Its quixotic readiness to go on crusade against every perceived wrong, hampered at every turn by its lack of maturity and inability to systematically think through some of the most basic tenets of civilisation — the presumption of innocence, for example — has turned it into a mob and created an environment in which unaccomplished yet entitled youths are readily masking their personal failures and inadequacies behind complex webs of manufactured and appropriated grievances.
This Is Not Good Enough
Right-wing populist governments with designs on capturing the state and fascism, such as Donald Trump’s and Boris Johnson’s are, are bringing home the shock doctrine consecutive US and British governments have employed on their foreign interventionist adventures since the US-backed coup and military takeover of Chile in 1973. This is the neoliberal dream; to see powerful and cohesive democracies softened up by truncheons, rent asunder by socio-economic division, and fractured into thousands of squabbling factions of the oppressed.
In Defence of Occupation
Only a few minutes’ walk from the quays, tucked in behind Tara Street DART station, a small revolution is taking place. Home Sweet Home was the brainchild of Ballymun man Quintin Sheridan.
If Democracy Actually Changed Anything…
Democracy is and has always been the pleasant whitewash over the oligarchy that always and everywhere exists at its heart. In this regard Britain and Ireland are no different from the United States, Russia, and more explicitly totalitarian regimes such as China and North Korea – the priorities and actions of the State always reflect the interests of the ruling class.
What is the Purpose of the Law?
Nowhere in the capitalist world is the law intended to protect human beings qua persons with certain inalienable rights. Where such rights are protected they are protected not on the basis of the essential rights of people to the necessities of life, but rather on the basis of the requirements of the capitalist economy – the god and chief arbiter of capitalist justice.
Making a Difference
Every social crisis is the result of the conditions that govern society remaining as they are and functioning as they were intended. This is true in the case of racially motivated police brutality because the structures of law and order – as the hard edge of the hegemon – are inherently racist.
Antonio Gramsci and the Culchie Mindset
In Ireland we know these rustic power-brokering as “Gombeenary” – the shady wheeler-dealing of parish pump big shots, concerned almost entirely with the task of lining their own pockets and keeping their friends and neighbours at least one peg below them.
Ireland’s Real Major Emergency
Homelessness in Ireland has reached disaster levels meriting the declaration of a state of emergency in the country. In spite of UN experts making this clear to Ireland the government continues to look after the rich.
Random Public Journal 