Book Review:The Situationists and the City, edited by Tom McDonough, (2009) Verso.
It isn’t entirely clear why Verso thought now would be a good time to publish a book of extracts from the writings of the Situationists about the urban environment and experience. Editor Tom McDonough, whose excellent introductory essay renders much of the subsequent material [...]

The title of this wee piece scans a little like a football chant. That might, at least at the start, make it easier reading for Ian O’Doherty of The Irish Independent. But it’s mainly a direct reply to his article today on asylum-seekers in Mosney, “It’s not racist to say sorry we’re full“.
There is a [...]

Book Review: Ireland’s Economic Crash, by Kieran Allen, The Liffey Press
Kieran Allen’s excellent analysis of Ireland’s recession, the first that this writer has encountered from an Irish Marxist, is predicated on a single simple truth: Since 1970, in the worldwide capitalist system, profits have been falling. For example, ‘the profit rate in 1997 was only [...]

This article is a slightly edited version of a presentation I gave at the Equality in a Time of Crisis conference, organized by the UCD Egalitarian World Initiative (EWI) and the UCD School of Social Justice in UCD last week.
The issues raised by an agenda of workplace equality have urgent implications for trade unionists.
By [...]

John Barry is Associate Director of the Institute for a Sustainable World and Reader in Politics both at Queen’s University Belfast.  He was educated at University College Dublin and the University of Glasgow.  From 2003-2009 he was co-chair of the Green Party in Northern Ireland and was a key figure in the creation of an [...]

A European country that scapegoats a Semitic people, persecutes defenders of human rights by stripping them of employment, and denies freedom of speech to Jews: surely a description of Germany during the Third Reich?
Yes, but unfortunately also a description of Germany at the outset of the 21st century.
In the wake of German Chancellor Merkel’s craven speech [...]

Comparisons between Ireland and Iceland abound, but as recent events there show, the public response has been more vociferous to the injustice of the Icesave bailout. However, as political activist, poet, editor and member of the Icelandic parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir shows here, Iceland is also like Ireland in that it is a small Island with [...]

Yesterday I spoke to Professor Terrence McDonough on the phone, about his talk at the recent TASC conference entitled Towards a Progressive Economics. In a conversation that lasted about 30 minutes Professor McDonough described how orthodox economics is commonly (and inaccurately) understood and suggested that the left in all its forms should take a fresh [...]

Paul Ginsborg is Professor of Contemporary European History, University of Florence and a frequent public commentator on politics and life in Italy. His books include A History of Contemporary Italy, Society and Politics 1943 - 1988 , Italy and Its Discontents: Family, Civil Society and the State , 1980-2000, and the bestselling biography Berlusconi: Television, [...]

Did anyone catch it?  Stephen Collins did but he didn’t give us the maths.  When Minister Lenihan introduced the Finance Bill he made a small amendment in the new income levy, imposing an extra one percent on incomes above €250,000.  In doing so he put forward two statistics:  first, that this would net the state coffers €60 [...]