Alternatively, 1798

Just an observation but I was really surprised at home few phones I saw at Big Thief in Dublin on Wednesday. Gave me hope

Shane O'Brien, one of the Irish citizens involved in the Palestine solidarity movement in Berlin who was threatened with deportation from Germany, has been acquitted on all charges related to a protest. A video provided by his defence appeared to contradict key testimony by police officers.

New episode out all about the fuel protests and how the left should think about them. Definitely going to be an uncontroversial one this 😊

Crazy that Big Thief can play for over 2 hours, not play any of my four favourite songs, and still be out of this world

i am buzzing to share that i have a new column with the journal which will be published every tuesday!! this is the first one but i’ll be writing about this sort of stuff and the housing crisis a lot in the coming weeks jrnl.ie/7025887

100% correct about Ronay

Ah yes the feminist position that women don’t like sport

The exploiters are organised. They have lobby groups who are basically writing government policy. The fuel protestors were organised, too, and successfully used their leverage for their own ends. What does it all mean? Until tenants get organised, we are doomed to be extorted for squalor.

17,500 homeless. Rents rising even higher. Tenement conditions. Mould everywhere. Illegal evictions happening up and down the country. Vacant and derelict properties galore. Landlords and developers bragging about how much money they’re making off it all. And the government suggest garden sheds!

[X group with X interests do big protest, everyone on blitter]: OH so PROTESTING is how you WIN!? what am I supposed to do, get ORGANISED and protest to win!?!? 😡

There is one big massive obvious lesson from the fuel protests that everybody on here seems to consistently miss. We are so doomed !

We could just ... not let them do this.

Everyone really is just reading and writing LLM slop all the time now aren’t they. I guess that’s it

Spoke the other day to residents at one D3 apartment complex who are all terrified — but mainly resigned. Many have been told they can’t replace outgoing flatmates and have to cover the rent themselves. Families waiting for the eviction notice through the door. All because of these laws!

make fun of Rosenior all you like but a six and a half year contract was extremely High Performance of him

The shed housing plan is the ultimate example of the governing Irish political ideology that everything must be set up for someone to make money from it. Here's a national crisis being converted into an opportunity for people who're unaffected by it to screw money out of those who are. A new low.

People hate AI so much (and, fair) that they are pretending obviously useful things – like asking it how to perform functions in Excel – is useless and dumb

I’m afraid that are being deliberately obtuse and self-centered about the robot runner. It is obviously impressive from a technological standpoint? And maybe YOU are not “supposed to be impressed”. Not everything is actually about you

Wouldn’t mind seeing the lot of them keyed

As a nerd who’s into this sort of stuff, it is genuinely exciting that the 1926 census data for the 26 counties is being released tomorrow. But it’s also incredibly depressing that the equivalent from the north no longer exists.

Have to laugh at all the people on here who seem to think that “papal infallibility“ means you can never disagree with the Pope on anything ever.

Classic chicken and egg scenario. Can the lack of a strong left be explained by an inherently reactionary populace, or is it the other way around?

This argument is, on the one hand, obviously true. On the other hand it is so self-defeating and stifling, the constant repetition of it serving only to comfort us while encouraging us to give up: “Of course we didn’t fight for a better world. Sure we weren’t let!”

Still laughing at the people who told the How To Gael girls that they shouldn‘t give a platform to … the Taoiseach

Hungarian opposition oust their fascist leader. Americans: haha, another failure for JD Vance, an American

Begging people to stop thinking about politics in normative terms and start thinking about it in terms of power. Yes the government should spend money on social services for those who need it most. No, it won’t happen just because we ask nicely or point out some hypocrisy.

Guy with a James Connolly header putting himself in the same “we” as the police and our centre-right government. I could agree or disagree with the protests but you would never find me being this embarassing lmao

My main takeaway from the protests and the reaction to them is that it’s just relentlessly depressing how easy it is to divide the working class. They barely even need to try anymore.

If it’s true that hauliers and contractors will get special deals while the rest of us get nothing, it is so obvious to me that the Left should then be all-in on the protests.

Far right talking points absolutely are being Trojan-horsed in. The question remains though: what do we do about that? Sit back and let it happen, or try to change the conversation?

I’m sorry I know I’m going against the grain a lot here but … this is mental!

I Know, I know, “log off”, but the amount of people I’ve seen on here positively giddy about the prospect of the protestors getting arrested or attacked … grow tf up!

Yes, obviously. Yet another thing the Irish left is consistently wrong about, I’m afraid!

The Left see the protestors as male-coded, uncivilised fascists. The protestors see the Left as out-of-touch, middle-class pedophiles. And thus capital’s job is done, the spectacle of culture foreclosing any possibility of us recognising our shared interests.

Some CATU people were down at the protest at O Connell Bridge and definitely did NOT come away with the impression that it had completely been taken over by the far right. I’ve decided to keep an open mind on this thing for another night at least 😊

I’m still figuring things out in my head but I do at least believe that PBP’s stance on this so far has been courageous. I’m not sure these protests have revolutionary potential but I do admire those going to try anyway.

Sorry but as someone who actually knows farmers, there are absolutely loads of farmers protesting. The point is that it’s not ONLY a farmers’ protest – and why would it be?

The far right rhetoric heard all over these protests – and the petit bourgeois individuals who started them – have completely precluded me from considering them potentially revolutionary up to this point. But should the left be getting involved? Is sitting on the sidelines an opportunity missed?

Our conception of class in Ireland is so fucked up that a guy who owns a construction company which employs 10 people is considered “working class” while an administrative officer at an office in Dublin is considered “middle class”. Our social world appears to us as pure aesthetics.

Actually quite upsetting ngl

It’s nice to be reminded that, despite a lot of spectacle, politics in Ireland never really changes. We are a petit bourgeois country and our understanding of the world is theirs – politics as a balance of taxes and subsidies, to be adjusted slightly, and every now and then protested against.

The cool thing about birds is that they are literally everywhere. Once you start noticing them you will never stop noticing them.

Just saw a load of Irish army fellas running through the city center with guns? Probably fine?

“A whole civilisation will die tonight”. I filter most of what Trump says out but I simply cannot escape the horror in that sentence. Do Americans feel any sense of moral responsibility for what is about to be done in their country’s name?

You already get no tenancy rights if you live in the same property as your landlord!

Don’t really know what pointing this out is supposed to achieve? The original post is also obvious nazi shit. Do we think we will defeat nazis by exposing that they do in fact hang out with other nazis?

I simply don’t care about this. Is that bad?

Interesting. Do something about the blockades on Gaza and Cuba?

Can’t tell if it would be better or worse if the government realised they actually had the power to pass legislation