Anarchic update news all over the world - Part 1 - 6.04.2018

Today's Topics:

   
1.  Indian Anarchist Federation: INDIA-A CHANGE OF MASTERS -
      SARTHAK (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  [Czech Republic] 6th Anarchist Book Fair in Prague By ANA
      [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  For a self-organized movement and struggles that converge!
      by Youth Secretariat (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  wsm.ie: Repealing the 8th - what the opinion polls are
      telling   us (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #281 - Violence: Art or
      pigs ? (fr, it, pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
6.  Poland, Workers' Initiative - Germany: shorter working week
      in industry [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1





August, 1947. Freedom. U.K. ---- T'HE transfer of power in India has taken place, with 
pomp and pageantry, and a rather too self-conscious atmosphere of "being in the presence 
of history". Viscount Mountbatten, the Viceroy, becomes an earl and Governor General. 
Pandit Nehru's position is unchanged as Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. Mr. Arthur 
Henderson, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for India, doubles his salary and becomes 
Minister of State for Commonwealth Affairs. But the highest slice of the political spoils 
goes to Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the Governor- General of the new Dominion of Pakistan and 
President of its Constituent Assembly, which has given him the title "Quaid-e- Azan", 
while Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan, the Pakistan Prime Minister referred to him as "the Ataturk or 
the Stalin of our States"-a remark the appropriateness of which depends upon your 
evaluation of these figures.

No End to Poverty

Thus is power transferred, but what of the Indian peasants and what of the workers in the 
great industrial cities? Can they now feel that the country is theirs, that the burdens of 
poverty, squalor, starvation and ignorance will be lifted of the hauling down for the last 
time of the Union Jack and the hoisting of the saffron, white and green of India, and the 
green flag of Pakistan, but for the nameless Indian masses will these prove the "colours 
of liberty"? The streets of Delhi ring with the cry Jai Hind- Victory is Ours, but will it 
not be a. hollow victory for those who for years have fought and suffered for this day, to 
find that they have exchanged subjection under British Imperialism for exploitation under 
the nascent Indian capitalism?

Useless Words

In his speeches Pandit Nehru has championed the Indian masses. He declares that his 
government aims

"To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, peasants and workers of India."

But Nehru's government depends on the support of the Indian industrialists whose interests 
are inevitably directly opposed to such a policy, and since the first concern of every 
government is to perpetuate its own power, Nehru will find an ever-greater pressure upon 
him to pay no more than lip-service to the high ideals of his inaugural statement.

Those sincere and genuine elements in India who really believe in the possibility of a 
"two-stage" liberation of the Indian people;-first the throwing off of foreign domination 
and, secondly, defeating native capitalism; should study the experience in Ireland and 
reflect on the shameful betrayal of the Irish working class. For we may be sure that James 
Connolly and Padraig Pearse and countless others did not fight and die for the 
clerico-feudalism that is the only result of their sacrifices. It does not matter to the 
Indian peasant or factory-worker whether his exploiters skin is white or brown-what does 
concern him is the fact of his exploitation.

No-one Mentions Them

That is why, in this "historic moment" our thoughts and sympathies are not with the astute 
politicians of New Delhi, dividing up the spoils of office, or with the "British 
Quislings" ofPakistan, swearing the loyalty to ‘George VI, his heirs and successor", but 
with the poverty-stricken and half-starved toilers in the fields, bazars and factories, 
whose aspirations am whose interests are the same as those of the "left-out and shutout 
million is of the weak and poor" throughout the world.

https://thecominganarchy.wordpress.com/2018/03/30/india-a-change-of-masters/

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Message: 2





The 6th Prague Anarchist Book Fair will take place on May 19th from 10am to 8pm in Eternia.
The Prague Anarchist Book Fair has become a solid event with hundreds of people coming 
from all walks of life, not just from anarchist and anti-authoritarian circles.
It consists of the presentation and sale of anarchist and antiauthoritarian literature of 
different types, in addition to parties with seminars and workshops.
The whole event is self-organized and non-profit. We do not charge fees for stands, and if 
necessary, we can assist ACTIVE participants with travel costs.

anarchistbookfair.cz

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Message: 3





Students and high school students continue to mobilize against the Vidal law which 
introduces the selection at the entrance of the university and against the end of the 
compensation between subjects in License. Police attacks have joined those of the extreme 
right. In response, several facs are strongly mobilized, while the strike is preparing the 
railroads. ---- In several cities high school students organize themselves and them to 
coordinate their actions, as in Ile de France or Rennes, but the mobilization still 
skates. In universities, the mobilization has been growing since last week: 700 people in 
Nancy, 800 in Nantes or Tolbiac. In Toulouse, the faculty of Mirail, continues to vote the 
blocking renewable at important AG. The students of Montpellier reacted strongly to the 
aggression by the extreme right of students occupying an amphitheater. Aggression that the 
dean, who resigned, had supported. In addition to police repression, the extreme right 
reveals its true role in attacking the social movement, as in Strasbourg or Lille. The 
best answer to fafs, beyond the self-defense of our mobilizations, is to continue to 
expand our movement,

