Workers Solidarity Movement

Tens of thousands of Egyptians have taken to the streets to demand an end to the dicatorship of Hosni Mubarak. The protests echo the recent overthrow of the dictator in Tunisia. Today is a national holiday in Egypt to celebrate the police, a brutal force and a key component in keeping Mubarak in power.

Fine Gael and the Labour party are engaged in a desperate attempt to pass the Fianna Fail/Green party budget into law. A budget containing billions in cuts attacking the poorest sections of Irish society. A budget they loudly opposed only a few weeks ago.

I attended a public launch of the ULA in Cork city on Wednesday 16th of January. There was a real sense of purpose in the attendance and a fairly high level of energy , anger and enthusiasm.  It was clear from the start in the packed hall that people had come to not just listen but many to join up and play a role in the emerging organisation.

Limerick County Council has revived an old bylaw to enable it to seize caravans and cars belonging to Travellers.   The move comes as hundreds of members of the families of Travellers who call Rathkeale home arrive for the Christmas break.  This is an annual event that has been going on for years. Due to the lack of facilities families often end up camping on the roadside. This unavoibably causes tension with other local residents and road users. The county council has never made any serious effort to address the shortage of short term halting facilities in Rathkeale over the Christmas despite having fore knowledge of the problem.

Technical, Engineering & Electrical Union (TEEU) call for a campaign of civil disobedience. Union members overwhelmingly endorsed the emergency motion at their conference this morning.

This is the account of James - a WSM member from Cork - of what happened to him at the November 10th day of action in Rossport. James was the person with the bloody face whose image was featured on indymedia and the TV3 footage of the event.

Around thirty people attended an Anarchist meeting, in Cork, on war and the ongoing use of Shannon Airport for US military purposes.

I joined Sinn Féin in the mid eighties with many others on the back of what we saw as a radical shift to the left and a commitment to build a 32 county Democratic Socialist Republic. I find myself outside that movement now, thoroughly disillusioned with it and its shift to a left nationalist and social democratic electoralist future.

Just three years ago 7 people were jailed in Cork city as part of the campaign against the first attempt at non -collection. HASC members then brought their refuse to the City Hall when it was left uncollection. Fines led to imprisonment. The campaign succeeded with the corporation backing down. A few weeks later the High Court ruled that the council had to collect under the Health Acts, these were subsequently amended by the government to allow for non- collection. The first to suffer from this were in Dublin, but the plan was afoot for the rest of the country. Threatening letters have gone out in Cork city to all households. November 17th is the designated day for the beginning of non-collection in Cork and forces are being gathered for the showdown. The key issue now is to organise as many areas as possible, get people aware of the alternatives to Corporation collection and organise tactics to put the council on the defensive.

The Cork Autonomous Zone has bee functioning for over a year now. The shared space has become an irreplaceable part of the agitational infrastructure of anti-capitalism in Cork city.