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| ARTICLES FROM THE ISN |
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Book Review: The Lost Revolution: the story of the Official IRA and the Workers Party |
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This work sets out to give a detailed narrative account of the rise and fall of Official Republicanism and its successors and in that it is remarkably successful. Some might demand more analysis but this is to miss the point: the authors prov. .... ... more... |
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The Southern Bank Robbery |
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For the last few months, there’s been a deafening clamour from the media and our political elite, telling us that we need to restore the public finances by slashing public-sector pay, unemployment benefit and other forms of state spendi. .... ... more... |
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Government attacks community projects |
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| In times of economic recession and massive unemployment, the services, facilities and programmes provided by the Community sector are more important and essential than ever. The Community sector’s role is to provide grassroots services to worki. .... ... more... |
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The end of social partnership |
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| While social partnership has been in existence for the last twenty two years it now appears to be on its last legs. It may be an appropriate time to review its outcomes. Employers, it seems, have been the principal beneficiary from partnership. . .... ... more... |
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Labour Gains |
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| As people try to figure out what happened to the Celtic Tiger, the Irish Labour Party has seen a big rise in its support. With Fianna Fail sinking to third place in the opinion polls, Labour has been scoring high across the country, with voters in Du. .... ... more... |
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Business as usual for Israeli apartheid |
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| When Barack Obama was elected he made many pledges about bringing peace to Israel/Palestine, and there was some hope he would end the Bush Doctrine of supporting Israel, right or wrong. In truth, most Palestinian solidarity activists weren&. .... ... more... |
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Would you buy a used car from these people? |
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Two names have been doing the rounds in the Irish media for the last few months: NAMA and “An Bord Snip”. In fairness, you can’t expect journalists to keep repeating a mouthful like “National Assets Management Agency&r. .... ... more... |
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Iran after the elections |
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Iran was rocked by the biggest protests since the 1979 revolution after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of this year’s presidential elections. Anne McShane spoke to Iranian opposition activist Yassamine Mather for Resistance. .... ... more... |
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Shell Shock in Mayo |
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When sacked workers at Thomas Cook defied a court order to leave the company building in Dublin’s city centre, they were arrested by Gardai who broke down the door at the crack of dawn and dragged them off to Bridewell Garda station. Th. .... ... more... |
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Book review - Rave twenty years on |
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Simon Reynolds Energy Flash: a journey through rave music and dance culture (Picador, 2008)
There’s a new edition of this classic history of dance music to mark the twentieth anniversary of the UK rave explosion, and Si. .... ... more... |
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Rough Guide to Socialism - The European Union |
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The European Union has divided opinion on the Left. Some people see it as a bulwark against the power of multi-national corporations that can defend the rights of workers and protect the “European social model”. What they have in . .... ... more... |
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Rough Guide to Socialism - Changing the Media |
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If you had any doubts about the conservative bias of the Irish media, the last year will have set them to rest. From every corner of the print and broadcast media, we’ve been deluged with propaganda about the economic crisis, trying to . .... ... more... |
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How France\'s LCR organises |
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What is the membership of the LCR, roughly speaking? How long has it been around?
The Ligue has at present approximately 3000 members. It was formed in 1974, basically as the continuation of the Ligue communiste, which was formed in . .... ... more... |
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The builders gave us this crisis - now they must give us their land |
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The current economic crisis wasn’t caused by civil servants, or even by US multi-nationals. The blame lies with a cosy network of property developers, bankers and politicians who made fortunes out of the housing bubble before it crashed. .... ... more... |
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Left must rise to the challenge |
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Irish capitalism is in poor health and according to all the “expert” economists the likelihood for a speedy recovery isn’t good. Our leaders believe they have the cure to the problem: take all the money supposed to be earmar. .... ... more... |
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Opposing cuts is a public service |
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At a time when the Irish economy is going down the tube at an alarming rate, it’s heartening to see that petty differences are being set aside in the name of a higher cause. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the Irish Times and the Sund. .... ... more... |
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Responding to the crisis - views from the Left |
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| Resistance asked a number of left-wing groups for their suggestions on what the Irish Left should be doing to respond to the new situation as we face a ruthless offensive by employers and the state against working-class people.
