Workers Solidarity Movement

The tragic deaths of at least 30 ‘asylum seekers’ at Christmas island of the coast in Western Australian is an indictment on an entire criminal system that condemns humanity to misery and enslavement in the interests of capital and statism.

As soon as the scale of the crisis became clear, all rhetoric about free-markets and competition vanished. Bankers, capitalists and right wing politicians were all suddenly huge believers in the role of the state and the importance of regulation.

The first 18 months of the crash from the Credit Crunch to the spread to the 'real economy.

Dr Mary Favier, a Cork GP and a founder member of Doctors for Choice, says the ABC case decision is a hugely welcome, important and significant decision. That will make a fundamental difference and force the government to legislate for the X Case. She then explains the background to the ABC v Ireland case currently before the European Court of Human Rights. She explains why the outcome of the case (and the issues it raises) are central to the predicament currently faced my thousands of Irish women every year in Ireland. Pointing out the Irish Government has fought the three women (A, B and C) along every step of their long and arduous route to the European Court, she also addresses the issue of the silence of within the Irish medical profession in relation to the matter of abortion. Over 5000 Irish women leave Ireland each year to have abortions in European countries.

Andrew Flood’s article “Capitalist crisis and union resistance in Ireland” (IAR 1) calls for a “debate on where we should put our energy”. This is a contribution to that debate. Andrew outlines the framework of the economic crisis and the balance of forces as the Irish workers’ movement attempts to respond to attacks by the bosses and their state. While the exact details of the government’s December budget are currently unclear, doubtless it will once again involve a massive attack on the living standards of working people.

Sevinc Karaca, a Turkish anarchist and feminist, describes the fine line that Muslim women must navigate between Islam and the West. "In all Muslim countries, women had to wait until the 1970s and 1980s for a feminist movement that questioned the practise of religion and its role in the oppression of women. As Feminists in the West beat around the bush with an air of multi-culturalist political correctness and go out of their way to show respect for exotic religions, there is a growing number of feminists in countries like Turkey and Iran and among the diaspora in non- Muslim countries whose policies and strategies for feminism do not take the route of Western Liberal Feminism. The majority of feminist ideologies and activism in the developed world today do not address and support the struggle of their Muslim comrades openly, directly or sufficiently."

A decade ago the US First Lady Mrs. Bush’s went on the radio in the first solitary address of any president’s wife in U.S. history to dare all decent people of the world to join the US and its allies in freeing the women of Afghanistan from the “brutal terrorism” of Islamic fundamentalism. Almost ten years later this explanation continues, Time Magazine weighed in with its July 2010 headline, What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan. This story about ‘freeing’ Afghan women only became politically expedient when the aim of capturing Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda proved harder to do than anticipated. So the Bush Administration asked Laura to polish off that erstwhile story of the savage East in need of an altruistic West, and they cleverly reinvented orientalism in the guise of “the woman question.”

Every year the so called “free education” that is our right, costs us more and more. If the proposed rise in registration fees goes ahead , it will mean many currently enrolled in college will have to drop out and college will simply not be an option for many of the next generation of potential students. All because the politicians are attempting to make the public pay for the mistakes of a small class of wealthy individuals. Many of us are up to our necks in debt, many more live in poverty. Due to the economic downturn, the job prospects when we graduate are poor and those of us lucky enough to find work will be taxed heavily to pay the banks’ and speculators’ debts.

As part of the budget protests at the Dáil Dec 7th 2011 Andrew Flood gave the following speech for the 1% Network at the left bloc rally. "If we wish to build a new society based on equality and real democracy, we need to find a way to take political power as well as economic wealth away from that 1%"

As part of the budget protests at the Dail Dec 7 2010 Gregor Kerr gave the following speech for the WSM.  In it he argues that, while we must fight the budget, we need to look beyond that and clearly say that capitalism as a way of organising society is morally and politically bankrupt. If we want to ensure that this financial crisis and the economic misery it has visited on millions of working class people across the world is the last, then we need to begin to organise not to change the administrators of capitalism, but to tear down that capitalist system and replace it with a system which places the needs of the many above the greed of the few.