Workers Solidarity Movement

Racism is definitely not a "new fruit" in Greek society and not a unique phenomenon to this country. I have witnessed it with my own eyes as it manifested throughout the years I was living there so I can share with you a little knowledge of how it ripens.

In Greece being different is not a good thing, as you will suffer a lot if you are a minority! Your life will be a living hell, if you are a woman or find yourself in a minority like being a  lesbian, gay, gypsy, Pakistani, Albanian, Egyptian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Nigerian... In other words it will take a lot of effort to escape being discriminated against and that's without mentioning the people that are prepared to stand up for all these people, the likes of socialists, autonomists, anarchists, people that volunteer in NGO's or anyone that cherishes humanism/altruism. For people to fit in, in a land the locals like to call Hellas (and of the sun) to survive within it is to stay silent and live life in a comatose state.   

We don’t know a lot about the personal life of this son of a small farmer.  He was the richest man in Ireland in 2008 with an estimated wealth of €4.7billion and now he is only out of jail because the Judge wants him to help the Irish Resolution Banking Corporation (IRBC) recover some of the €2.8 billion that he owes them.  You may never have heard of IRBC but you will know of it’s previous alias: Anglo Irish Bank,winner of the dodgiest bank award in a state where there is stiff competition for that prize.   His son is in prison, (plush Training Unit in Mountjoy) serving a sentence for what the Judge called ‘outrageous’ contempt of court as he sought to put money/assets beyond the reach of the bank.  His nephew Peter is supposed to be there for the same reason but has gone missing.  All we know about Sean – the daddy of the empire is that he’s big into the GAA and he likes to play poker for a few quid with his friends. Along with his love of poker, I would guess that Sean senior fancies the odd western.

Undoubtedly, Greece is the country that has suffered the most during this last and totally unrestrained wave of liberalization and fierce devaluation of labour which has been sweeping Europe since the start of the financial crisis in 2008. At the same time there are a multitude of political anti-systemic oppositional forces which have managed to maintain a living presence in Greek society.

The third world war

is coming

That's what they say

Fuck

This ain't gonna be

a class war either

Four anarchists including two Greek anarchists examine the real effects of the Euro crisis on the Greek population, resistance to the attempts to impose all the costs of the crisis on ordinary Greeks and the meaning of the second round of elections in particular the role of SYRIZA

While there is a tradition of grassroots campaigning against racism in Ireland, there is less discussion of what it means to be an anti-racist from an anarchist perspective. Most material focuses on obvious forms such as hate-speech or supporting Travellers & migrants in practical terms. The issue this article seeks to raise, is that in order to get it right we also need to look at ourselves on a personal level, recognise privilege and develop a wider critique that is truer to our own politics. As such I am writing as a white anarchist, to other white anarchists.

Almost a month has passed since the national conference of the Campaign Against Household and Water Taxes (CAHWT). While on the surface things look pretty quiet, this is a critical juncture for the campaign. The momentum that has been lost by the attachment of the CAHWT to the unsuccessful No referendum campaign will only be rebuilt when the government make their next move, but those active in the campaign need to use the coming weeks to prepare for that eventuality.

Eyewitness Afghanistan outlined the current political situation in Afghanistan as told through interviews Farah conducted with Afghan politicians, artists, religious leaders, community organizers, journalists and activists between December 2010 and February 2012.

It was as if our streets were paved in gold as the Olympic torch made its way across this bright new shiny Northern Ireland. We listened to  our local business leaders and political class lining up to praise this symbol of hope and reconciliation, but beneath this spectacle of spin and ‘regeneration’ smokescreen is a showcase of corporate class privilege and profiteering.

Workers’ co-operatives have always been championed by sections of the left and wider labour movement - from their advocacy by 19th century Welsh social reformer and utopian socialist Robert Owens to Proudhon through to their existence in various state capitalist countries today such as Cuba. While workers’ co-operatives can provide a small example of anarchist ideas based on self-management, direct democracy and mutual aid in action, we should not be blinded by their contradictions and should query their effectiveness as a strategy for real revolutionary transformation.

This session of the 2012 Dublin Anarchist Bookfair looked at the value of paper and ink when the net is usually declared the real frontier. We asked our panel to track some of the connections between todays underground radical press, and what went before.