight, the 50 minutes from Dublin to London, 30 times in the last 20 years. Probably half of that time for political events of one sort or another. (a recovered post from March 2007, see end)
The last 18 months or so I’ve been reading and note taking furiously on the period around the 1916 insurrection in Dublin. I managed to get three articles and a talk out of it, probably 20,000 words or so. The missing bit though is what was going on in the north and thats what I’ve been working on since the summer. So now I’m sitting on a finalised 11.000 word first draft which Sovietpop is reading for me. (The entry is from Feb 2007, see note at end)