George Bush may have declared major combat operations over in Iraq on May 1st but resistance to the US occupation forces goes on. The killing today of one more US soldier at a petrol station in Baghdad means 42 have been killed in combat since that date, almost one per day. And every week US soldiers coming to and from Iraq continue to fly through Shannon airport.
Writer: Andrew Flood
Articles by Andrew N Flood
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Shannon – at the end of a long road
Report on the 12 April 2003 Shannon demonstration which was only attended by about 470 people, many of these being from the political parties that make up the IAWM. The movement that could mobilise 100,000 ends up leading 467 into a protest pen at Shannon as in the background military flights taxi for take off.
Report written in the aftermath of the attempted March 1st 2003 Direct Action at Shannon airport which looks at what happened and what it means for the anti-war movement.
Article written in the aftermath of the massive February 15th 2003 anti-war demonstrations arguing that now (before the wart started) was the time to be organising mass direct actions and arguing for the one planned for March 1st 2003 at Shannon airport.
Report on the October 2002 anti-war demonstration at Shannon airport when part of the perimeter fence was torn down and up to 150 people entered the airfield.
Over the Mayday weekend of 1998 around 250 anarchists travelled to the small town of Bradford in England for a weekend of activity which included a conference. As I understand it the planning for what was to become the J18 Day of Action against the city of London started at Bradford but in any case the spirit was certainly that of the anti-capitalist movement that was to emerge the following year. These are two reports I wrote at the time and the original conference program.
In Workers Solidarity 105 we reviewed David Simon’s ‘The Wire’. His follow on project ‘Generation Kill’ which features some of the same actors is a 7 episode series following the United States Marine Corps’ 1st Reconnaissance Battalion during the invasion of Iraq . It’s based on the book published by Rolling Stone journalist Evan Wright.
Bin charges; hundreds sleeping on the streets in the midst of an economic boom; soaring profits for the banks while many workers can’t afford decent housing; underfunding of health, education and public transport.
This is the reality for workers in Ireland today, elsewhere, and particularly in Africa, it is far worse. For years we have been told that this is the way it is, that there is ‘no alternative’. This is a lie.
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Prospects for revolution
This talk was probably part of a debate at a conference of the Irish anarchist groups (WSM, Organise, Class War) in 1994. We are living in a time of great change for the left. For this century the left has been identified with social-democracy (Labour, WP etc.) who saw socialism as being introduced through a few good men taking getting elected through parliament. Or by Leninists who saw socialism as a few good men being put into power by a revolution. Essentially both were variations on the Marxist conception of socialism. Anarchists who argued that socialism could not be brought about by a few good men but only by the self activity of the working class were dismissed as everything from dreamers to bomb throwers.
The Zapatista rebellion of 1994 has become the 90’s equivalent of the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions. It has excited the imagination of a layer of active young. The balaclava and pipe toting Marcos is becoming the same sort of visual icon that the bearded and beret wearing Ché was 30 years earlier. And perhaps it is this similarity that has scared the organised anarchist movement into comparative silence on the on-going rebellion in Chiapas?