You may remember back in early December (2000) the news being dominated for several nights by coverage of the European Summit in Nice. An endless stream of politicians and political experts offered us their opinions on what new voting arrangements might be introduced. You might even be aware that there was some opposition on the streets of Nice to the summit, on December 7th most TV news items started with brief footage of a bank being set on fire
Writer: Andrew Flood
Articles by Andrew N Flood
IT HAS BECOME increasingly fashionable to use the term globalisation as a description of the international economy and international political relations. Globalisation is meant to have taken over from imperialism, when a handful of large states openly and directly ran most or the world.
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The Euro: the root of all evil?
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.
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The globalisation we demand
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.
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What is the World Economic Forum?
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.
In every country after February 15th 2003 the anti-war movement was faced with the question of what to do next. In Ireland almost all of the direct action protests were targeted on Shannon airport. More than half dozen successful actions took place, ranging from a large scale breach of the fence in October, to physical attacks on planes as the build up to war escalated. In response to these actions three out of the four airlines using the airport for troop transportation pulled out just before the start of the Iraq war.