Irish Left Review - Joined up thinking for the Irish Left

Ireland is in the middle of a catastrophized recession. This will come as no surprise to anyone in Ireland, though perhaps it is not known as well internationally as one might think. One of the crucial features of the time leading up to the boom was the activity of the property developers, the ‘risk-taking’ darlings of the neo-liberal miracle. The developers built and built, while prices and availability of cheap credit grew. Until one day it all fell apart and the Irish economy collapsed into a heap on the floor. What was once ‘prime residential’ housing, is now a ‘toxic’ asset. A crucial feature of the post-crash Irish landscape is the presence of vacant or half-built houses and apartments. The question I want to address here is what those radicals concerned with social justice in Ireland should do in the face of this landscape. To get to the point, I would like to go back and point towards an alternate historiography which reveals that rights have been used in truly radical demands and assertions. This is necessary to challenge the (neo)liberal hegemony that rights are ultimately a relation to the state, and that the economy/market is the necessary determinant of policy. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, questions of property are key.

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As part of the ongoing relationship with Aontas. It was suggested in mid 2008 that DCTV and the Aontas – Community Education Network would be a good fit to explore a production project. This series, supported by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland sound and vision scheme is the most visible result of that partnership and seeks to bring the techniques, principles and potential of community education fully into view.

All of this material will be broadcast on Dublin Community Television and will be made available for other community television stations both within Ireland and abroad. Thanks to the support of the Broadcasting Authority and Aontas, a production crew and director were able to engage with the community education sector over an extended period and develop not only an awareness of the story of community education but also the importance for community television of the practice and principles the sector had developed.

From the development of television as a learning tool and the transformative potential in our work to the very real yet important insistence of using circular studio designs as opposed to the simpler to shoot yet less inclusive designs we had been using previously, the nearly two years work on this series has been profoundly influential on DCTV. We think that these “innovative, creative, critical, educational, and entertaining programmes that focus on real people and communities” that form the Beyond the Classroom series not only capture the spirit of community education but also point a way for community television as it too is transformed by these important concepts.

In the second story Tallaght drugs activists talk about working with An Cosan.

Beyond the Classroom - The Communities -Ep2 from DCTV on Vimeo.

Larry Elliott’s article about the current Eurozone crisis in yesterday’s Guardian contained a reference to some interesting research to come out of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. The paper, titled Eurozone Crisis: Beggar Thyself and Thy Neighbour contains some thoughtful insights into the underlying structural causes of the current predicament. It argues that the EU has created a core and periphery relationship with export-led Germany running current account surpluses, and the periphery countries suffering from persistent deficits, high consumer borrowing and/or investment bubbles characterised by property speculation, leaving them open to a sovereign debt crisis. Greek is the most obvious manifestation of this, but it applies to Spain and Ireland.

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Aggressive free market approach disastrous for development, demo warns

In Brussels today campaigners warned that the European Union’s free market trade policies are savaging poor people and the environment in developing countries, and have staged an action outside a DG Trade conference in Brussels where senior EU figures were discussing the issue of trade with developing countries[1].

The action, organised by the Seattle to Brussels network[2] used a five-metre inflated savage dog, representing EU trade policy, which was let off its lead by a giant EC business official, attacking victims representing small farmers, small businesses, women and indigenous people from the developing world.

DG Trade is today hosting a conference on EU Trade Policy towards Developing Countries in the Charlemagne Building.

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Irish, English, Scots and Welsh people are so reluctant to talk about death they often fail to tell their families what they want to happen to them when they die, or so a recent survey has found. 60% of people have not written a will, including a quarter of over-65 year olds. And of those who have made a will, 81 % have not written down any preferences for their own death, such as whether they want to be buried or cremated or if they want their organs to be donated or not. The study was carried out by the Dying Matters Coalition, and published today, Monday March 15th, to mark the start of an awareness week to encourage people to talk about death with relatives and friends before it is too late.

Dying Matters Coalition …the name of the group and the results of this remarkable study got me thinking.

Ideas and movements die too. The cemeteries of political parties are overflowing with monuments of organisations that were able, not so long ago, to evoke passions, lead massive crowds….but have since fallen to disarray. Who remembers today the visionary radical parties of Europe – one of the most powerful centre-left forces of the 19th century? The winds of history seem to have blown that movement away. What has happened to stalinist communism that was able to galvanise and lead millions of workers and peasants to the dream of the dictatorship of the proletariat? Where are those dreams buried? What has happened to anarchism?

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In 1975, the victorious Viet Minh entered Saigon, the capital of the South, following a 30 year struggle against a range of international forces. For the first time, since its occupation by France in the late 19th century, Viet Nam was independent and no longer subject to the dictates of foreign powers.

However, while the lengthy and costly conflicts, which had resulted in the loss of 3 million Vietnamese lives, were over, they left in their wake a debilitating legacy of obstacles to the country’s future economic development.

Viet Nam had been subjected to an aerial bombardment three to four times greater than the total tonnage released during WWII but it was the use of chemical defoliants which has had the greater long-term detrimental impact on the country and its people. These defoliants had been used by the US military to strip away the omnipresent lush and abundant forests in the south and centre so the Vietnamese resistance could be better targeted.

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