Arrival, a recent and popular sci-fi film based on the Ted Chiang novella Story of Your Life, and China Miéville’s perennially popular Embassytown both build on a long tradition of fiction challenging and examining the power of language. These are especially interesting because of their focus on the interaction of […]
Previous Articles
The capitalist illusion and the independent state (part 2)
Part 2 ■ Part 1 of this article was published in February. All the wealth created by labour in the production process is appropriated by capital, only appearing in its money form in the exchange process, with a portion of the proceeds then being redistributed back to labour through the […]
Israeli Apartheid Week, 2019
23 February to 6 March Israeli Apartheid Week is an international series of events that seeks to raise awareness about Israel’s apartheid regime and to build support for the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement and to help in grass-roots organising for effective solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. […]
Letter: The Life and Times of James Connolly
On Monday 11 March at 3 p.m. in the Luke Wadding Library in Waterford Institute of Technology, Prof. Anthony Coughlan will relaunch the classic biography of James Connolly by Desmond Greaves. Prof. Coughlan is editor of the newly republished Connolly biography and is Greaves’s literary executor. He wrote the introduction […]
“Incredibly original” novel about the Northern conflict
The author Anna Burns from Belfast has won the 2018 Man Booker Prize for her novel Milkman. The chairperson of the judges, the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, described it as “incredibly original,” saying that “none of us has ever read anything like this before.” Burns is the first winner of […]
Build a People’s Dáil
Late in January some three hundred activists from all over Ireland gathered in Liberty Hall, Dublin, to celebrate the centenary of the first Dáil Éireann. The event, organised by the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum, attracted a wide range of forces, including trade union and community activists and women’s and […]
Raise the Roof Housing conference held in Dublin
On 30 January the Irish Congress of Trade Unions held a housing conference under the banner of “Raise the Roof.” The two main demands to come out of the conference were the need for public housing and for the right to housing to be enshrined in the Constitution of Ireland. […]
Not just ending partition but undoing the Conquest
Speech by Laura Duggan at the celebration of the first Dáil Éireann26 January 2019 Partition is the political arrangement created by British imperialism as a solution to the colonial crisis caused by the Irish Revolution. Partition and its institutions serve only the interests of imperialism, and we should not invest […]
Bono at Davos
I used to own an Alsatian dog. He was very partial to a dog biscuit called Bonios. When I first heard that Paul Hewson was known as “Bono” I was unable to dissociate him from the dog biscuit. He used to hang around Grafton Street in Dublin with the other […]
The capitalist illusion and the independent state (part 1)
In this series on the Capitalist Illusion I have tried to expose as clearly and plainly as possible the exploitative class nature of the capitalist system at the level of both the individual worker and internationally. The next task is to clearly understand how all this is facilitated within borders, […]
Christy Moore to unveil a plaque to Kildare communists
A plaque to the memory of the Kildare communist Frank Conroy, killed in Spain while fighting with the International Brigades, will be unveiled in June in Kilcullen Heritage Centre, Co. Kildare, by Christy Moore. Frank Conroy was born on 25 February 1914 in Kilcullen and was killed on 28 December […]
Venezuela screaming
Robert NavanVenezuela-Ireland Network “Make the economy scream” was Richard Nixon’s instruction to the CIA when the United States decided in 1973 to overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile. Other countries in Latin America have seen democratically elected leaders ousted by the United States or its proxies. […]
Brexit: Fact or fiction?
There is a lot more fiction than fact in the Brexit debate, the smoke and mirrors being created by the establishment here, in Britain, and in the EU. The Government are up to their necks in the propaganda war, and have failed to deal with Brexit in Ireland’s interest. Instead […]
All will change, change utterly—and for the better
“Oh, words are lightly spoken, said Pearse to Connolly.” This is a line from W. B. Yeats’s poem “The Rose Tree.” It is not, though, something always practised by the establishment in our 26-county republic. Their words are carefully chosen to deliver a message. Moreover, what they say and how […]
Towards a new republic
On 1 March 2019 the Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act (2017) will come into effect. This is to be welcomed; it is a step in the right direction for workers’ rights. We must always be aware that we are up against a formidable enemy in capitalism. The nature of capitalism is […]
A century of unfulfilled aspirations
Much has been written and will be written about the establishment of Dáil Éireann in January 1919 and its adoption of the Democratic Programme. That programme offered the people a vision of a better and more just Ireland, presented as a natural progression from the Proclamation of the Irish Republic […]