The leader of the UNITE trade union in Ireland, Jimmy Kelly, has written to each of the opposition party leaders calling on them to reject the agreement announced last night between the Irish government and the EU and IMF.
He has further asked for commitments that banking debt will be written down and that the cash [...]

The imposed “solution” to the Irish state’s growing and deepening crisis is to make every person an indentured servant to the needs and interests of EU finance houses, in particular to German banks. The National Pension Fund is now to be squandered to bail out banks that should have been allowed to go to the [...]

It is understandable that a large section of the population welcomes the coming of the IMF and the EU. They can’t do any worse at running our economy and banks into the ground as the Government have. And maybe along the way they can tell us a little truth. [...]

The first decade of the 21st century witnessed two mass media events that stand out from the rest: the first was visible, the second was invisible. 9/11 and its aftermath offered a feast of visible shock and awe. These images were devoured by media consumers, but the human realities they portrayed remained at a safe [...]

This interview is a translation of an article by Dominique Bari that originally appeared yesterday in L’Humanité. Trans: David Lundy.

“In Portugal, we too are in a phase of mass mobilization”.
For Manuel Carvalho da Silva, the country’s main union leader, the call for a general strike against the austerity policy is the beginning of a broader [...]

This is a slightly updated version of an article I wrote for the latest edition of the Scottish independent Marxist journal Frontline.
Ireland is now the centre of a European economic crisis, as the events of the last few weeks have made startlingly clear. The continuing rise in the cost of borrowing on the bond markets [...]

Public anger is growing.  Three austerity budgets and the banking guarantee have deepened rather than resolved the economic crisis. And now, in defiance of all the evidence the Government are going to continue with these failed policies with more vigor and determination that ever before.
The four-year plan and Budget 2011 will push thousands of families [...]

When journalists arrive at Government Buildings for the launch of the 4-year ‘plan’ they will have many questions on their mind.  Here’s one that should be asked.
The Irish economy has suffered from three years of a domestic demand recession. Domestic demand is the measurement of all components of our GDP excluding net exports.  It comprises [...]

The anger I’m referring to is not about the meltdown in my broadband, my modem, my phone line - which has kept me off-line for the last two weeks.
After the anger, the rage, the disappointment - we are still left with the question: what do we do. Just because the [...]

Every time we hear a minister, an economist or a journalist talking about the economic catastrophe, we hear them talk about the pain to be suffered by the tax-payer. We should listen carefully to the language our masters use, because language has a way of turning things into reality.
Tax-payers will pay for the catastrophe, they [...]