Friday, Jan 27th 2012
The Options
All the papers are saying
the Invisible Hand
is on the way back.
Do you remember the last time it came,
not so long ago atall?
It stole your job.
It tried to throw you
out of your home.
It beat up your wife
and your children.
It kept pouring drink
down your brother’s
throat until he choked.
It tied the knot in
your niece’s boyfriend’s
suicide rope.
It smacked [...]
[This is an extended version of an article which first appeared in Look Left, Summer 2010.]
There are those who will tell you that Ireland has a unique love-affair with property, that home-ownership is part of our DNA - a kind of Celtic mortgage double-helix which drives us to buy houses regardless of cost, need or [...]
The Government is proposing to introduce a property tax in the forthcoming Budget. The definition of property likely to be used will be limited to people’s homes and is not likely to include assets such as foreign properties, stocks and bonds, land, luxury items such as paintings and vintage cars etc.
The Community Platform (a network [...]
Comment & Analysis Video: Joel Linares on 1989 ‘Caracazo’ Uprising Against Neoliberalism in Venezuela
Venezuelan grassroots community activist Joel Linares explains the origins and effects of the 1989 ‘Caracazo’ uprising against neoliberalism in Venezuela. This is an excerpt taken from ‘Inside the Revolution: A Journey into the Heart of Venezuela‘ (Alborada Films, 2009).
Recent political performances require a new verb. Imagine, if you will, a talk given to an audience where the speaker is discussing an object sitting between him and the audience. The object is clearly black but the speaker refers to it throughout his talk as white. He does this without irony giving no hint that he [...]
I’ve written about this issue here before, but some things deserve a second comment.
At the moment we have the combination (in Ireland as in several other northern countries) of an economic austerity package, an unpopular government tied to neoliberal economic policies more broadly, an ineffectual mainstream left pledged to the same basic [...]
Dear TDs,
It’s time for an election. It really is.
How long more can this charade of pretending you have a mandate from the “people” go on? You never had a mandate from the people in the first place - at most you had about 41% of a mandate from the 40% that voted [...]
Not paricularly Left (indeed, not really Left at all), but an interesting read nonetheless.
Ireland: The timidity of the lawyers
“Perhaps the biggest puzzle of Ireland’s 2+ years of economic crisis is the lack of progress on restructuring the banking sector, and in particular the reluctance to follow through on the implications of having [...]
Can Socialism be Revived? | The Progressive Economics Forum (Canada)
Bruce Livesey
Unfortunately, the two great experiments in socialism attempted during the last century – social democracy and the Stalinist model of state-controlled socialism – are now spent forces. In respect to sweeping capitalism into the dustbin of history, they both failed.
[...]
I would contend the two main [...]
Poblacht na h ÉireannTM
The Temporary Government
To the people of Anglo-IrelandTM.
IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of Mammon and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of subservience, we declare the name of this country to be Anglo-IrelandTM, and through us, Anglo-IrelandTM summons her children to aid her banks and abandon their [...]
