Archive for the ‘Belgium’ Category
Two Contrasting May Day Celebrations in 2023 – Ghent (Belgium) V Dublin (Ireland)
Ghent, Thomas Weyts Reports
This year we also participated in the 1st May parade in Ghent with a beautiful group of Ukrainian people and solidarity Belgians.
With a clear message: Russian troops out of Ukraine, stop the bombing. Solidarity with Ukraine and its people! We will continue to take action as long as necessary.
We also continue to shake the high tree of the trade unions and the progressive movements: come out of your room, show your solidarity with Ukraine, in words but especially in deeds!
We thank the fine people of Peace for Ukraine-Ghent, the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine, Ghent4Humanity Refugee Support, SAP Anti-capitalists and all the other people who were there, but also all the participants at the parade and by the side who showed their sympathy.
https://www.facebook.com/100049340987344/videos/788647199647966/?idorvanity=1354716241617827
Dublin : John Meehan Reports :
Dublin Council of Trade Unions (DCTU), organisers of the May Day march in Ireland’s capital city, made sure that nothing politically worthwhile was said from the platform about Ukraine. Mick O’Reilly spoke about “War and Peace” – at best the speech was woffle; at worst it was a left-evasionist exercise which avoided making a clear call for the immediate withdrawal of the Russian genocidal troops from Ukraine, or demanding an end to the murderous Russian bombing of civilian targets (including hospitals and schools) in the invaded territories.
Read the rest of this entry »Donald Trump’s Anti-China “Cold War” – Capitalist China’s Hot War against Muslim Uighurs and the people of Hong Kong – Trump’s Hot War against the “Black Lives Matter” Movement
A lot of tit-for-tat politicking is on the international political agenda. Shooting the messenger is a big temptation. Donald Trump is a hypocrite because he condemns China’s terrible human rights assaults on the Muslim Uighurs – while organising military tear-gassing assaults on “Black Lives Matter” street protests in his own country, the USA.
A correspondent notes the big problem with “shoot the messenger” politics (promoted by nocoldwar.org) :
Oppose all imperialist wars, hot or cold, but I think we can be safe in assuming that nothing will be said at this in solidarity with the Uighurs or independence movement in Hong Kong, unless they are denounced as agents of imperialism that is.
What is a good collective noun to describe this sort of 21st Century politics? Pierre Rousset offers “Campism” and presents a clear example :
“campism” remains present in this field, like a Pavlovian reflex: satisfied for example to condemn imperialist intervention in Iraq and Syria (which it is certainly necessary to do), but without saying what Islamic State represents or calling to resist it. http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article3669
“Stalinism”is out of date – the decrepit megalomaniac dictator of the Soviet Union, Stalin, died in 1953. Stalin’s leftwing fan club loyally defended every anti-worker crime performed by the Moscow Régime – “Socialism in One Country” in action.
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, and no serious person on the revolutionary left bickers today about the class character of Putin’s Russia and Xe Jinping’s China – both are capitalist world powers. The fan club listed in the attached notice is of interest to trainspotters since it includes ex-Trotskyist renegades – a name which jumps out is the British China-based academic John Ross.
Let’s work on a positive alternative. We can take inspiration in Ireland from Easter 1916 Rising Rebel Roger Casement’s exemplary 19th and early 20th century campaign against Belgian imperialist brutality in the Congo. Similarly, the 21st century radical left needs to make principled alliances in support of the oppressed Uighur Muslims and the mass pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, oppressed by capitalist China.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 