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Anti-Empire

Anti-Empire

offsite link The Wholesome Photo of the Month Thu May 09, 2024 11:01 | Anti-Empire

offsite link In 3 War Years Russia Will Have Spent $3... Thu May 09, 2024 02:17 | Anti-Empire

offsite link UK Sending Missiles to Be Fired Into Rus... Tue May 07, 2024 14:17 | Marko Marjanović

offsite link US Gives Weapons to Taiwan for Free, The... Fri May 03, 2024 03:55 | Anti-Empire

offsite link Russia Has 17 Percent More Defense Jobs ... Tue Apr 30, 2024 11:56 | Marko Marjanović

Anti-Empire >>

Human Rights in Ireland
Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.

offsite link Julian Assange is finally free ! Tue Jun 25, 2024 21:11 | indy

offsite link Stand With Palestine: Workplace Day of Action on Naksa Day Thu May 30, 2024 21:55 | indy

offsite link It is Chemtrails Month and Time to Visit this Topic Thu May 30, 2024 00:01 | indy

offsite link Hamburg 14.05. "Rote" Flora Reoccupied By Internationalists Wed May 15, 2024 15:49 | Internationalist left

offsite link Eddie Hobbs Breaks the Silence Exposing the Hidden Agenda Behind the WHO Treaty Sat May 11, 2024 22:41 | indy

Human Rights in Ireland >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link Judges Told to Avoid Saying ?Asylum Seekers? and ?Immigrants? Fri Jul 26, 2024 17:00 | Toby Young
A new edition of the Equal Treatment Bench Book instructs judges to avoid terms such as 'asylum seekers', 'immigrant' and 'gays', which it says can be 'dehumanising'.
The post Judges Told to Avoid Saying ?Asylum Seekers? and ?Immigrants? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link The Intersectional Feminist Rewriting the National Curriculum Fri Jul 26, 2024 15:00 | Toby Young
Labour has appointed Becky Francis, an intersectional feminist, to rewrite the national curriculum, which it will then force all schools to teach. Prepare for even more woke claptrap to be shoehorned into the classroom.
The post The Intersectional Feminist Rewriting the National Curriculum appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Government Has Just Declared War on Free Speech Fri Jul 26, 2024 13:03 | Toby Young
The Government has just announced it intends to block the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, effectively declaring war on free speech. It's time to join the Free Speech Union and fight back.
The post Government Has Just Declared War on Free Speech appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link I Wrote an Article for Forbes Defending J.D. Vance From Accusations of ?Climate Denialism?. Forty Ei... Fri Jul 26, 2024 11:00 | Tilak Doshi
On July 18th, Dr Tilak Doshi wrote an article for Forbes defending J.D. Vance from accusations of 'climate denialism'. 48 hours later, Forbes un-published the article. Read the article on the Daily Sceptic.
The post I Wrote an Article for Forbes Defending J.D. Vance From Accusations of ?Climate Denialism?. Forty Eight Hours Later, Forbes Un-Published the Article and Sacked Me as a Contributor appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Come and See Nick Dixon and me Recording the Weekly Sceptic at the Hippodrome on Monday Fri Jul 26, 2024 09:00 | Toby Young
Tickets are still available to a live recording of the Weekly Sceptic, Britain's only podcast to break into the top five of Apple's podcast chart. It?s at Lola's, the downstairs bar of the Hippodrome on Monday July 29th.
The post Come and See Nick Dixon and me Recording the Weekly Sceptic at the Hippodrome on Monday appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Netanyahu soon to appear before the US Congress? It will be decisive for the suc... Thu Jul 04, 2024 04:44 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N°93 Fri Jun 28, 2024 14:49 | en

offsite link Will Israel succeed in attacking Lebanon and pushing the United States to nuke I... Fri Jun 28, 2024 14:40 | en

offsite link Will Netanyahu launch tactical nuclear bombs (sic) against Hezbollah, with US su... Thu Jun 27, 2024 12:09 | en

offsite link Will Israel provoke a cataclysm?, by Thierry Meyssan Tue Jun 25, 2024 06:59 | en

Voltaire Network >>

Right2Change: The Theft of the Commons

category national | bin tax / household tax / water tax | opinion/analysis author Wednesday February 17, 2016 23:17author by right2water - Right2Change Report this post to the editors

We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible.’ An affirmation that should, by now, be familiar to most of us.

