indymedia does a pretty fantastic analysis of last saturdays riots in the centre of dublin city. here is an extract:

a political analysis of the dublin riots and why nobody saw them coming o’connell street was a building site and bricks, paving stones, barricades and oil cans were neatly arranged all along it, almost like an ammunition dump for rioters. combine that with the proximity of many of the poorest residential areas in the city where the gardai are feared and hated and the reasonable number of destitute drug users who you will find around o’connell street on an average saturday and you had a ready supply of people and ammunition for a proper riot and that was what we saw. there were probably no more than 200 people who were involved in the initial onslaught, but hundreds more joined in as the fighting made its way down o’connell street. local youths could be seen coming out of side streets phoning their mates and as the fighting progressed more and more people joined in. i’d estimate that over a thousand people took part in the events in one way or another. every time that the riot squad managed to advance a few metres, they would have to leave a line of police to guard any of the side streets that they had passed as more and more locals came out to see what was happening. there were crowds massed all along the side streets and most of their sympathies appeared to liewith the rioters. at one stage some of the more political republicans who had organised the counter-protest engaged in a sit down protest in front of the riot police advance. presumably they had decided that they wanted to distance themselves from the rioters and mount a protest that was less liable to be associated with mindless violence. predictably they were brutally beaten and promptly cleared from the road. shortly afterwards, i witnessed a half dozen gardai trying to arrest an individual who had become trapped behind police lines, a crowd of onlookers let out an enraged shout and started rushing over to intervene – causing the gardai to relinquish their hold. the street was still thronged with shoppers and passers by many of whom seemed entirely nonplussed by the riot, simply standing towards the sides of the roads or wandering around behind police lines without taking part in the fighting, but clearly more sympathetic to the rioters than the gardai as i reached nassau street i witnessed an incredibly bizzare and disconcerting sight. on my left a mob was torching cars, on my right grafton street shopping continued very much like any ordinary saturday afternoon indymedia ireland 2006.02.26