For a self-organized coordination
Mobilization is still struggling to coordinate nationally. Although the CNL (National 
Coordination of Struggles) or the CNE (National Student Coordination) have set dates for 
national mobilization, they are not free from reproach. The CNL operates without mandates, 
hence zero democratic control over the decisions that are made there. The CNE, it was 
largely controlled by the activists of UNEF, who instead of respecting the mandates of 
their GA acted according to the instructions of their union. In particular by being 
mandated by phantom AGs, that is to say the GA with only a handful of students whose goal 
is only to give more voice to UNEF during coordination . By increasing the difference of 
voice between small and large AG, these maneuvers would have less weight, because at the 
last CNE, an AG of less than 200 people had two mandates, while one of more than 1000 only 
four, which does not reflect the state of the struggle within the coordination. Two 
sections of the UNEF posing as " AG  "in little mobilized faculties could therefore weigh 
as much as the GA of more than one thousand students of the Mirail which is not 
admissible. For us, libertarian communists, self-management of the struggle passes by 
students mandated by their general assemblies so that the coordination is truly 
self-organized by the students, and not controlled by political groups or groups. trade 
unions.

Let's go to the rendezvous !

Schoolchildren and students are not the only ones attacked and the success of March 22nd 
proved that anger is there, especially among the railway workers whose strike which will 
begin on April 3rd. strong announcement! Just like rail workers fighting attacks on their 
sector, high school students and students are not struggling just to defend a status. The 
popular classes, attacked by the bourgeoisie and the government at its heels, must 
converge in an overall movement that is able to block the economy. Touching the portfolio 
of the ruling class, it is the hope to impose on it to let go of the ballast, even to 
abandon its destructive projects. In the history of struggles, the strong movements of 
youth can encourage workers to enter them and also into a hard struggle, and vice versa. 
The only way to win is to converge the mobilizations. It is a movement of magnitude that 
we need, a general and renewable strike that is not to invoke but to build methodically. 
The youth must be at the rendezvous, continue to mobilize, massively self-organize and go 
to meet the workers in struggle.

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Pour-un-mouvement-auto-organise-et-des-luttes-qui-convergent

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Message: 4





The Sunday Times with Behaviour & Attitudes have ran two very useful polls that give a 
strong sense of how the campaign to Repeal the 8th Referendum is going.  The overall story 
the poll results tell is bad for the Vote No campaign and promising for the Vote Yes 
campaign.  If the referendum had been held at the time of the March poll then Repeal would 
have been carried by 64% to 36%, almost 2:1.  The polling data also shows No has a soft 
vote that is very much larger proportion than the equivalent soft Yes vote.  This means if 
anything between now and referendum day the polls are likely to drift towards repeal. ---- 
None of this is a reason for complacency, what the No side lacks in terms of numbers and 
support they make up for in terms of funding.  Before the campaign had even started they 
were spending hundreds of thousands on online advertising, billboards, leaflets and free 
buses to what had to be their disappointingly small March 10th national march.  Together 
for Yes may have far more support and more people out canvassing but will it have enough 
to defeat all that paid advertising?

As this is a long read we are also making an audio version available

That is a question that will be answered on referendum day and the answer will be 
determined by the work put in between now and then, both in terms of formal canvassing 
teams but also - and at least as important - in dozens of conversations at home, at work 
and out with friends.  But here we want to look into the detail of the polls, in part 
because it helps guide those conversations.    As well as looking at the results of each 
of these two polls we can also look at what changed between them, and presuming there are 
similar polls in future check back in from time to time.

The first poll was carried out over the first two weeks of February, the second in the 
second week of March.   In terms of the overall question of which way people will vote in 
the Repeal referendum the two polls showed little change, both showed 49% of people were 
voting yes.  There was bad news for the vote No campaign as not only were only 30% 
intending to vote No in the February poll but this actually fell by the time of the March 
poll to 27%. In the March poll some 20% of people Didn't Know which way they would vote 
and 4% said they had decided not to vote.  It's when we exclude these last two groups that 
we get the 64% Yes to 36% No mentioned above.

This discussion will draw numbers from the four polls linked below but it mostly works off 
a Behaviour & Attitudes poll reported on by the Sunday Times in March so we recommend you 
download that and read this text with it open as we will be referring to specific pages of 
that report.

Margins of error
It's useful to understand some technical details of polling so we don't try and read more 
out of them than we should.  The error on a poll of this size (900 voters) is a little 
over 3%.  This is because a random sample of 900 people from the Irish population will not 
be exactly representative of the total population.  There is a 95% chance that the 
percentages in a poll of this size will be within 3.3 points of the actual percentage if 
people voted in the referendum that day.    In other words we can't really say much about 
apparent difference that are less than 3%.

This error margin increases as the poll size reduces, a poll of 96 people will have an 
error margin of +/- 10%.  This is important for the discussion that follows because the 
most useful aspect of these polls is when they break the results down to subgroups, for 
example Fianna Fail voters or Farmers.  Because these are a subgroup of the total poll of 
900 they will be smaller, many are about 300 people.

In some cases these subgroups are too small for any meaning to be derived, for instance in 
the first poll 80% of Green Party voters were voting Yes and by the second this had risen 
to 100%.  The problem though is that there are not many Green Party voters and these 
percentages come from sub sample sizes that are tiny, just 9 people in the second poll. 
The error margin is too vast to draw any conclusion at all from those numbers.

