Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
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, […]
At the beginning of September the coalition government published its long-awaited final, final, final housing strategy, “Housing for All,” to solve the deepening housing crisis. Thousands are on local authority housing lists, and tens of thousands are trapped in rising rents which are completely unsustainable from the renter’s point of […]
Last month Kathy Sheridan, writing for the Irish Times, opined about the dilemma faced by Ireland’s middle class as they agonise over whether or not to vote for Sinn Féin. The problem, it would appear, relates to the fact that while the party is promoting progressive policies, it simultaneously glorifies […]
On Wednesday 1 September 2021 the most restrictive abortion law in the United States, the Texas abortion law known as Senate Bill 8, came into effect. This bill amounts to a near-complete ban on abortion in the state. It prohibits abortion as soon as cardiac activity in the embryo is […]
There was a great discussion recently with representatives of the Protestant/loyalist community about sectarianism and its roots, among other things, and the obvious effects on people and our society. That set me thinking about potential strategies. Socialists and republicans lay the blame for sectarianism at the door of British colonialism […]
There is a sense of déjà vu in the events that took place in Afghanistan, reminding us of what happened in 1975 when the United States was defeated in Vietnam. However, the outcomes are as different as chalk and cheese. If the outcome in Vietnam was a socialist government, which […]