&n. .... ... more... |
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Book review - Inside Ulster Loyalism |
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| Jim Cusack and Henry McDonald UVF: The Endgame (Poolbeg, 2008)
Jim Cusack and Henry McDonald are well placed to tell the story of the UVF, having spent decades building up contacts inside the loyalist scene. If you want to know what happened over. .... ... more... |
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Rough Guide to Socialism - Public Ownership |
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| After decades when privatisation was the only game in town, western governments are nationalising at a fierce rate. The Irish government has taken over Anglo Irish Bank, and a big chunk of the financial sector in the UK is now under state ownership. . .... ... more... |
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Lisbon Mark II carries the day |
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| Any hopes that Ireland – the only European country whose people were allowed to vote on the Lisbon Treaty – would throw a spanner in the works a second time were dashed by the unequivocal vote in favour of Lisbon on October 2nd. The large. .... ... more... |
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Workers show their anger at economic crisis |
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| 150,000 people took to the streets of Dublin on February 21st for the biggest demonstration since the 1980s. The march had been called by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) in protest against the government’s handling of the financial cr. .... ... more... |
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1968 - Forty Years on |
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| Forty years on from the political struggles of 1968, there\'s been no shortage of conservative pundits eager to mock the generation of radicals whose actions briefly raised the spectre of revolution from Paris to Mexico City. Often the pundits themse. .... ... more... |
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Beyond the Life of Brian - Sectarianism and the Left |
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| Anyone who has been around the radical left for a while will have heard countless jibes about the “People’s Front of Judea”. The stubborn relevance of a Monty Python sketch from nearly thirty years ago suggests that left-wing sectar. .... ... more... |
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Democracy vs. Capitalism |
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| It’s common to hear social democrats and others on the moderate end of the Left spectrum say “we want to change society, but we don’t believe it’s necessary to have a revolution – we want to advance our goals through dem. .... ... more... |
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The Rise and Fall of Communism in Europe |
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| After the fall of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe, people rushed to proclaim that the experiment was doomed to failure from the beginning. Capitalism is the only viable system. Breaking with the rule of the market was always bound to end in bl. .... ... more... |
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The Ideas of Karl Marx: A Basic Introduction |
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| History
Marx’s view of history is not just about what happened years and years ago. It is a way of understanding how people think and act in general, today as well as in the past. Marx’s starting point is that people have to produce thei. .... ... more... |
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The Ideas of Rosa Luxemburg |
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| The history of the twentieth century was dominated by the struggle of the left for political change. Most important events, from the October Revolution to the rise of Hitler, from the Cuban missile crisis to the fall of the Berlin wall, can only be e. .... ... more... |
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Leon Trotsky - a flawed prophet |
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| A landmark of sorts was reached a short while ago when Hugo Chavez became the first head of state to describe himself as a Trotskyist. For a while it seemed as if Trotsky’s memory had been consigned to the dust-bin of history after the fall of . .... ... more... |
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Reflections on the Anti War Movement in Ireland |
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| Before making a number of personal observations on the activities of the anti-war movement in Ireland, I think it is necessary to take the opportunity to analyse some general aspects of opposition to the war in an international context.
In the war t. .... ... more... |
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Green fig leaf: the weakest link |
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| The Green Party’s decision to enter government with Fianna Fáil hardly came as a surprise given that party’s drift to the right, but the scale of the sell-out leaves one breathless. Anyone expecting radical reforms will be sorely d. .... ... more... |
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Labour Pains: The Irish Labour Party |
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| Labouring Under An Illusion
No matter how many times Labour enters coalition government, breaks its election promises and fails to defend working people on even the most basic level, the party seems to recover after a few years in the wilderness. Th. .... ... more... |
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Prospects for The left in The Republic of Ireland |
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| The Reformist Parties
The Irish Labour Party often seems like a pale imitation of its British counterpart. During the 1980s it came complete with its own Militant Tendency, soft left and right wing leadership. Having expelled the Militants and bough. .... ... more... |
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Battle over Rossport |
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| The first battle over the Mayo gas pipeline may now be over, but the war has just begun. The people of Rossport will need to be very determined if they’re going to defeat a ruthless multi-national and its backers in Leinster House. But they&rsq. .... ... more... |
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When the Boom goes Bust - Thoughts on the Demise of the Celtic Tiger |
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| It’s not just dyed in the wool Marxists who are eyeing up the Celtic Tiger to check for signs of fatal illness. Even the poster boy of popular capitalism, the economist/journalist David Mac Williams, has taken to making dire warnings of about t. .... ... more... |
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Whatever Happened to Anti-Capitalism? |
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| The G8 will be visiting Germany next summer, and the “travelling circus” of protesters (as it was dubbed by Tony Blair) are already mobilising for the occasion. But it seems clear that the hey-day of summit protests is long past.
