Yestereday while replying to a query from a friend about audio recording devices I realised that I'd none of the recordings I did before the North American tour on this site.  So I'm going to start seeking them out and posting them here.

I went along to the ICTU protest against the budget (called almost a full week after the budget!) last night.  While we were there we spotted opposition leader Enda Kenny and some of the Dublin Shell to Sea crew chased him up the street in order to ask him a a few questions.  I followed with the iPhone and shot some very dark video of him trying to evade the discussion.  The rally itself was crap, not much more than a thousand people and only two quick speeches from David Begg the general secretary of ICTU and Sheila Nunan the president of the INTO.  Neither said very much. Jack O'Coonor from SIPTU lurked in the corner of the platform looking at his feet but apparently he had lost his voice.

This audio interview conducted by mobile phone on Monday evening covers the protests at the COP15 summit in Copenhagen. Ronan who was a member of WSM in Ireland has been living in Denmark for a year and a half and is involved in a new Libertarian Socialist group and the local infoshop in the autonomous Youth House.

Our interviewee gets nicked on Saturday along with 960+ others

This audio consists of 10 brief interviews with public sector strikers made during the national strike on 24th November. Picketers at various locations across Dublin talk of what the strike is about, the effects of the cuts and how their unions organised for the strike.

We'd a national Shell to Sea meeting in Dublin this Saturday at the end of which we had a talk from Heather Milton Lightening of the Indigenous Environmental Network about the struggle against Tar Sand extraction in Alberta, Canada.  This is a filthy process that involves vast open cast mines, tailing ponds that can be seen from space and the use of huge quantities of water and energy making it a major cause of climate change.  Back in 2006 I mentioned the dangers it posed in the conclusion of the article 'The politics and reality of the peak oil scare'  I wrote with Chekov Feeney.

We recently hosted Jonathan of the South African Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) in Dublin.  He was doing a speaking tour of Ireland and Britain on the subject of 'After Apartheid: Social struggle in South Africa'.  I've just uploaded the audio of his Dublin talk, its linked below.  Jonathan is another person I've 'known' online for quite a long period so it was good to meet him IRL at the London anarchist bookfair which provided the first date for his talk.

Noam Chomsky was in Dublin again last week and five WSM members met up with him over breakfast for a conversation about anarchism and social struggles. I finished editing the audio of this earlier today and have now posted it to indymedia.ie. Chomsky has a huge reputation in Ireland; he talks to halls packed with 1000's of people and appears on the main chat shows so its nice that on his last couple of visits he's made time to meet with the local anarchist movement. This time we could only grab a breakfast slot with a few people (last time we had an invitation only Q&A with 100) so some time was spent working out what was the best use of that time and how that decision should be made. In the end it was left in the hands of the Dublin branch secretaries to make a final decision and select which members to send.

I've been bold of late and allowed procrastination to result in a back log of audio material I should have published.  This audio recorded in September is of a WSM branch educational given by Paul Bowman on class classification.  In it he looks at the various systems that have been used before arguing that this is perhaps the wrong appraoch to the question and that we should look on class as more of a relationship then a distinct thing.  Anyway here is the first of the missing audio's I should get a good few more up in the next couple of weeks.

I spent Saturday evening at Semora Spraoi where RAG were screening two abortion rights documentaries, 'The Coat Hanger Project' and 'Abortion Democracy : Poland/South Africa'.  The makers of both documentaries were present so the screenings were introduced by them and there was a wide ranging discussion after the films had been show.  I've included a link to an audio recording of the introductions at the end of this piece.

Last night I went to the launch of a new history of the Offical IRA and the Workers Party called ‘The Lost Revolution’ by Brian Hanley and Scott Miller.  I've been wiaiting for a detailed history of the Workers Party to be written for a long time and I knew Scott was working on one.  I've only read the first couple of chapters so far but from these, what people have been saying about it and the huge crowd that turned up for the launch