In 1762 Jean Jacques Rousseau published his book, The Social Contract, in which he wrote,

“In Greece, all that the populace had to do, it did for itself; it was constantly assembled in the public square.”

Rousseau was well aware of the importance of public spaces when it came to political change. Indeed, the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 showed the power of the populace against armed guards defending the medieval fortress, armory, and political prison in Paris which at the time represented royal authority. Interestingly enough, the decision had also been taken to replace the Bastille with an open public space and the fortress was demolished within five months. Since then many open public spaces around the world have been the centres of political activity. read full story / add a comment

Irish Rail workers were out on strike recently. What’s going on?

The WSM recently caught up with J, an activist and worker at Irish Rail, to find out.

For background details, see our analysis, "Why Irish Rail workers are right to strike", published here. https://wsm.ie/c/why-irish-rail-workers-are-right-strike read full story / add a comment

Contribution to the Discussion on the Centinnial of the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution
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Will the next General election feature many new candidates.
Will they make much of a difference or will many be elected?
What formula should people use to vote i.e 1 to 5 even if it is the least bad of a bad lot? read full story / add a comment

Despite the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, the Israeli state is never going to grant the Palestinians complete autonomy or independence. As recently as last week in London Netanyahu said there could never be an independent Palestine. So they have to actively maintain a state of conflict, and heightened security. read full story / add a comment

Given recent behaviour of google and facebook, Now more than ever, activists need to reduce their addiction and dependence on these corporate websites to disseminate their message and store their data. read full story / add a comment

Ireland’s hare coursing fraternity has taken a big hit. Coursing “trials” - big money spinning events in which hares are terrorized and subjected to agonizing injury or death- are to be downgraded to one- day sessions aimed purely at familiarizing hares with coursing venues. read full story / add a comment

This is a repost from Thierry Meyssan site and it discusses how the US military-intelligence industrial complex has co-opted the far Left, largely unrealized to themselves in the fight for US imperialism. The story of Kobane and Rojava got a surprising amount of coverage in the mainstream and that in itself is often a red flag because they don't give publicity for nothing unless there is a propaganda reason for it. While maybe a surprise to some, the US via it's pawns like Saudi Arabia and up to recently Turkey, were and are the main backers of ISIS in all it's forms, from support, logistics, weapons, oil-purchase, it is all part of a greater goal to destroy Syria, and use the Kurds to carve out their own state and in the process to give the US a bridgehead to attack Iran, break up Iraq, and permanently cripple Syria. The US will also ensure that if the Kurds manage to form their own state, they will setup it up to Balkanize it and leave it in a permanent state of war so they can play the old divide and conquer game. Over the previous decades the US has previously backed and then dropped the support for the Kurds many time and betrayed them. So while the Kurds may well deserve their own state, these things do not occur in a vaccum.

When the Russians were invited by Syria to support it in crushing ISIS in 2014 and so far they have gone along way and block the US's plan A for Syria, they came up with plan B to use the Kurds to achieve the goal. There is no doubt that there was and is a pre-existing left leaning movement within the Kurds and even with Anarchist tendencies or elements to it but it just seemed all too good to be true and the immense resources and budgets of US imperalism and it's NATO allies, has the means to control the show as outlined in Meyssan's article read full story / add a comment

The recent furore over Public Service Card (PSC) has highlighted the sly and underhand way the government has tried to introduce identity cards through the backdoor. In a typical fashion for the political system in Ireland, they have without any public discussion, legislation or clear thought tried to push this through to the unsuspecting public or at least most of them. Even the police state next door, the UK, rejected identity cards when the UK House of Lords rejected identity cards in early 2006. read full story / add a comment

My dear Irish friends,
Let me introduce the English version of my e-book The Stone Portals devoted to the study of prehistoric Stone artefacts, the first two Chapters (http://www.astrotheos.com/EPage_Portal_HOME.htm) of which I have just posted at my site www.astrotheos.com.
I appeal to you in connection with the fact that much of the material presented in Chapter 2 is devoted to the reconstruction of the prehistoric solar calendar of the Celts, the key days of which are reflected in the festivals (Samhain et al.), and in correlation with the astronomical alignments of the Passage Mounds, and before all – of the Mound of the Hostages, which I analyzed numerically for all the data that I had.
I would not be distracting your attention if the results obtained in relation to precise determining the exact days of these festivals on the alignments of the mounds would not coincide with the same values determined by the astronomical alignment of the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, and a number of other stone artefacts as well.
From my point of view, the results obtained could contribute not only to a more complete disclosure of the properties of these passage mounds and the ancient culture of the Celts in general, but also to that that in scientific, administrative, and esoteric circles, much more attention was paid to preserving and study of these remarkable objects.