Likewise the figures for farmers are also initially fascinating until you see there are 
only 36 farmers in the 2nd poll, again meaning such a huge error margin that attempts at 
interpretation are futile.  So later on when we look at the number for various sub 
populations we will only be interested in those that show major gaps and major changes, in 
the order of 5% (a poll of 384 would have a 5% accuracy) and where the subpopulation 
contains hundreds of people.

RED C polls
In this piece we are focusing on the Behaviour & Attitudes / Sunday Times polls.  Red C 
also carried out two polls in the same period, the second of which attracted attention as 
it appears to show a large swing from Yes to No in comparison with their first poll.  It 
appears to us that something went wrong with that first poll as the B&A poll taken less 
than a week later had a startlingly different result which would require a 21 point swing 
against Yes in the period before any significant campaigning had taken place.

Excluding RedC 1 the three remaining polls don't have such wild swings although the 
different methodology and question phrasing of the Red C polls would complicate direct 
comparisons. For what it's worth the No vote across the three polls goes from 30 (B&A 1) 
to 27 (B&A 2) to 26 (RedC 2).  RedC 1 with a No of 20 would not fit well at the start of 
that sequence and if it actually measured anything as opposed to being the product of an 
error it was measuring something other than the impact of campaigning.

Red C January - https://www.redcresearch.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/SBP-Jan-2018-Poll...
B&A February - http://banda.ie/wp-content/uploads/Sunday-Times-Report.pdf
B&A March - http://banda.ie/wp-content/uploads/J.8878-Sunday-Times-March-2018-Report...
Red C March - https://www.redcresearch.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/SBP-March-2018-Po...
Soft and Hard votes will decide
In terms of strategy both sides of the referendum will pay most attention to 3 blocks of 
voters and mostly ignore two other blocks.  The mostly ignored ones are called the ‘hard 
yes' vote and the ‘hard no' vote.  These are people who are very unlikely to switch votes 
and canvassers will be trained to not waste time talking to them as the time is better 
spent with the three other groups .

We do of course want to encourage the ones voting hard Yes to definitely get out and vote 
- this could be key to winning Repeal -  but arguing with a hard No would in most cases be 
a complete waste of time.  In particular as the hard No's are close in size to the 
percentage who opposed the very very limited reforms of the Protection of Life During 
Pregnancy act which was designed to deal only with cases where the women would die if 
denied a termination.  The hards Nos are pretty much that ‘let women die' bloc.

These are three groups whose opinions both sides will try and spend time shifting
1. The ‘soft Yes' voters who are voting yes but unsure about aspects of a women's right to 
choose.  Typically they only want women to be able to access abortions for some reasons 
and not others..
2. The Don't Knows that have not yet decided how to vote but who do intend to vote.
3. The ‘soft No' who are against a women's right to choose but perhaps think there are 
some circumstances eg Fatal Foetal Abnormality (FFA) where access to abortion should be 
granted.

In these polls and it would appear in the internal polling of all the campaigns the key 
issues that are being used to identify the soft voters are, for the Yes vote whether they 
are voting Yes but oppose abortion on request up to 12 weeks and on the No side whether 
they are voting No but support access to abortion in cases of Fatal Foetal Abnormality 
(FFA) and threats to the health of the women.  Fairly obviously someone who intends to 
vote No but feels abortion should be available in the case of FFA or where there is a 
threat to the women's health should be possible to convince that they should vote Yes so 
this can happen.

The No campaign will target soft Yes voters by trying to steer the conversation onto the 
12 week access on request issue.  Typically this is done by trying to create categories of 
women who deserve access to abortion and those who do not.  So even though the No campaign 
are against abortion in all cases they will try and chip away at the soft Yes, for 
instance through the favourite myth of women using abortion as contraception because they 
are lazy.

Likewise the Yes campaign will target the soft No's by explaining that if they vote No 
they will be stopping women with (FFA) from accessing abortion in Ireland - only Repeal 
will mean the legislation required to access such medical care in Ireland can be passed.

To a very large extent this means that the No campaign will want to centre discussions on 
the 12 week issue while the Yes campaign will want to centre it on FFA and threats to the 
women health.  Both will have to be able to provide answers to its own ‘soft Yes' voters 
to avoid losing them but as far as possible they don't want the conversation centered there.

The Sunday Times polls directly asked those polled on their attitudes on both these 
question so they give a very good indication of the relative side of these five important 
blocs and over time the movement between them.  From looking at all these responses (p13 
to p17) we can say that the March poll would divide the population up as follows;

40% hard yes (‘its a women decision')
8% soft yes (‘for health threats & FFA only')
20% Don't know
4% Not voting
14% soft no (‘but should be available for health &  FFA')
14% hard no ( ‘not even for health & FFA' bloc).
It may be a little bit hard to get your head around where we have produced these numbers 
from so hopefully the accompanying graphic will help.  It hacks together three of the 
Sunday Times / Behaviour and Attitude graphics around the key questions to allow us to 
visually focus in on the soft voters for each side.