The gre. .... ... more... |
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The Left and the Balkan Wars |
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| There was a flurry of excitement some time ago about a controversial interview with Noam Chomsky in the Guardian. Chomsky himself strongly contested the account of his views given by the article, and in due course the paper repudiated it. Reading ove. .... ... more... |
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Sarko\'s victory in French elections |
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| The widely-predicted victory of Nicolas Sarkozy in the French presidential election has prompted a fairly nauseating display of triumphalism from all those who believe that strikes are only legitimate when they take place on the territory of Middle E. .... ... more... |
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The Race for the White House |
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| When Ralph Nader threw his hat into the ring for the US presidential elections, you could have scripted the response from partisans of the Democratic Party in advance – especially from those who like to flaunt their ‘liberal’ creden. .... ... more... |
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Is Venezuela on The Road to Dictatorship? |
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| As Evo Morales moves to nationalize his country’s hydrocarbon reserves, attention has again been drawn to the man identified as the root of Latin America’s creeping radicalization – Hugo Chavez. It’s typical of short-sighted e. .... ... more... |
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After the re-election of Chavez - where now for the Bolivarian Revolution? |
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| There was no great surprise when Hugo Chavez was re-elected as president of Venezuela before Christmas. But only a brave man would try predicting exactly how things will go from there. Whatever else may be uncertain, it seems likely that the next few. .... ... more... |
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Venezuela After The Referendum |
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| Hugo Chávez suffered his first electoral defeat last weekend as a referendum on amendments to the Venezuelan constitution was defeated by a narrow margin. The result has naturally delighted opponents of Chávez at home and abroad. Behind. .... ... more... |
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What will Tony Blair\'s legacy be? |
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Whatever the timing and circumstances of his final departure will turn out to be, it’s clear now that Tony Blair is on his last legs. The man who swept Labour to power in Britain nine years ago in a tidal wave of sound-bit. .... ... more... |
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Book review - Democracy: Crisis and Renewal - Paul Ginsborg (London, 2008) |
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Ed Walsh
There were two remarkable things about the Lisbon Treaty referendum that have been almost completely ignored by the men and women whose job it is to chew over Irish politics on a daily basis. First of all, the result showe. .... ... more... |
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After the Gaza massacre - Time to Boycott Apartheid Israel |
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| This motion was adopted by a national meeting of the Irish Socialist Network in January 2009
The Israeli assault on the people of Gaza was not “excessive” or “disproportionate”: it was a calculated massacre of civilians. .... ... more... |
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Split in RESPECT |
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| The British Left has now experienced two acrimonious splits in the space of eighteen months. After the grim transformation of the Scottish Socialist Party into two bitterly-divided camps, their comrades south of the border now have their own feud to . .... ... more... |
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How can we re-build the Left? What kind of Left should we be trying to build? |
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Speech delivered on behalf of the ISN at the Anarchist Bookfair in Dublin in March 2009
I got a big pile of DVDs for Christmas that we spent the whole of January working through – we don’t have a telly in our flat –. .... ... more... |
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Book review: Iran Today - Dilip Hiro |
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| It remains to be seen whether the Bush administration will launch another reckless military adventure. But it does seem fairly certain that Washington is incapable of executing a full-scale invasion of Iran. With its forces tied down in Iraq, the US . .... ... more... |
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Palestine: Class, Colonialism & Economy |
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| With the American "victory" in the Iraq War, world attention has again turned to Palestine. There is no doubt that this was a war for oil but it also put in place another piece in the great jigsaw called global dominance. ‘Stability&r. .... ... more... |
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Crisis In The SSP |
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| The Tommy Sheridan affair probably hasn’t run its course yet: there’s bound to be a few twists and turns left before we can close the book on the whole saga. But it’s possible to draw up a provisional balance sheet after the events . .... ... more... |
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Putting \'Islamo-Facism\' to bed |
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| If there’s one term in modern political language that badly needs to be put verifiably beyond use, it’s “Islamo-fascism”. The “Islamo-fascist” label has been used to justify imperialist war and aggression in the na. .... ... more... |
