Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
Speculators no longer know where to go with their money. The German share index DAX stands at more than 13,000 points; on the eve of the financial crisis, in July 2007, it was 8,000. Property prices shoot up; art becomes almost priceless. For $450 million Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi […]
It’s almost eight months since Emmanuel Macron took up residence in the Élysée Palace after a second-round “victory” over Marine Le Pen’s Front Nationale. This “victory” was accompanied by a historic vote for Le Pen, dwarfing that of her father’s in 2002 against Chirac. Macron did not have the support […]
Patrick Pearse is an often misunderstood revolutionary leader. He is seen more as a romantic nationalist when compared with James Connolly. Indeed even today some on the left criticise Connolly for making an alliance with Pearse and the Irish Volunteers in 1916. The problem with this simplistic view is that […]
Gabriel Rosenstock introduces and translates another poem from the Indian subcontinent, a poem that sings of man’s hope and despair and the never-ending disparity between the privileged and the poor. [one_half padding=”0 4px 0 4px”] Abdul Sotalach Rahul Rai Samhlaigh le do thoil sotal Abdul bhoicht: Arsa Abdul bocht: “Bead […]
In the early 1950s American companies wanted to invest in Ireland so that they could expand into the European market; and Irish corporation tax policy was adapted for them. In 1956 export profits tax relief was introduced. Exports of manufactured goods were zero-rated (no tax); so American companies that exported […]
Every so often, history presents us with an amazing affirmation of our humanity, a sense of continuity, the passing on of the torch. This applies supremely to Robert Burns’s song “For A’ That.” Burns was highly regarded in the USSR Robert Burns, born on 25 January 1759, lived in an […]
Ideology has dominated the Irish housing sector since the outset. There is no period in history, even during times of relatively robust state house-building, that could be said to have had a stable or working housing system. From tenements to failed housing experiments to bubbles, the Irish story of housing […]
An introduction After hearing the minister for housing, Eoghan Murphy, declare the Government’s response to the housing crisis—namely changing planning regulations and restrictions for developments and the clear impact it would actually have—it reminded me of a small pamphlet that I picked up in Connolly Books back in 2008, Land […]
In its electronic newsletter in mid-December the web site German Foreign Policy (german-foreign-policy.com) reports on the launch of the European Union’s new “Military Union” strategy. The report states: “The German Government has announced that the EU Military Union will be officially launched this Monday, with the EU Council formally adopting […]
The merger of Impact, the Civil, Public and Services Union (CPSU) and the Public Service Executive Union (PSEU) will create a new 80,000-member, largely public-sector union, to be called Fórsa, in 2018. Towards the end of 2017, 86 per cent of Impact members who voted supported the merger; 76 per […]
Has the wage system hidden the class nature of our society, where one section—the capitalist class, the owners of finance and industry—exploit working people, the wealth-producers? It is this class that enforces the wage system, as they are the paymasters at the end of the day. Working people enter into […]
Most of the campaigning on zero-hour contracts and precarious work has dealt (rightly) with the retail industry, with Mandate leading the way. The education sector, however, has increasingly been hit by very similar conditions, which is an example of the growing impact of the state’s neo-liberalism. Part of the neo-liberal […]
In the unlikely event that any of our readers have invested in a significant number of shares in the British company Curry’s PC World, they would be well advised to sell before too long On a pre-Christmas visit to one of their larger stores I was surprised to find some […]
In 2016 James Wickham and Alicja Bobek produced a report for TASC into working conditions in Ireland in which they identified “enforced flexibility” as the major development in employment conditions for workers in all industries following the crisis. This enforced flexibility comes in a number of forms. For some it […]
At the time of the last general election in the South it was in vogue to remark that the only thing Sinn Féin were unsure of was whether they wanted to become the next Labour or the next Fianna Fáil. Now, in the light of the events of recent years, […]
Many people in Ireland yearn for a change of government, to one that would govern in the people’s interests and not renege on electoral promises once they enter Dáil Éireann. A noble dream it may be, but how real is it? Let’s briefly look at the Right2Water campaign. The CPI […]