IrishLeaks.ie, an Irish leaking platform modelled on WikiLeaks will launch on May 1st, with plans to enable whistleblowers to safely expose abuses of power. Dara McHugh spoke with IrishLeaks, to discuss their plans for the website.
This edition of CrisisJam is looking at the potential of new media forms to increase information access and reframe public debate. This article by Steven Fake puts these issues in historical context, arguing that conservative media ownership is crucial for the control of public consciousness. He calls for labour unions to found a progressive press. Although based in the United States, the argument remains relevant in Ireland.
WikiLeaks gained massive exposure for collaborating with major media outlets in the release of diplomatic and military secrets. Harry Browne wonders if this meeting of old and new media caused more harm than good.
As Ireland becomes a more unequal society, the already huge pressures on social workers are going to worsen and the societal problems they deal with at work will deepen. While the state writes off billions to provide a safety net for the private sector, these public sector workers are being forced to pay to be legally scrutinised, writes Angela Nagle, right at the time when we need them most.
As the fight for our natural gas and oil rages on, and the fight against the IMF doesn't, Ireland's problems are global. They resemble those which have plagued countries in the Global South such as Nigeria and Ecuador, writes Andy Storey
From the early Celtic Tiger, when the dominance of finance capital emblazoned itself upon the city's landscape, to the cold Internationalist half-empty remains of the frantic land speculation that characterised the era and its demise, Owen Hatherley walks us through the confused but telling structures of one patch of Dublin's post-industrial regeneration.
When one of the few major demonstrations mounted in opposition to the cuts was met with police brutality last November, USI leader and Ógra Fianna Fáil affiliated Garry Redmond condemned his own members. In the face of student transport being cut, fees being hiked and vital part-time employment vanishing, the conservative and inactive unions, writes Éimhín Ní Cionnaith, have shown about as much integrity as can be expected from a careerist leadership.
Sigh. A long, sustainted Pat Rabbitte special. Kevin Myers is attracting a lot of attention today. To respond, or not respond? It depends. It’s not worth engaging with what he meant - as he doesn’t propose actual arguments - but it may be worth considering what he means, as a symptom of something else. By Gavan Titley.
Those who are employed experience a distinction between their employer's time and their 'own' time. And the employer must use the time of his labour, and see it is not wasted: not the task but the value of time when reduced to money is dominant. Time is now currency: it is not passed but spent.
-E. P. Thompson, Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism