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offsite link North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

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offsite link Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link ?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?

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Human Rights in Ireland
Promoting Human Rights in Ireland

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Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link News Round-Up Thu Apr 17, 2025 00:01 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link People Are Entitled to Private Conversations ? If They Don?t Offend, Says Minister Wed Apr 16, 2025 19:30 | Will Jones
People are entitled to hold private conversations in pubs, provided they don't offend staff and make them feel "unsafe", Government Minister Lilian Greenwood has said, as she defended Labour's 'banter ban'.
The post People Are Entitled to Private Conversations ? If They Don’t Offend, Says Minister appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Over ?275,000 of Unwanted Electric Cars Dumped on Roadside in Nottingham Wed Apr 16, 2025 18:00 | Will Jones
Nine brand new electric cars with a total value of between ?278,000 and ?520,000 have been dumped on a roadside in Nottingham after the Tesla-rival manufacturer went into liquidation last year.
The post Over ?275,000 of Unwanted Electric Cars Dumped on Roadside in Nottingham appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Indoctrination of Schoolchildren with Gender Ideology Goes Mainstream Wed Apr 16, 2025 15:57 | Caroline Ffiske
The indoctrination of schoolchildren with gender ideology has gone mainstream, says Caroline Ffiske. Collins's textbooks are saturated with it, pushing trans, 'non-binary' and other harmful pseudoscience on 11 year-olds.
The post Indoctrination of Schoolchildren with Gender Ideology Goes Mainstream appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link No, BBC, Electricity is Not Expensive Because of Gas But Because of Renewables Subsidies Wed Apr 16, 2025 13:47 | David Turver
A BBC show has claimed that electricity is expensive because of the price of gas. That's nonsense, says David Turver. When taxpayer subsidies are included, electricity from renewables is far more expensive than from gas.
The post No, BBC, Electricity is Not Expensive Because of Gas But Because of Renewables Subsidies appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en

offsite link Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en

offsite link The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en

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The Irish water charges movement

category national | bin tax / household tax / water tax | opinion/analysis author Wednesday January 25, 2017 21:44author by Laurence Cox - MA in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism Report this post to the editors

Theorising "the social movement in general"

A working paper on the water charges movement now available online for comment and discussion.

This paper uses participant narratives and Marxist social movement theory to analyse resistance to water charges as the driving force of Irish anti-austerity struggles – or “the social movement in general”. It locates this movement within the history of working-class community-based self-organisation in Ireland. Contemporary resistance to metering and refusal to pay are not “spontaneous”, but articulate long-standing local rationalities.

The current situation has seen the crisis of other forms of working-class articulation: union dependence on a Labour Party which enthusiastically embraced austerity in government; the co-optation of community service provision within “social partnership”, under attack from the state since the mid-2000s; and the collapse of far left initiatives for shared parliamentary representation and resistance to household charges. New forms of popular agency are thus developing; community-based direct action has enabled a historic alliance between multiple forms of working-class voice and unleashed a vast process of popular mobilisation and self-education.

Finally, the paper relates the Irish movement to the wider loss of consent for austerity on the European periphery, and asks after the political prospects for effective alliances “within the belly of the beast”.

The paper can be viewed or downloaded at the link below. Activist and researcher comments welcome.

Related Link: https://www.academia.edu/31075937/The_Irish_water_charges_movement_theorising_the_social_movement_in_general
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