Crime

Anarchists: Against Laws and the State, Against Poverty and Violence

Date:

Why It’s Right to Resist the Government

The law is essentially the weapon of the privileged, it is made by them for the purpose of enshrining their power and the people need to dismantle it entirely if they want to be genuinely free” – Errico Malatesta

Does this mean anarchists are against laws? Anarchists are against laws that are created by the rich and the privileged layer of society which are used in their favour. These same laws are used to exploit and oppress the rest of society. These laws are designed to give as little as possible to people.
 

Abortion: Bodily Autonomy, Capitalism, Misogyny

Date:

In this society we are told that we have certain rights; the right to vote, the right to protest, the right to bodily autonomy (i.e. the right to decide what happens to our bodies). All of these rights can be taken away in a flash at the whim of those in power. But you cannot take away from a pregnant person that which they don’t have: bodily autonomy.

Abortion is extremely restrictive on this island, with the southern state not acting on the prohibitive legislation that is in place – as was highlighted with Ms. Y in August 2014 – and the northern state only allowing abortion when the pregnancy endangers the mother’s life (read: not health).
 

ACAB: All Cops Are ... Bounded

Date:

This photo was taken at Thursday evening's demonstration against the criminalisation of protest - in particular the arrest of almost 20 people for participating in a 2 hour blockade of the Tánaiste 3 months previously. It shows protesters holding signs saying 'ACAB' – but what does this mean? It means 'All Cops Are Bastards'. We can hear some people objecting already: 'not all Gardaí are bad'. But please hold on, that's missing the point entirely. ACAB doesn't mean that each police officer as an individual person is nasty, sadistic, dishonest, and so on. It means that every police officer is bounded by their job as an agent of the state, and this necessarily causes cops to act like 'bastards' - whether or not they want to.

A cop goes to work as a cop, not as an individual. They cease to be 'John Murphy' and become 'Garda B203', anonymous law enforcement officer 71032. ACAB means that no matter how nice a person the cop is individually they must break strikes, attack social movements, execute homophobic, sexist, and racist laws, deport and evict people, and even torture and murder, because that is what the police do. Feel free to make a conscientious objection, you will be fired.
 

Crime, Punishment, and Community Policing

Date:

The term 'community policing' has been much abused in recent times, most particularly in the North of Ireland where it has become shorthand for vicious punishment beatings and shootings. In this article Gregor Kerr takes a look at the issue of community policing - what it is and more importantly what it isn't. The question of what levels of real community policing would actually be possible or allowed under capitalism is looked at, and the debate about crime, anti-social behaviour and reactions to it in an anarchist society is touched on. (pic: Anti-heroin dealer march, N. Inner city Dublin c1996 Photo Joe Black)

 

 

Crime, Punishment & Community policing

Homelessness & Prostitution - Legalisation not criminalisation

Date:

The sex industry is expanding and is said to gross millions of pounds per annum. Over the last year this has been reflected in the increasing focus in the media on prostitution. In October, a brothel keeper was arrested and charged. In November, Young Fine Gael passed a motion supporting the legalisation of prostitution. It is now a popular topic on the late night chat shows on tabloid radio stations.This summer, an inevitable tragedy happened. As a result of having to work unprotected on the street Sinead Kelly, a young Dublin prostitute, was murdered as she worked. Politicians and high-ranking cops shed crocodile tears for the cameras. Few of them pointed out that it was their stringent laws that made Sinead Kelly an easy target.

100+ Drugs Decriminalised by Accident, Users Shrug as Prohibition Ineffective

Date:

Over 100 drugs have been temporarily decriminalised by accident due to a legal loophole, including MDMA ('ecstasy'), Ketamine, Benzodiazepine, Methamphetamine, and many head shop 'legal highs'. The Dáil will pass emergency legislation tonight to re-ban these substances, which will be before the Seanad tomorrow.

Of course people who use illicit drugs will merely laugh and then shrug as drug prohibition doesn't actually stop people from consuming them.

 

Galway University: First Students' Union in Europe to Support Legalisation of Cannabis

Date:
Great news as students in Galway University have voted to support the legalisation of cannabis. NUI Galway Students' Union now supports the "legalisation & regulation of the cultivation, sale and possession of cannabis for adults age 18 and over" and is the first SU in Europe to do so. 68% of students voted in favour of the motion (1796 'yes', 838 'no').

Of course this does not mean that cannabis is legalised in Ireland, Galway, or even the university, but it does exhibit the rapidly changing attitudes toward drug prohibition and that this change is happening right here in Ireland.

Burton Trapped in Car, Generations Trapped in Banking Debt

Date:

We have had months of outrage from media & politicians over the last months about the 2 hours Joan Burton spent stuck in a luxury car. This morning we saw a wave of Garda raids at dawn on political activists involved in that protest, one of whom faced 8 Garda barging into his house to arrest him while he tried to get his two young kids ready for school.

That's the nature of policing in this country, one law for the rich and powerful, and another for anyone who dares to stand up to the powerful.  The laws are written to protect those with wealth and power, to allow them to keep the rest of us down and desperate. It fast it turned out almost none of their scams that caused the crisis were even illegal (under the laws they paid politicians to draft).

The French proto anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon wrote over 150 years ago that
“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.
 

Is paramilitary punishment attacks the answer to crime?

Date:

We maybe 10 years on from the signing of the Good Friday but the blight of militarism in the form of the state and vigilantism continues to raise its ugly head and shows little sign of fading away. In fact it is embedded and enshrined in the new discourse which even the hype around the Titanic cannot simply wash away.

Keep the PSNI recruiters away from the schools

Date:

Plans by the PSNI to visit catholic schools as part of a recruitment drive is a cynical cosmetic exercise designed to a camouflage a paramilitary police that has abandoned working class communities and continues to aggressively intimidate and criminalise any dissenters from the status-quo.

Syndicate content