Month: February 2013

Since the anti-globalisation movement of the late '90s and early 2000s, wherever the political representatives and economic thinkers of capital met, they encountered protest and opposition. The anti-worker and environmentally unsustainable implications of their free trade and neo-liberal agenda were exposed at Seattle, Genoa and worldwide.

There is no question but that the Property Tax is the anti-austerity issue this year, writes Cllr Matthew Waine. The planned robbery of peoples’ wages, pensions & welfare payments by a government that includes the Labour Party is the final straw for many people.

Eyewitness reports of Garda violence at South Dublin County Council, on 11 February. Photo: Paul Murphy MEP being arrested by plain clothes Gardaí.

Zero Dark Thirty, directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal, sets out to depict – but according to Bigelow not necessarily endorse – the “greatest manhunt in history”, the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Despite Bigelow’s claims of artistic neutrality, her film is a grotesque and blatant propaganda piece for US foreign policy post 9/11 and its criminal use of torture in particular.

What a rancid state and political establishment. Even the whitewash of a report by  devout Catholic, Martin McAleese illustrates intimate state involvement of various hues in the Magdalene Laundries. Yet, the mealy-mouthed immediate response from the government constituted a blatant shirking of responsibility, and a refusal to apologise, or even clearly admit wrongdoing on behalf of the state.