Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
If you were to do an online search for “richest countries” you would quickly find lists where Ireland features prominently, by some estimates sometimes as high as the third-richest in the entire world. At the same time you would understand anecdotally, or perhaps personally, the difficulty with which people manage […]
Low pay is defined by the OECD as the pay of a full-time worker whose earnings are below two-thirds of a country’s median income. The proportion of workers on low pay ranges from 4 per cent in Belgium to 24 per cent in the United States. The Republic, at 23 […]
The housing crisis has laid bare the ruthless nature of capitalism, its parasitic and exploitative nature. There is simply no lengths it will not go to to secure its interests, to secure profits and the further accumulation of capital. But the housing crisis has exposed not only the real nature […]
“Yes, friends, governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class.” James Connolly The earliest recorded form of government is said to have been that of the Sumerians in fourth-century Mesopotamia (Iraq). This development led, in the fifth century in Athens, […]
A pension propaganda war has broken out, with selective leaks from the soon-to-be published report of the Pension Commission. The first leak suggested that the increase in pension age to 67 and 68 would be delayed by seven years. This was followed by a suggestion in the submission of the […]
On the 6th of October, at 1 p.m., the #BetterMaternityCare Campaign will be assembling outside Leinster House with the aim of ending the restrictions on birth partners’ access in maternity hospitals. While this campaign and associated groups, such as AIMS, have been raising awareness about the impact of covid-19 restrictions […]
Professor Geraldine McCarthy, chairperson of the board of the South and South-West Hospital Group, has become the third senior health figure to resign, following the departure of two other senior officials from the government’s Sláintecare reform scheme. The three lay the blame on the government’s continuing failure to implement reforms […]
The trade union movement is an integral part of Irish society and as such reflects how society sees women workers. It affects how the historical role of women as primary care-givers in the home can muddy the waters when it comes to equal pay, gender equality, and smashing the glass […]
Katherine Zappone’s rejection, respectful or otherwise, of an invitation to appear before an Oireachtas committee investigating her irregular appointment was symptomatic of a wider phenomenon. It was an example of a sense of entitlement shared by all those in the well-to-do strata of this, our class-bound, class-divided society. This is […]
Voters in Berlin have voted to expropriate large institutional landlords in a non-binding referendum that shows the fury Berliners have with rising rents and falling conditions. As part of the “Deutsche Wohnen & Co. enteignen” campaign, which targeted Deutsche Wohnen, a company listed on the stock exchange, and other international […]
Summer of Soul (or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is a documentary film directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson about the legendary Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969. It had its premiere on 28 January 2021 at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. More than forty thousand people […]
A lot of decent people believed that when Donald Trump was voted out of office and replaced by Joe Biden things would change for the better in the United States. The left-liberals, Sanders and others, even believed that Biden would lean to the left and that there would be a […]
Victor Klemperer is remembered for his seminal study of the language of the Nazis. Born the son of a rabbi on 9 October 1881 in Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland (then called Landsberg an der Warthe in German), Klemperer grew up in Berlin, where he was baptised as a Protestant. In the […]
Three hundred days have passed and 601 lives have been martyred in the farmers’ struggle in India. The struggle continues, and so does government apathy. Three laws were forced in an undemocratic way on the farmers, without discussion or consultation with trade unions or debate in the parliament: the Farm […]
Over the past year the powers that be have succeeded in reducing any and all political debate about the government’s response to the covid-19 pandemic to the single issue of vaccines. In doing so they have pitted workers against one another, in their time-honoured tactic, and distracted attention from the […]
Government housing policy is the cause of the housing crisis. Homelessness, waiting-lists and extortionate private rent levels are the symptoms. Universally accessible public housing is the cure, the solution, to permanently end the housing crisis. Government housing policy works very well for those it is designed to benefit: the speculators, […]