Fishermen on the beach at Triunfo

Enclosing the commons – the historical process of fencing off land which had previously been in the public domain, for private use – is perhaps one of the most blatant expressions of the fundamental criminal nature of the capitalist state. Today it's the voracious neo-liberal model which stalks the last pockets of community-held global territory for privatization - from Chiapas, Mexico, to the deep Amazon, to the Garifuna coast of Honduras, leaving no stone unturned.

"We have hundreds of kilometers of beaches that aren't developed, and it's a waste,'' said the then Honduran Tourism Secretary, Ana Abarca in 2001. "We want strong tourism. We are going after the sun and the beach."

While the neo-liberal government sees unproductive beaches and waste, other people see living communities existing in harmony with their surroundings. These hundreds of kilometers of "waste" are home to 76 Garifuna villages, where people live as they have for a couple of hundred years, reliant on the sea for fishing, on the beach for coconut and fruit, on the wetlands for rice cultivation and the surrounding hillsides for growing manioc, yucca, firewood, and hunting. Their simple wooden homes are built along the beaches, or on stilts above the waves. Men fish from dugout canoes or dive with spears along the reefs.

Related Links: Recent articles by the same author.

Shell recently announced the names of local groups in Erris who they are going to fund, as part of the deal they arrived with government appointed mediator Peter Cassels in 2006.

Cassells, who admitted that there was no basis for mediation while Shell insisted on an onshore production pipeline and refinery, recommended that the company should pay money into the local community in an effort to turn public opinion in favour of the scheme.

Related Links: More on Corrib gas project

But which one?

A short report on four republican commemorations of the Easter rising. The guilty parties include the Workers' Party, IRSP, 32 CSM, RSF, and Sinn Féin, carefully watched by the state's sterling political police.

Related Links: Workers' Party | 32 County SM | IRSP | Republican Sinn Féin | Sinn Féin

Donagh Brennan in Sunday Tribune

Over the last few years, blogs and blogging have started to permeate the mainstream in Ireland. Features on bloggers and blogging have started to appear with increasing frequency in weekend newspapers. However, in comparison to the US, where blogs have become an integral part of political organising, blogs are very much still seen as marginal by the Irish political establishment.

Left wing political blogs have until recently been particularly thin on the ground. However, this has started to change, with the emergence of a number of increasingly popular blogs written from an explicitly left-wing point of view. Last month, some of these bloggers came together to establish the Irish Left Review, as an online magazine to help further disseminate left wing views in Ireland. This article presents an interview with Donagh Brennan of dublinopinion.com,one of the founders and current editor of Irish Left Review, about blogging and the origins of this project.

Where to find left-leaning Irish Blogging? A Selection: Irish Left Review | Cedar Lounge Revolution | Notes on the Front | Dublin Opinion | Irish Election | Splintered Sunrise | Fringe Thoughts | IE Politics | Organized Rage | Tuppenceworth.ie

American Anarchism is Full of Surprises

I spent the last month Greyhounding around the USA speaking about anarchism in Ireland. Fourteen cities, 20+ meetings in thirty days in cities with populations from thirty thousand to over eight million.

On my travels I used the opportunity to record interviews with many of the local anarchists who were organizing the meetings which I edited on the bus and posted to indymedia.ie once I hit my next wi-fi signal. I've collated these interviews below, over two hours of audio in all.All those interviewed are anarchists but apart from that they represent a section of the population of the North East ranging in age from perhaps 20 to nearly 70. Together they give an impression of 'the other America', that is the vast majority of the US population that is not visible in the election coverage or as characters on 'Friends' or 'Sex & the City'.

Related Links: Andrew's Archive | Black Cat Forum | Blog | Nefac: Cross border Makhnovites

New Jersey 0.12 Mb Dyer Lum, mentioned in the North Hampton interview 0.1 Mb The Lucy Parsons anarchist bookstore in Boston 0.23 Mb The community centre in Richmond which was the venue for my talk there 0.21 Mb