" How many of us can put our hands up and say we are not ourselves primarily responsible for the culture of drunkenness that our children are now embracing with such eagerness?"

Nothing can be done collectively without laying on booze

“In the name of greed we are in danger of losing everything that is good about our town”. So said SF town councillor Paul Hayes at a public meeting held in Clonakilty, West Cork on Monday 4th September and it might have been a good thing if every parent, politician, publican and young adult in Ireland had been present. Certain events in Clonakilty in recent years have the familiar ingredients of many a story that could be told up and down the country: petty politics; worries about garda presence, indifferent parents; grasping business interests and so forth. But an analysis of the situation is instructive because, if we are looking to apportion blame, none of us come out of it looking good.

There appears to be general agreement nowadays that the country is rapidly losing its soul, whatever that is or was. We acknowledge the benefits of increased prosperity but are as rabbits frozen in headlights about what to do with its negative consequences, which are increasingly difficult either to ignore or to avoid. Some folk snarl at talk like this, terrified both of its impact on profit – pursuit of which is the new compulsory religion – and that we might all end up back where we were 30 years ago. Well, it is at least arguable that nothing will guarantee that we end up on the scrap heap more than shoving our heads in the sand about what we are making of our country right now. The trouble with the ostrich perspective is that you are left with limited faculties for thinking and communicating, if you see what I mean.

Answering difficult questions early on a Saturday morning

In June, the women members of the WSM hosted a dayschool on Women in Revolutionary Struggle. Following on from this RAG (Revolutionary Anarcho-Feminist Group) decide to host a women's only day-school on sexual violence. This was held in the in the new Seomra Spraoi space in Dublin.

I have to be honest; I wasn’t looking forward to it. Sexual violence is a difficult, emotional and disturbing issue. Spending a Saturday talking about it just wasn’t my idea of fun. It was something important, that had to be done, but not exactly a barrel of laughs.
But I was wrong, there were lots of laughs, and it was fun (who’d have thought it!). RAG are to be complimented for creating a relaxed and easy going environment in which to discuss this most difficult of issues.

The first thing we did was get to know the person sitting beside us – we asked them about what they liked and didn’t like, what they were good at and what they were bad at. Then we went around in a circle, each introducing the person we had been talking to everyone else. I discovered that Clair likes Organising and that Eve likes Rossport Solidarity Camp and hates Shell. I like cats and have a bad memory. It was an easy start to the day, but things were about to get more difficult.

Reclaiming Fitzwilliam Square over Mayday'04

From the newswire: A LOCAL authority has come under fire after revelations it sold a prime development site in a thriving town centre for just €100. Leitrim County Council last week defended its decision to sell the town centre car park, which is estimated at being worth tens of thousands of euros. The land on Church Lane just off the Main Street in Manorhamilton was sold to the Manorhamilton Enterprise Forum Ltd, a voluntary group comprising of local businessmen. They have since sold it on to developers for an undisclosed "slight" profit who are in the process of building a major residential and commercial development on the site. The development was unsuccessfully appealed by a number of local residents to An Bord Pleanala in April and involved a petitions signed by Hundreds of local people. It has further emerged this week that the County Council have agreed to purchase back some of the development for €900,000....story continues.

Voices for Creative Non-Violence (VCNV.org) - a team that includes Farah Mokhtareizadeh (USA), Caoimhe Butterly (IRL), Michael Birmingham (IRL) and Kathy Kelly (USA),

Hi friends: I am sending these pictures to you in hopes you will perhaps be able to send them off to others. I have diligently been working on writing up reports on all of the places we have visited in the last few days, but for now the captions to these photos will have to do.... Part One   Part Two   Part Three   to be continued...

In Kazakhstan massive slum clearances are taking place to facilitate the development of luxury apartments and leisure facilities. These homes were built by people who were made unemployed and displaced by neo-liberal policies following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now they find that in order to facilitate these policies they must once again become homeless. The CWI (Comittee for a Workers International - the International of which the Socialist Party is part) section in Kazakhstan, Socialist Resistance, is deemed to be an illegal organisation but has played an active role in organising resistance to these clearances with many of our Comrades having been arrested or injured. I have published here information received from Kazakhstan and while I have edited it to some degree to run two seperate pieces together, it is otherwise a firsthand account of the situation there. Any letters or emails that can be sent in solidarity would be greatly appreciated.