Workers Solidarity Movement

Reading all that budget analysis you'd be forgiven for thinking that the unemployed were unaffected by the budget by and large; and you'd be wrong.  None of our news commentators in the mainstream media made much of the dramatic cut to the circumstances of the unemployed. A single person on the dole in rented accomodation is going to be €432 worse off this coming year.

This year as every year I went back to the place of my birth, Greece. I go back to Greece once, sometimes twice a year if I can. The experience of my last and recent visit to the place was a different experience all together that has me sick to my stomach and feeling extremely upset. 

Here in Ireland I read about Greece on a daily bases on the web, in the liberal mainstream and radical press and as well as I keep regular contact with people though phone calls and the internet. This gives me the false impression that I understand the current situation in Greece even though I'm living 2500 miles away from the place for a good 11 years now. Primarily I went back  to meet good friends and family but also because I have that odd habit to travel around the place try to figure out things for myself.

There’s a lot to be angry about. On the one hand mass unemployment, cut backs and pay cuts, we have death and destruction on a grand scale. On the other, the crushing bore­dom and alienation of everyday life. All of these various horrors are tied together, different faces of a single system. It exploits and exaggerates every tiny little difference between us from sexism to racism and nationalism, making us compete for scraps and hate each other as we fight while a tiny minority enjoy all the benefits. This system is global capitalism backed by the armed force of the state, a pattern of economic and political exploitation that reaches into every aspect of our lives. Class oppression is not simply a small cabal of the ultra-rich in Wall Street or Washington or London it's in every workplace, every police station, every dole queue, every courtroom, every prison and every territory occupied by Western militaries, and can only be sensibly understood as such.

Issue 124 of Ireland's anarchist paper Workers Solidarity  November / December 2011.

Welcome to issue 4 of the Irish Anarchist Review, produced by the Workers Solidarity Movement. This magazine aims to provide a forum for the exploration of theories, thoughts and ideas about political struggle, and where we would like to go and how to get there from the current situation. This magazine also seeks to be a place where people interested in revolutionary politics can read first-hand reports from people involved at the ‘coal-face’ of working-class struggles and perhaps reply to it with an article of their own. We believe there can be no revolution worthy of the name without a genuine sharing of political ideas between people.

There is no doubt that the political history of Greece is full of oppression and political struggle - from dictatorships to political prosecutions, jailings, exiles, shootings, torture, civil war, and countless strikes, demonstrations, occupations and protests that are put down by extreme state violence.

The last few years have seen a significant growth in the Freeman of the Land movement. Increasingly, its voice is being heard at environmental and other anarchist based protests and events, from the various UK climate camps to Rossport Solidarity Camp. 

1. Newspapers
2. Official papers
3. Books and journals
4. Interviews and correspondence

Newspapers
The Anarchist (Glasgow)
Belfast News Letter
Belfast Telegraph
Freedom
Irish News

Life is not easy in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia for young Miloš, between seductresses and...

Closely Watched Trains,
Czechoslovakia (1966) 92 mins
directed by Jiří Menzel

"one of the pinnacles of the Czech New Wave of the 60s" The Guardian

"earthy humor...wonderfully sly...charming and poignant comprehension of the psychology of sex" N.Y. Times

Sunday July 17th 8 pm at Solidarity Books 43 Douglas Street http://solidaritybooks.org admission free, donations appreciated

Film Night on Sunday nites hosted by Couchsurfers International 

J.S.A.: Joint Security Area, South Korea (2000) directed by Park Chan-Wook (director of acclaimed Old Boy) Sunday July 10th, 19.30 at Solidarity Books In the DMZ separating North and South Korea, two North Korean soldiers have been killed, supposedly by one South Korean soldier.