Both the images and the figures above show the difficulty the No campaign is in, it has a 
comparatively small hard No vote (51% of their 27% of the vote) and a comparatively large 
soft No which grew 4 points over the month.  Together for Yes not only starts off with 
what would be a 64% Yes but this is mostly Hard Yes (83% of their 49% of the vote) and the 
Soft Yes is small and shrunk 4 points over the month.

About 42% of voters in total are either undecided or soft but the large hard Yes 
percentage at 40% means that for Repeal to win we only need to win 1 in 4 of those soft 
and undecided votes.  The referendum can certainly be still lost with these numbers - in 
referendums Don't Knows often become No.

If you look at the four different polls the weekend before the 2015 Marriage Equality vote 
you see huge differences in the polls according to which company carried them out but also 
that with then MRBI and Millward Brown polls that still showed high numbers of Don't 
Know's much more became No than Yes on the day. 
http://www.thejournal.ie/marriage-referendum-poll-analysis-2109857-May2015/

No is losing rather than gaining ground
There is worse news for the anti-choice campaigns when we look at the movement between the 
two polls.  As already stated the March poll shows them losing 3% of the vote who become 
undecided.  To be clear this is within the 95% probability but would be at a less 
stringent 90% probability. To explain at 95% probability there is one chance to 20 you are 
wrong, at 90% this falls to 1 in 10.   A  shift between the two polls can also be seen in 
the health & FFA question (p17) where the percentage of No voters who are actually in 
favour of access to abortion in these circumstances rises from 33% in February to 37% in 
march.

The February poll was carried out as the wording of a probable referendum became clear but 
before any campaigns had really been launched.  The March poll was carried out before the 
Together for Yes campaign had been launched but right in the thick of the anti-choice 
campaign launches and in particular of their huge advertising spend that saw anti-choice 
billboards erected all over the country.  This was also the context of their failed 
attempt to mobilise large numbers for a national demonstration on 10th March, slap bang in 
the middle of the week polling was carried out.

In other words Vote No were dominating news reporting and they had billboards, truck ads 
and leaflets all over the country while very little was visible of Vote Yes.  To lose 
almost half of your soft No's under such conditions is extraordinary.  We shall see though 
that it's a little more complex and there are some warnings for the Yes campaign as we dig 
deeper into the breakdown of figures.

Again at this headline level the No campaign got off to a terrible start, despite being 
far more visible and spending a huge amount they not only failed to dent the soft Yes they 
actually lost some of their soft No's.

The No reaction and the Marriage Equality comparison
No spokespeople have looked at these polls and have access to their own internal polling 
which will be showing similar results.  We get some clue as to their alarm from what they 
are tweeting about the polls and what they are tweeting about canvasses.  On the polls 
they are actively trying to mislead their own supporters by comparing the eventual result 
of the Marriage equality poll with what they describe as a 76% Yes poll near the start of 
the campaign and then contrasting that with the 49% Yes above. 
http://www.thejournal.ie/opinion-poll-2015-same-sex-marriage-1882262-Jan...

What's misleading is that the January 2015 ME poll excluded Don't Knows to get that 74% 
Yes, if you do the same and exclude Don't Knows from The B&A poll the Yes rises from 49% 
to 64%.

It's true the Marriage Equality referendum eventually passed by 62%, a drop of 14% from 
that first poll. However... that first ME poll was also a Red C poll so in this case the 
real equivalent would be equally out of place first Red C poll back in January this year. 
Exclude Don't Knows from that January poll and Yes is at 75 so a similar 14% drop from the 
first poll would see Yes winning at 61%.  Red C polls consistently had too high a Yes vote 
in advance of Marriage Equality, something they explained by talking about a ‘shy vote' 
that was unwilling to tell them how they really intended to vote for fear of taking an 
unpopular stance.

Observing the No spokespeople on Twitter we've seen a lot of effort going into trying to 
shore up canvasser moral by posting positive claims about canvassing which just happen to 
from the areas of the country that voted against Marriage Equality or only passed it by 
narrow margins.  But we've also seen the replies from their canvassers in Dublin saying 
they are finding it very tough going.  A lot of the online No paid ads have a very strong 
emphasis on trying to recruit canvassers, this from a campaign whose spokespeople have 
been boasting they have been organised for months.  It's hard not to conclude that they 
are already facing major demoralisation problems.

Who will vote?
Are both Yes and No voters equally likely to get out and actually vote on referendum day? 
The tables on page 24 where Yes & No voters are asked how likely it is that they will 
actually vote in a general election are our best approximation in these polls.  Not too 
much can be drawn directly from this as it's unlikely a general election will take place 
on the day of the referendum - but we might assume that the intentions to vote would be 
similar so large differences here might matter.   As it turns out there are few surprise's 
here to upset the calculation above, Yes and No voters are jointly a little more sure they 
will be voting than the Don't Knows but there is no significant difference between the 
intentions of Yes & No voters which might tilt the result.

The table on p26 which combines likelihood to vote with attitudes to 12 weeks without 
restriction however shows those against unrestricted access to 12 weeks are quite a bit 
less likely to vote than those for unrestricted access.  This is good news for Together 
for Yes as it suggest the potential soft Yes vote here is less likely to stay at home, but 
this is within the margin of error.