Good luck,
Prof. Sergey Smelyakov, Doctor of math, PhD
Kharkov
astrotheos@yahoo.com
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Food Not Bombs recovers and shares free vegan food with the public without restriction in over 1,000 cities around the world to protest war, poverty and the destruction of the environment.
Each group is independent and invites everyone to participate in making decisions for their local chapter using the consensus process.

Food Not Bombs is dedicated to taking nonviolent direct action to change society so no one is forced to stand in line to eat at a soup kitchen expressing a commitment to the fact that food is a right and not a privilege. With over a billion people going hungry each day how can we spend money on weapons or war.

A new initiative has been started in Dublin. we appeal for volunteers.
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We all know that fruit is good for us. Recent studies suggest we should be eating up to ten portions of fruit and veg each day. But how much is too much? read full story / add a comment

The large vote for Corbyn's Labour socialist type policies shows that moving to the Left rather than the centre resonates with the masses and shows that things like issues of health, education and jobs are core issues and perhaps shows a sign that a certain section of the population is beginning to notice that practically every political party is infested with banking and corporate favoured policies and shrills and technocrats working on their behalf while the population is being relentlessly screwed by austerity. read full story / add a comment

This article is written as a counterweight against 21th Islamophobia,
since few people realize, how much the European civilization owes
the Moorish rule in Medieval Spain. Without this rule, there probably
should have been no Renaissance, also sciences as Algebra, chemistry,
astronomy etc derived from the Arab [Greek] civilization. You know
a Medieval English King nearly converted to Islam? Read further read full story / add a comment

This is opinion & analysis piece comes from Integrity Ireland who are attempting to fight corruption in the legal system and face an uphill struggle in their task and this piece illustrates well what they are up against.
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Well, it has been an interesting few weeks again, with reports of increasingly odd and bizarre ‘developments’ – especially regarding decisions being made by Gardaí, by Courts Service Staff and by senior personnel at the DPP’s Office. read full story / add a comment

One would think there would be enough intelligent and discerning people within the lawyerly world of the ACLU to have paid some real attention to the actual many and damning Wikileaks (both before the election and after), as well from real progressives like the Sane Progressive Debbie Lusignan, H.A. Goodman, and equally top quality libertarian writers like Justin Raimondo (and dozens of others who have actually been trying to tell truth against the avalanche of lies coming from both the traditional left and traditional right and mainstream media). read full story / add a comment

With the Greyhound Industry Bill due before the Oireachtas in the coming weeks, legislators need to be lobbied to ensure that any greyhound owner or trainer convicted of “blooding” greyhounds be banned FOR LIFE from access to, or ownership of, animals of any kind.

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The Irish American elite wish to claw their way up into the higher echelons of the US capitalist class. To do so they crush all talk of Irelands revolutionary socialists and its revolutionary traditons and instead were green and even in Chicago dye the river green. read full story / add a comment

The coup of 2016 double hit democracy in Brazil: it overthrew an honest president from power, without being able to point out against her rigorously no wrong attitude, thus trampling the constitution, which does not admit this alternative, and passing, in practice, the presidentialist regime to The parliamentarian, without consulting the population, a hypothesis that is also forbidden by the Magna Carta.

It is fundamental that democratic sectors outside Brazil, support the struggle of Brazilians for the return of democracy and presidentialism!

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My book has just been published and given time it will result in the elimination of neoliberalism because I show how it derives from a United Nations 'hidden' collectivist agenda which involves major violations of the Universal Declaration and the UN Charter. I recommend that the West, which has been determined for decline, boycott the UN until it has been removed. Already we are seeing the rise of China, Russia and political Islam and the decline of the European Union. read full story / add a comment