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Socialist Classics: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte |
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| Introduction
A left-leaning friend of mine once responded to an invitation to a day-school on Marxism by firmly rejecting the idea that the works of a man dead for over 120 years had any relevance to today’s socialists. On re-reading The Eigh. .... ... more... |
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If at first you don\'t succeed ... Lisbon Mark II |
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Ed Walsh
Since the Irish people voted to reject the Lisbon Treaty in June 2008, the response of the European political elite has confirmed something that was already well attested by the experience of other countries: voter. .... ... more... |
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Socialists & Palestine |
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| With the imminence of a full scale US/British attack on Iraq, under the pretence of dislodging their former protégé Saddam Hussein and his brutal Baathist regime, there is a real danger that the Israeli state will take this opportunity . .... ... more... |
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Crisis in Gaza |
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| Violence in the Middle East has surged since the end of February. Coverage in the western media over the past week has concentrated heavily on the killing of eight Israeli students in Jerusalem, claimed by a previously unknown group, and the approval. .... ... more... |
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Israel\'s war on Lebanon |
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| Sometimes it’s hard to accept that life is contradictory, things are never one-dimensional, that contrary and competing traits can exist within as well as between classes, political movements etc. So while some on the Left parade under infantil. .... ... more... |
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Gorgeous George |
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| George Galloway could hardly object to being called a polarising figure. And indeed, he’d surely be happy to accept the label – his whole approach to politics is brash, abrasive and designed to provoke a strong reaction. But hostility to . .... ... more... |
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New dawn fades in Belfast |
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From the outset, the sponsors of the “peace process” have been keen to depict Northern Ireland as a society gradually coming to peace both with itself and with everyone else. Anyone who has stumbled upon a tourism advertisement fo. .... ... more... |
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Back to the eighties |
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| We all like a bit of ‘80s nostalgia – at least judging by all the retro nights in pubs and discos and the TV programmes about electro-pop bands and silly haircuts. But that doesn’t mean we have to repeat everything that happened in . .... ... more... |
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Lisbon Treaty - After Ireland\'s \"No\" vote |
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| The ISN welcomes the decision of the Irish people to reject the Lisbon Treaty – a document that would have promoted the militarisation of the EU, entrenched Thatcherite principles in European law, and further undermined democracy. After this re. .... ... more... |
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When boom goes bust - thoughts on the Celtic Tiger\'s demise |
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| It’s not just dyed in the wool Marxists who are eyeing up the Celtic Tiger to check for signs of fatal illness. Even the poster boy of popular capitalism, the economist/journalist David Mac Williams, has taken to making dire warnings of about t. .... ... more... |
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The Battle of the Bins |
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| The Abolition of Rates
In 1977 the largest party in the Republic, the right-populist Fianna Fail (which means the rather fascistic sounding ‘Soldiers of Destiny’) won a landslide victory in a general election. They had campaigned on a gi. .... ... more... |
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Parting Company - ending social partnership in Ireland |
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| Introduction
"We might, if we choose, make a point against our political historians by pointing out that prosperity such as they speak of is purely capitalistic prosperity-that is to say, prosperity gauged merely by the volume of wealth produce. .... ... more... |
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More of the devil we know - winners and losers of Election 2007 |
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| End of the Boom Times
There’s no denying that this was a bad election for the left. Setbacks turn into major defeats in the absence of rational analysis of what went wrong. This is an attempt to start such an analysis.
The Fianna F&aa. .... ... more... |
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Socialists and Palestine |
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With the imminence of a full scale US/British attack on Iraq, under the pretence of dislodging their former protégé Saddam Hussein and his brutal Baathist regime, there is a real danger that the Israeli state will take this oppo. .... ... more... |
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Iraq - time for the occupiers to leave |
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| Two years after George Bush proclaimed “mission accomplished”, Iraq still hasn’t sunk into peaceful obscurity. Appalling scenes of carnage on the streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities have forced it back onto the news agenda. Th. .... ... more... |
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