The table on p29 combines likelihood to vote with attitudes to abortion access for threats 
to health and FFA.  It is the No voters that are less likely to vote here, if by a 
narrower margin.

One area of major concern for Pro-choice campaigners would be the table on page 31 which 
breaks likelihood to vote down by age.  Here only 60% of under 34s feel they would 
definitely vote but 80% of over 55s - the one bloc likely to vote No - feel they would 
definitely vote.  If that gap played out in the referendum it would close the gap between 
Yes and No by a couple of points and in a close referendum could result in a victory for 
the No side.  Both the US Trump election and the UK Brexit vote had the results they did 
because of the different turns outs of the similar age groups there in what were very 
close votes.  Will this happen here, it would be a rather grim irony if the over 55s 
turned out in numbers to defeat the access to the healthcare that no longer has relevance 
to them but which the 18-35s are most likely to need and least likely to bother to go to 
the polling station  for!

We can now move on to the other tables that divide into sub-populations based on gender, 
age, class and party support.  Each of these tells an important tale providing we keep 
sample size in mind - the error margin increases to 4.5% and more for these subsamples.

Gender
For the most part there is little to learn here on of Yes voters as the differences 
between men & women are within the error margins, only 1% off the overall voting average 
intention for the Yes vote. On the No vote though it does appear that women are somewhat 
more likely to be No voters, a 5 pt gap and in comparison between the two polls this gap 
opened up during the first month of the campaign because the percentage of No voting men 
fell by 3 points.  Why was there a 3% drop in men voting No?  This may simply be because 
men are less likely than women to have already given serious thought to all the negative 
consequences of the 8th amendment, for example the way it reduces women ability to make 
medical decisions during a healthy pregnancy.

There is no significance difference otherwise in the Yes votes all the way down this table 
but opposition from women to Repeal, 12 weeks and even health and FFA is just about 
significantly higher.  The higher No vote among women seems counter-intuitive but there is 
a simple explanation for this.  The highest No voter population by far is the over 55s and 
in that sub-population women are over represented because men have started to die earlier. 
  So the apparent gender difference may be a result of the comparatively large proportion 
of women in the over 55 sub-population - we will see this effect again below.

Age
It's no surprise to see people from 18 to 34 are overwhelming Yes voters, 59% yes to only 
18% no.  And even that 18% is a substantial fall from the 25% No of the previous month. 
This is the second biggest shift anywhere in the tables, its a drop of 1/3rd and 
presumably reflects a rapid education process amongst younger people through discussion 
and online research.  Likewise it's no surprise that the over 55s are the one group where 
the No vote has a narrow lead, 35% Yes to 37% No.  What is perhaps slightly more 
surprising is that Yes is also massively carrying the 35-54 age group, 54% Yes to 25% No.

This also very much reflects the composition of those pro and anti-choice campaign 
mobilisations for marches, canvassing and other street events. All the anti-choice 
mobilisations are overwhelmingly dominated by people aged 50 and over.  The lack of young 
supporters isn't just a branding problem for anti-choice organisations that can be fake 
fixed by putting all the young people on the front banner. It's looks like its also going 
to really hit them in the actual vote.  This incidentally is why getting a May rather than 
a June poll could be vital to getting the referendum passed and why if you are heading to 
a festival the weekend of 25 May you want to be sure to get down the polls first thing in 
the morning, wellies and all if need be.

It's also worth pointing out again that this means the two age groups where abortion 
access may be something that will directly come into their lives are 3:1 voting for 
Repeal.  The 55+ are group intending to vote against is very unlikely to face such a 
circumstance in their future.  This is also an indication that a narrow defeat in the 
referendum is likely to lead to a second referendum within a few years.

The Red C poll has the age groups divided into 6 groups rather than the 3 groups discussed 
above.  From their results the first two groups covering 18-34 are overwhelming Yes at 
68%, the next 3 covering 35-64 are majority Yes and it's only the over 65s that are 
majority No at 58%

Social Class
Here we have to be careful as the tables use a modified version of the UK NRS system which 
only has a tangential relationship to the way socialists talk about class.  Rather than 
dividing class into workers and bosses the NRS subdivisions are more about what sort of 
work is done (manual or brain labour) and whether people are working or on welfare.  For 
more on the problems of NRS see the section Class and Leave at 
https://www.wsm.ie/c/making-sense-brexit-tide-reaction-racist-vote

With that in mind we see little impact on class on the No vote (in the 25-28 range) but on 
the Yes vote ABC1s (55%) are more likely to be Yes voters than C2DEs (45%).  However as E 
include almost all pensioners the difference here may be largely down to the weight of the 
over 55 No vote.   There is also a F for farmer column but there were only 36 in the 
sample so the error margin is too large to say anything meaningful about the numbers here.

Regional breakdown
Over the page is the regional breakdown of voting intentions.  This is important data 
although perhaps also frustrating as there is not that much we can do as individuals about 
the divisions that show up - they do have a lot to say about the deployment of campaign 
resources.

The towns and cities are voting Yes by 2:1, a 26 point lead. In rural areas Yes only has a 
modest 12 point lead.  One figure that leaps out though is the huge drop in the rural No 
vote in comparison with the February poll, its down 10 points, 2/3rds of which became 
Don't Knows.  The drop is twice the error margin for this sub population size so its a 
real effect and we'd wonder what the cause of it might be - perhaps simply an impact of a 
previous lack of conversation about the need for abortion access being overcome by media 
coverage.

