Until recently, I never focused much on Libya. As part of the 1960s new left, I cheered the green revolution of 1969, as part of a wave of national liberation movements sweeping the world. Gaddafi seemed to be a revolutionary leader of a movement which overthrew a monarchy, set out to forge a form of [...]

This article was first published in #CrisisJam on politico.ie.
In December 2010, Afri published a report entitled ‘The IMF and Ireland: what we can learn from the Global South’. We looked at the record of the IMF around the world (generally appalling) and argued that the Irish ‘bail out’ deal would have similarly terrible consequences [...]

This is an extract from a just published paper prepared for Action from Ireland (Afri), December 2010. Click the link to access the full paper (PDF): The IMF and Ireland: What We Can Learn From The Global South.
The Politics of Denying Democratic Choice
Ireland has been a member of the IMF since 1957.[1] Despite [...]

…The United Left Alliance, launched 29th November 2010.
To download as a PDF (right-click this and select Save As)
Jodie Ginsberg, Reuters’ woman in Dublin, on TV3’s Vincent Browne Tonight on Thursday 25th November, when asked for her impression of the situation here, said “people are shell shocked”.
They have been for some time, but in little more [...]

It is now possible to begin to draw a tentative balance sheet of the vast movement against the reform (or more exactly, counter-reform) of the pension system that we have seen in France over the last few months. We need to look at the depth and breadth of the movement, the forms that [...]

And the big difference in twenty years? Money. Lots of it now. Back then, not enough.’ (Aine Lawlor, May 2006)
On 31 May 2006 RTE broadcast a ninety-minute documentary entitled That Was Then, This is Now. It consisted of nine personal reflections on Ireland and the changes the country underwent from 1986 to 2006. The contributors [...]

Risteard O’Dohmnaill’s film The Pipe encapsulates the balance of power in this shambolic republic - on the one hand the not inconsiderable determination and strength both personal and communal of ordinary people, and on the other the massive force of the state as expressed by the police, the judiciary, the army, the navy, the transnational [...]

Why everyone from your mother to your local fascist will love it.
Eagerly marketed as a ‘feel-good film’, Made in Dagenham has ditched the dour kitchen sink realism you might expect, for a triumphant, heart-on-sleeve dramatisation of a strike that changed British history and the lives of British workingwomen. In 1968, 187 sewing machinists for the [...]

Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People (Verso, 2010) Paperback £9.99 stg.
Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People, an academically minded historical work that nonetheless spent nineteen weeks on the bestseller list in Israel, is a book that is much more incendiary than it ought to be. Sand’s basic thesis – that [...]

Book Review: Living in the End Times, Slavoj Žižek (Verso, 2010)
Reading Žižek has always been as challenging as it is enjoyable, an experience of pleasure and pain that seems at times an intellectual correlate to the operation of objet petit a (little object a). The concept of objet petit a has been a constant in [...]