Irish Left Review

Ireland to Gaza

An article by John Hurston of Ireland to Gaza • January 15th 2010 • No comments so far

John Hurston of Ireland to Gaza was part of the “Viva Palestina” Humanitarian Aid Convoy which safely reached Gaza and delivered all their aid in the first week of January last. This is his account of how it went.

On January 6th, 517 humanitarians from 20 countries, in close to 200 vehicles, crossed through the Rafah Border into Gaza. The scenes greeting us as we made our way to Gaza city were unbelievable. Over 100,000 lined the roads and streets as we took 3 hours to drive 20 kilometres. They had waited patiently on us for us for weeks, and their outpouring of excitement and gratitude was the most humbling experience in my life. They are the real heroes, not us.

Having left London on December 6th the convoy made its way through Europe, and then crossed the sea into Greece. From there, they arrived to a hero’s reception in Turkey, and to add to the convoy, another 200 people in 70 vehicles loaded with aid joined the already swelling numbers on the road. One of the leading charities in Turkey, I.H.H. provided the vehicles and volunteers, and at various times, upwards on 12 Turkish M.P.’s were on the convoy. Their involvement brought with them some serious political clout that was to prove invaluable when we faced serious difficulties later in the journey.

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Is the Horror of Immigration. Now in 3-D!!

An article by Manuel Estimulo of Manuel Stimulation@Coddle Pot • January 14th 2010 • 2 comments →

As you are probly know if you are a funky culture vulture with your fingers in the pulses, peoples everywhere are rave about the new blue movie Atavar, by Irish director James Cameron, mostly because it is in three dimensions, going not only up and down the screen and both ways across the screen but also, if you wear special spectacles, like the founder of the Mormons, even out of the screen and into the theatre. Or, if you are watch it at home, into your living room, all over your carpet, and into your bed.

This may be a bit too close for comfort for many viewers, of course, because this is a movie that deal with a most unpalatable topic, namley, foreingers, and the last thing most people want is foreingers in their bedroom. Neverthenonetheless, you should bare with me, because the movie is have an important message that people do not really been pay attention to, and is about bloody time that they did.

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The Ever-bizarre Rules of British Journalism

An article by Rod Stoneman of Irish Left Review • January 12th 2010 • One comment →

The half-page, feature length article by Peter Sherwell about the current situation in Venezuela that appeared in The Sunday Telegraph on 29th November follows an established pattern of unsympathetic and negative reporting in European and North American media, some of it touched on in my book Chávez: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. While this particular report is unremarkable for its fulsome dismissal of the Venezuelan president and the changes he has wrought, it is worth pausing to analyse the arrangement of components deployed in the process of denunciation. The repeated application of such negative reporting has led most people, even those on the liberal left, to assume that Chávez is some combination of clown and dictator and that any supposed attempt at social change in Venezuela over the last 10 years has been a complete failure.

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Starting New Arguments: The Recession Diaries - January 11th

An article by Michael Taft of Notes on the Front • January 11th 2010 • 2 comments →

In the last post, I suggested that some of the arguments regarding the relative poverty measurement were starting to be answered. Now let’s start some new arguments - but, as always, in a positive way; namely, how much tax do those on high incomes pay and is it enough or too much.

For some time, many commentators having been making claims that a small proportion of ‘those at the top’ are paying the lion’s share of taxes. This leads some to conclude that (a) tax at the top is already too high and, (b) that the Irish tax system is highly progressive.

Based on the evidence to support those contentions, we should be dubious - mucho dubious. In fact, it can be argued that the highest income groups don’t really pay all that much tax relative to their income position; and that the Irish tax system is not all that progressive. So let’s take a whirlwind tour of some of the stats that are fired around the place and see what sense we can make of them, bearing in mind that it is hard to get to grips with issues of income, wealth and tax distribution; for the simple reason we don’t have a single or series of consistent data sources (on wealth, almost nil). For anyone trying to piece together bits from here and there - it is never going to be a satisfactory state of affairs.

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Torture Thriving: It’s Time to Nail the Equivocators

An article by Justin Frewen of Irish Left Review • January 8th 2010 • 2 comments →

In the immediate aftermath of World War Two, as awareness of the horrific atrocities inflicted by the Nazi regime on Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and the disabled filtered out, there was widespread international agreement that systems and structures should be put in place to prevent future recurrence of such barbarity. One pillar of these efforts was the establishment of the United Nations, armed with a mandate to prevent “aggressive war”, the “supreme crime” according to judges at the Nuremberg Trials and one from whose savage bosom the other evils had flowed.

The ensuing decades also gave birth to a range of treaties and declarations, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the Geneva Convention and the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, all of which explicitly prohibited the practice of torture.

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Starting to Settle Some Old Arguments: The Recession Diaries - January 7th

An article by Michael Taft of Notes on the Front • January 7th 2010 • One comment →

There are a few subjects that are guaranteed to start rows. Public sector pay is always a dead cert. Stimulus is another one. And, of course, relative poverty; as in ‘Ireland suffers from a high level of relative poverty’. There are any number of views on this matter, usually quite heated. The ESRI report, ‘Poverty and Deprivation in Ireland in Comparative Perspective’ by Christopher Whelan and Bertrand Maitre is, thankfully, starting to take the heat out of the debate by shedding a little bit of light.

That Ireland has a high level of ‘relative poverty’ or to be more precise, ‘at-risk of poverty’ should not be surprising. On any number of metrics Irish income distribution is highly unequal. However, comparing this high level of at-risk poverty with other EU countries has proven contentious. For instance, in Ireland in 2006, 18.5 percent had incomes of 60 percent of median income or below - one of the higher levels in the EU-15. Portugal experienced a similar level. On this reading, one could argue that Ireland and Portugal had similar levels of inequality - and this would be correct, in their national context.

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