If the lead in urban areas is big in Dublin it's huge, 3:1, a 40 point lead at 63% to 23%. 
  The Yes vote is weakest in Connacht/Ulster, where Yes with 33% has a tiny 3 point lead. 
Yes leads by 20 points in the rest of Leinster and by 16 points in Munster.  The Don't 
Knows are highest in the regions where Yes is weakest, they are only 11% in Dublin but 30% 
in Connacht/Ulster. This may indicate that the ‘shy vote' presenting as Don't Know may 
shift more heavily to Yes than No because of the long term reliance of anti-choice 
movements on public shaming tactics.

Our impression is also that the Together for Yes campaign is weakest at the start of the 
campaign in Connacht/Ulster whereas Donegal has always been a strong point of the 
anti-choice movement.  So this certainly suggests that canvassing and other outreach 
methods there may have a far bigger proportional impact than they would elsewhere.  If you 
live in Dublin but come from Connacht/Ulster you'd do a lot better to canvass ‘back home' 
and chase the 30% Don't Know than the elusive 11% in Dublin.

This may also be a good point to insert a reminder that there is also a parallel 
pro-choice struggle along broadly similar lines in the 6 North-East counties of Ulster 
under British rule.  The ‘carnival of reaction' that followed partition created theocratic 
states north and south of the border but the continued impact of colonialism in the north 
has served to preserve clerical influence three decades after its disintegration started 
in the south.  When Repeal is carried south of the border we may become the best available 
option for pregnant people in the north needing to access abortion.  They will of be 
disproportionately disadvantaged by the requirement for two doctors visits 3 days apart to 
access abortion pills.  This requirement is not simply a pointless inconvenience but 
something that if passed will deny abortion access to vulnerable segments of the 
population including those trapped in abusive relationships.

These regional sub populations are all around 250 people meaning the margin of error is 
around 6% so although there are fascinating fluctuations between the March and February 
polls almost all are around 3% and so meaningless within the error margin.  A few are not, 
these are;

In Leinster No has dropped 7 points, all it appears switching to Don't Know.
In Ulster Yes has dropped 9 points,  however the Conn/Ulster population size is small that 
the others (161) so that 9% drop isn't far off the margin of error at 8%.  The drop split 
evenly between Don't know and Won't vote which indicates it may be a ‘shy vote' in 
conditions where there is a lot of aggressive public shaming from the anti-choice campaigns.
12 weeks by region
The reason the No campaign want to centre the 12 week issue is clear when we look at 
regional variation on the question of unrestricted access to 12 weeks.  If this was the 
question rather than Repeal Yes would carry Dublin and Munster but lose Connacht / Ulster 
and (by a tiny margin) the rest of Leinster.    The concentration of population in Dublin 
and Cork would mean the referendum would still pass - even if 12 weeks on request was the 
question - but it would be very tight.  This is why the No campaign is trying to centre 
the conversation on the 12 week question, they want voters to be thinking of that rather 
than FFA or health at the moment they mark their ballot box.

FFA & health by region
The other significant shifts are around the FFA & Health access issue - here we see why 
the Together for Yes campaign will want to centre health & FFA access.  The regional 
differences are huge here, Dublin has an 8:1 lead when you ignore Don't Knows. Elsewhere 
the Yes lead on that question is a little over 2:1 except Leinster which is 3:1.  If 
access to abortion for women whose health was under threat and for FFA was the question 
the referendum would be massively carried everywhere.  The problem for the No campaign is 
that essentially this is the question for anyone who thinks abortion should be available 
in such circumstances even when they are unsure of the 12 weeks on request issue.  All the 
more so as the 12 week limit is determined by that being the last point abortion pills can 
be used and the state has already demonstrated it cannot stop hundreds of women using 
these every year.

There were a couple of significant shifts between February and March on this question

In Leinster support for FFA and health access rose 9 points to 61% and opposition fell 11 
points to 19%
But in urban areas support for FFA and health access fell 15 points to 63% while 
opposition rose 9 points to 18%.
These are real effects several times the error margin.  The 15% urban drop is the largest 
change across both polls.  A clue to the cause may be that while the drop is in urban 
areas it is not reflected in the largest urban area of Dublin.

Intentions by Party
Over the page we have the tables that provides a breakdown of voter intention by which 
party was voted for in the previous election.  This is a particularly important subset as 
those most likely to vote in the referendum are those who voted in the last election.

It has to be said at the start that the size of the sub populations here for Labour (42) 
and the Green Party (9) are too small to draw any conclusions from the data.  Otherwise we 
could waste time considering the plus and minus 20% changes since the last poll but that's 
pretty much the error margin and less.

It's probably not surprising to see that Fine Gael who are in government are over 2:1 Yes. 
  Fianna Fail voters only give the Yes side a 10 point lead over No compared to the 22 
point lead for the total population.  It's likely the Fianna Fail Yes is largely their 
urban vote and that their rural vote is No, one of the major difficulties Fianna Fail 
faces is the disintegration of their once powerful urban base because of their role in the 
crash and the pressure of Sinn Fein.

