Indymedia Ireland wish to pay tribute to the late leader Comrade Fidel Castro who died on Fri 25th Nov 2016, aged 90. He was an iconic figure of the 20th century and perhaps most famous for leading Cuba away from the clutches of a dictator and the mafia which ran the country on behalf of the US prior to that and then to events of the CIA backed failed invasion to overthrow him referred to as the Bay of Pigs and then later to the Cuban missile crisis which brought the world to the brink. This came about because the US had placed nuclear missiles in Turkey which were 15 minutes flight time to Moscow and Castro allowed the Soviet Union to respond in kind by placing Soviet missile in Cuba which were 15 minutes flight time to Washington.

Not only that he and Cuba defied the US for many decades simply by existing despite the US openly being hostile including imposing economic and financial sanctions against Cuba since the revolution and an estimated 600 assassination attempts against him and for daring to give the example that there is another way to exist than naked capitalism. A successful example on their doorstep of a state that provided benefits such as education, health and general well-being for their citizens is what the US most feared. Even to this day, the health system and life expectancy exceeds anything in Latin American and including huge swaths of the USA itself and this lesson is surely being brought home to many not just in the US but elsewhere where many are mired in puntative debt and are prey to vulture capitalists and increasing unstable and uncertain existence in their daily lives. read full story / add a comment

Nothing should inspire the public’s outrage more than the chasm that exists between the haves and have nots in Philippine society. And what better indicator can there be of inequality than when poor people suspected of involvement in drugs start dropping dead on the streets while the rich and powerful escape plunder charges through the courts? read full story / add a comment

Big capital has constantly decreased its contribution to the state – creating a gap in the state’s coffers which is then filled by more and varied taxes on ordinary people – ultimately shrinking the very market big capital needs to sell its increased production of goods. read full story / add a comment

Weak Irish capitalism makes a deal with Catholic hierarchy in which the hierarchy get control over many areas of Irish life and in return preach and organize in support of capitalism and against socialism and as part of this against women's rights. read full story / add a comment

There are a lot of rumblings now about Negative interest rates and the war on cash Lately.

Negative interest rates are when the bank actually charges you interest on the money "resting in your account"

in plainspeak, they will slowly rob your money. read full story / add a comment

MANILA - “Bernie Sanders would be good not only for the United States but for the Philippines and Asia,” Walden Bello told the US media after he chatted briefly with the candidate for Democratic Party presidential nomination in Waterloo, Iowa on Sunday, 13 December 2015.
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Paul Craig Roberts clearly outlines the systematic way western financial institutions and the IMF have traditionally looted the third world and now, having exhausted that process, have turned to looting other western countries such as Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and more recently, Spain and Italy. read full story / add a comment

Utilitarianism is the hidden basis for the moral and philosophical basis of much of the Irish Left read full story / add a comment

Society determines the character of culture. read full story / add a comment

Marx's morality is not materialist read full story / add a comment

Irish government wastes over 1 million euro on biased fracking study
in spite of world oil prices rendering fracking itself as nothing
but a major loss making and pointless exercise. read full story / add a comment

This article deals with how much left sectarianism has damaged the workers struggle in Ireland. read full story / add a comment

ORGANIZED workers sneered at the so-called labor agenda in the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila next month by describing it as deceptive and vague, which merely reaffirms APEC’s ideology based on the primacy of corporate power and profits over labor and trade union rights. read full story / add a comment

The annual budget statement is a bourgeois matter. It is the obligation of communists to highlight the latter rather than getting exclusively immersed in its details. No matter how popularly appealing a budget appears it can never serve the class interests of workers. Sections of the Left relate to state budgets as if they are pliable and can consequently meet workers' needs. read full story / add a comment

The following statement is issued by various progressive individuals and organizations from many parts of the world, but mostly in Asia-Pacific. A copy of the statement has already been sent to Syriza's international department.

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Nathan Stuart with a short piece on the transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Nathan is an RNU student activist from Armagh, currently living and studying in Belfast. He has been heavily involved in numerous campaigns on student, socialist and republican issues. read full story / add a comment

THE workers and the trade unions throughout the world mark today the International Labor Day – 125th anniversary globally and 112th celebration here in the Philippines. This historic and revered day has been an enduring and stirring symbol for the working class despite serious setbacks caused by multipronged and systematic neoliberal attacks against the workers, the masses and their organizations, which have seriously threatened to dilute if not totally wipe out the hard-fought sociopolitical gains achieved by the labor movement in the past hundred years or so.

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Hundreds of millions have moved away from animal flesh. McDonald's is one of many chains feeling the change. Animal Agony, Unionbusting, Deforestation, Human Disease, Crime, Corruption, Environmental Desecration, Energy Waste, in the world's biggest fast food chain, McDonald's Has Closed 350 Stores Since Jan 1, 2015 Will Close 350 More This Year read full story / add a comment

It has been 10 years since the European Court of Human Rights fined British courts 57,000 pounds for denying free speech to Steel and Morris in London Greenpeace V McDonald's,
Unionbusting, obesity, strokes, heart attacks, cancer, animal agony, deforestation, rainforest destruction, energy waste, crime, litter, employee burns, unusual ingredients continue to be
associated with the Western wrold's biggest restaurant chain read full story / add a comment

Michael Hudson, interviewed on real news network discusses the class war starting in greece and the panic among the Euro rich and powerful that the rich might actually be taxed for a change rather than crippling the labour force and the poor with endless austerity, and how the finance ministers of currently right wing governments of spain, finland, Portugal, Ireland and germany are determined to make an example of greece to avoid contagion of these dangerous ideas which would likely lead to such governments losing upcoming elections to left wing parties read full story / add a comment