Given Connolly’s input into what became the Proclamation of the Republic, argues the labour historian John Callow, this passage ‘could be taken as legally enshrining the nationalisation, and common ownership, of industry and the land’. Democratic control of the island’s resources and indeed all aspects of the economy was a central tenet of Connolly’s political thought, and has featured prominently in the efforts of his followers to transform society for the benefit of the majority.

Other political forces, such as the Fianna Fáil governments of the early 1930s or indeed the contemporary proponents of populist nationalism, have not been above using the principle of Irish ownership as a rhetorical tool to appeal to all sections of the population. But as the abhorrent treatment of Dunnes Stores workers starkly demonstrates, this limited objective does not in itself constitute the making of a more democratic and equal society. Connolly made this point repeatedly, not least in the weeks leading up to the Easter Rising: ‘We are out for Ireland for the Irish. But who are the Irish? Not the rack-renting, slum-owning landlord; not the sweating, profit-grinding capitalist; not the sleek and oily lawyer; not the prostitute pressman – the hired liars of the enemy. Not these are the Irish upon whom the future depends. Not these, but the Irish working class, the only secure foundation upon which a free nation can be reared.’

For the greater part of its existence, the economy of the southern Irish state has been designed to benefit the class of people so despised by Connolly. At various points in Irish history, native policy makers have privileged ranchers, commercial banking interests, multinational corporations and those engaged in FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) activities over the needs of the broader population. As early as the 1950s, with the opening up of the economy to free trade and FDI, government ministers had begun to establish Ireland’s ‘open for business’ credentials with a giveaway of oil and gas exploration rights worth £ millions. Henceforth, the two civil war parties would create between them the architecture of an economy based on speculation, while the middle-men continued receiving huge fees for services rendered to multinationals.

Neoliberalism – as those living in Thatcher’s Britain or Reagan’s US understood and experienced it – took longer to reach Ireland, but by the time it did it was pushing at an open door. From the late 1980s onwards, the Irish economy began to replicate the features of global neoliberalism – low taxes, a weakened labour movement, financialisation, and commercial property speculation – while somehow retaining the structures that benefited its strong middleman class. Indeed, it was in 1989 that the Fianna Fáil Minister for Energy Ray Burke reduced the reduced the state’s 50% share in its offshore oil and gas to zero and abolished royalties completely.

The characteristics of the neoliberal turn are well known to us, but it is privatisation that best encapsulates its grasping nature. Privatisation is not efficient, it’s not clever and it doesn’t deliver. It’s simply a massive wealth grab, a project increasing in scope and intensity across the globe with annual revenues reaching the hundreds of billions. As we have reduced progressive and wealth taxes, and as public finances have collapsed, new infrastructural investment has increasingly taken the form of installing private tollbooths over the economy’s most critical access points such as roads, public transportation, communications, energy, healthcare, education and, of course, clean water. It represents the final theft of the commons and allows private interests to control our most important public assets. Privatisation is the backbone of the neoliberal project and shows the true nature of the free market, monopolies owned by the few. That’s not democracy, it’s an economic tyranny.

Having formed a key component of the project that led to the biggest capitalist crisis in living memory, privatisation is now proposed as part of the solution. Embedded in TTIP, EU treaties and the programmes of national governments are a set of policies that lead inexorably to the privatisation of everything that remains in common ownership. In the twenty-six counties, this involves the sale of profitable state assets, the defunding and creeping privatisation of a two-tier healthcare system, and the transformation of Irish Water into a commercial entity.

Contained within the Right2Change Policy Principles for a Progressive Irish Government is a rejection of privatisation, wholesale opposition to TTIP and a number of measures aimed at (re-)establishing democratic control over ‘surrendered natural resources’ and crucial parts of the economy. Realisation of these proposals would go some way towards reversing the drift to a market society, deepening economic democracy both in places where it can already be found and where it has not existed. Achieving and sustaining this kind of radical change will require victory on the political front and a fundamental transformation in the balance of class power.

Written by Stevie Nolan and Sean Byers, Trademark Belfast

Related Link: http://www.right2change.ie/blog/theft-commons
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