Realistically we can expect rural Fianna Fail to be sitting on their hands and quietly 
campaigning against the referendum.  We've certainly see a couple of obvious sock puppet 
accounts on Twitter whose real owners appear to be rural Fianna Fail activists.  As issue 
in rural areas will be Fianna Fail trying to use the referendum to damage rival 
candidates, another reason why understanding these polls is important as they are far more 
likely to try this if they think it will be a close vote. Likewise Fine Gael and Labour 
politicians in rural areas are less likely to campaign vigorously if they think the vote 
will be close.  This is part of the reason the No spokespeople were very keen to talk up 
the second RedC poll even though they also must have spotted that the trend across all 
four polls suggests the apparent shift was an artifact rather than a real finding.

The most significant population bloc in terms of campaigning is found in this table and 
that is the Sinn Fein voters.  In the February poll 26% were Don't Knows or Won't Vote but 
by March both these have fallen drastically resulting in a 7% rise in SF No vote to 30%. 
We need a little caution here though as the SF population size is only 133 so the 7% 
growth in the No vote is slightly under the error margin.  Sinn Fein is the one political 
party where over the period the leadership have adopted a strikingly stronger position, in 
particular over the last few days (ie after the March poll had come out).  It could well 
be this will have a major impact on the figures in the next poll, otherwise republicans 
will have to switch ‘No Freedom till Freedom for Women' to ‘your on your own girls'.

To summarise this poll data means that it is likely but not inevitable that the Yes vote 
will win.  The lead is significant and the trend is favourable but there are a lot of 
Don't Knows and if they all become No's and the over 55s turn out in droves while the 
under 35s fail to show than the result could be very close.

In addition we can expect a massive increase in the volume of dirty stealth ads to appear 
in the last week of the campaign.  These will attempt to create moral panics and play on 
prejudices when there will not be enough time to address these.  The conversations we have 
with workmates, friends and relative between now and then can be used to inoculate people 
against this tactic, the Cambridge Analytica investigation breaking when it did is useful 
in that regard to encourage people to question the funding and truthfulness of the dirty 
stealth ads as they appear.

We conclude by saying that a ‘women's right to choose' is no more subject to the popular 
whim than slavery.  The logic of the passing of the 8th was the attempts to ban 
information and travel that quickly followed.  A 2:1 majority did not stop our fight 
against those.  If by some disaster Repeal is defeated then the day after pregnant people 
will still be illegally importing pills for use in Ireland and travelling to obtain 
abortions elsewhere.  A no vote won't stop abortion, it will just extend the period of 
illegality and force thousands to continue to travel or break the law here and risk a 14 
year prison sentence.

Together for Yes website

Author: Andrew N Flood

https://wsm.ie/c/repeal-8th-opinion-polls-analysis

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Message: 5




Awareness of the violence suffered by women (mainly in their professional environment) has 
started in recent months. Since the actresses dared to raise the silence on Weinstein, the 
women have denounced sexist acts of violence, harassment, aggression on the part of public 
figures including a good number of artists. What to do with pigs and their works ? ---- 
The place of works and their authors in public, cultural or educational spheres is a 
debate that remains legitimate beyond the hiding place of freedom of expression. Indeed, 
how can we fight violence against women, against sexism and more broadly against 
patriarchy, and at the same time assume works that make these oppressions models ? Do we 
need "  the past to make a clean sweep  " ?

No forgiveness, no forgetting

These questions resurface with each new case, each new appearance, diffusion, defense of a 
sexist work, or whose author committed a sexist crime. We will try to develop here certain 
possibilities of answers. Many male actors and personalities in the arts have engaged in 
sexist behavior, violence, harassment and aggression against women. Some have been fired 
from projects they had underway, some have been sentenced and others are being whitened as 
default.

Should we then systematically boycott all artists who have or have had violent behavior 
towards women ? So useful that a boycott is, the steadily growing size of the list makes 
the task difficult ; but it remains intolerable that those men who have broken the lives 
of women can benefit from impunity. This would amount to legitimizing these behaviors. So 
what to do ?

Can one dissociate the man from his art, works in which he participated ? Or should we 
outright forbid the diffusion of the works of these artists ?

It is not a question of restoring censorship. But we can not agree to protect by freedom 
of expression, those who by their behavior and practices alienate life, the freedom of 
women. In addition, a work exceeds its author: one can despise the artist and recognize an 
interest in the work.

John Waterhouse's painting Hylias and Nymphs (1896) was taken from the Manchester Gallery 
by artist Sonia Boyce as she represents a man among six nude women.
Is destruction creation ?
The most pragmatic seems to simply refuse to be posed as models, heroes or innovators to 
be honored, whether by a festival selection, a magazine or a retrospective. The question 
is a little different when the work itself is the problem. Certainly the vast majority of 
works are sexist: a work is the product of its time, of the society in which it was 
thought. But some are more violent than others. A uniform treatment of the question seems 
impossible to us, case by case is necessary.

Take the example of the rewrite of the end of Bizet's opera Carmen for the public of 
Florence. The original libretto illustrates the violence of the male domination and 
proposes for end a feminicide: the heroine, a free woman, is killed by Don Jose, a lover 
whose Carmen no longer wants. The director thought that in the current context of 
liberating women's words about the violence they endure, it would be: "  inconceivable 
that we applaud the murder of one of them  ".In this new version Carmen kills Don José in 
a state of self-defense, facing his violent insistence. Message: Carmen remains free, and 
has the strength to defend herself, she can get by on her own. Rewritings are common but 
is the solution to rewrite all the parts that have violent passages ?

In England, a woman stands against Sleeping Beauty and wants to ban the story in schools. 
Belle is immersed in a 100-year-old sleep and is kissed by the prince. Physically, she can 
not give her consent. This tale traditionally read to children shows and normalizes, even 
idealizes, violent sexual behavior. It reproduces the culture of rape. According to 
Bettelheim, this tale serves as a training for the life of a woman: the rules are a curse 
from which a withdrawal into oneself ; while the prince is turned towards the world and 
can fight. Through these tales, gendered models are portrayed to children. To fight 
against sexism, would it not be to read other tales which would make it possible to be 
constructed differently ?

At the Manchester Gallery, Sonia Boyce performed a performance to question the image and 
representation of women: she removed a painting representing a man in the middle of six 
naked women, exposed in a room named, to crown it, "  Search for Beauty  ", where are hung 
only paintings painted by men representing women's bodies. In the place of the painting is 
a note that explains the approach of the performer.

The director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam undertook in 2015 to rid, if possible with 
prior agreement of the artists, the names of works of 23 discriminatory words (sexist, 
racist) according to complaints from visitors ( "  negro  ", "  dwarf "). "  Wild  ", 
etc.). If she renames these works, the director does not erase history because the names 
given by collectors will remain in the database and those given by the artist will be 
mentioned above the new name.

Contextualize the Works
Our current sexist society still has some way to go, and our story is one of successive 
struggles against discrimination. Knowing these possible struggles has allowed us to move 
forward. So erasing, modifying, or prohibiting these works would not have the detrimental 
effect of erasing the existence of the possibility of struggle ? To make society believe 
that male domination and patriarchy would have totally and permanently disappeared. If it 
seems absurd to judge the works of yesterday according to today's socio-political 
criteria, it is necessary to draw up a critique of values and that everyone can understand 
it. By means of education, explanatory notes at the beginning of a book, a film, an 
exhibition ... to contextualize the works but also to make known the struggles that made 
it possible to go beyond what they convey.

AL Alsace

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Violences-De-l-art-ou-des-cochons

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Message: 6





 From next year, more than 2.3 million employees and employees of German industry will be 
able to shorten their weekly working time to 28 hours. This is the effect of the agreement 
that in February this year concluded by the IG Metall trade union and the employers' 
association of the metal and electrical industry Gesamtmetall. The signing of the 
agreement was preceded by mass strike action. The leftist daily Junge Welt reported that 
as part of a series of 24-hour warning strikes at the turn of January and February, a 
total of about half a million employees and employees from 280 factories were on strike. 
---- On January 31, strikes were organized in 80 companies, and work refused 68,000. 
people - mainly in MAN factories producing trucks. On February 1, employees and workers of 
Volkswagen plants in Cologne (employing 13,000 people) carried out a strike. In the 
following days, IG Metall conducted strike actions in the Bosha, BMW, Audi, Daimler, 
Siemens and Airbus factories. Mobilization mainly covered the automotive industry, but 
strikes were also organized in plants producing electronic equipment and other sectors of 
the metallurgical industry.

The effect of the strikes is an agreement under which wages will increase by 4.3% already 
in April this year (IG Metall initially demanded a 6% increase). However, more important 
are the arrangements for working time - from 2019, each employee will be able to shorten 
their weekly working time to 28 hours for a pre-determined period from half a year to two 
years. After this time, he will be able to return to the standard 35-hour working week or 
remain in the 28-hour system for the next period. Even 4 million employees and employees 
employed in establishments covered by the agreement will be able to use these solutions. 
However, employers have the right to extend the working week to 40 hours for those 
employees and workers who "want to work longer".

Although the agreement is often presented as a huge success of the German trade unions, 
the employers seem to be satisfied with it. President of Gesamtmetall, Dr. Rainer Dulger, 
commented on them as follows: "A collective agreement allows employees to shorten their 
working time for a limited period and then return to full-time. Consequently, much more 
employees than before will be able to work longer than 35 hours, in some cases up to 50 
percent In this way, not only does the work volume lost due to part-time work, but even 
the overall production capacity can be extended if necessary.This model will allow us 
exactly the flexibility up and down we wanted. "Skeptical about agreement also the Junge 
Welt newspaper: "It's obvious that contrary to the declarations of the head of IG Metall 
Jörg Hofmann, this collective agreement is not a "breakthrough in working time." - 
according to Junge Welt, the agreement guarantees employers the possibility of flexible 
management of work time and matching it to the economic situation. In this way, global 
working hours in the German automotive industry and the electrical industry can remain at 
a similar level, but will be differently "spread" into individual categories of employees 
and employees.

http://ozzip.pl/teksty/informacje/zagranica/item/2360-niemcy-krotszy-czas-pracy-w-przemysle

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