Tomás Ó Flatharta

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Archive for the ‘Sweden’ Category

Brussels conference lifts Ukraine solidarity to higher plane – Report by Dick Nichols, Green Left Weekly Australia

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The March 26-27 Brussels Solidarity with Ukraine conference drew together about 200 activists from a score of countries, in support of the Ukrainian people’s national and social rights.

A main organizer was Dick Nichols, who wrote the comprehensive report below;

Link :
Brussels Conference Lifts Ukraine Solidarity to a Higher Plane – Dick Nichols, Green Left Weekly

Former Finnish education minister Li Andersson (left) and Ukrainian women’s rights activist Ivanna Vynna addressing the March 26-27 Ukraine Solidarity Conference in the Belgian capital Brussels. Photos: Julie Ward

The gathering was organised by the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine (ENSU) and the Ukraine Solidarity Campaigns (USC) of England and Wales and Scotland. It was devoted to strengthening people-to-people solidarity, as the menace of Ukraine being partitioned and pillaged by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s and United States President Donald Trump’s governments looms ever larger.

The conference also took place in the context of ongoing conflict between Ukraine’s trade union, feminist, environmental, civil rights and progressive political movements and the neoliberal domestic policies of Volodymyr Zelensky’s government.

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“Being a socialist you oppose imperialism – Russia has no right to a single square metre of Ukrainian Soil” – Jonas Sjöstedt, European Parliament Member of the Vänsterpartiet (Left Party, Sweden)

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News reports, reactions and analysis : Solidarity With Ukraine Conference, Brussels, March 26 and 27 2025.

Jonas Sjöstedt, European Parliament Member of the Vänsterpartiet (Left Party, Sweden) spoke at the opening session of the international conference “Solidarity with Ukraine”, March 26 and 27 2025, Brussels.

Link :
Jonas Sjösted MEP (Left Party, Sweden), European Left – Being a socialist you oppose imperialism – Russia has no right to a single square metre of Ukrainian Soil

Li Andersson MEP (Left Alliance, Finland) reports :

Ukraine needs support to fight back against Russia’s aggression, but we must also address the problems facing Ukrainian civil society.

Last week we in The Left group organised a conference in Brussels to which we invited Ukrainian leftists and trade unionists to talk about supporting Ukrainian civil society in the midst of Russia’s illegal war of aggression launched by Putin.

Their message was very clear: in addition to arms support, there are many problems in Ukrainian civil society that urgently need solutions. In particular, they highlighted the serious lack of affordable housing, the lack of care services and the proposed reforms which will weaken workers’ rights and trade unions.

When I was in Kiev last autumn, we also talked a lot about the housing shortage with the Ukrainians.

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Senator Bernie Sanders : Russia started the war, not Ukraine. Putin is the dictator, not Zelensky – A growing progressive Pro-Ukraine revolt is rocking the USA – One dude, Jeffrey Sachs, is not joining in

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The good news is that progressive revolt seems to be starting in the United States of America.

A leading spokesperson is Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator from the New England state of Vermont.

Bernie SandersI don’t want to hear any Republicans talk about “freedom” unless they have the guts to call out Trump for the lies that he is telling about Putin and Ukraine.It was Russia that started the war, not Ukraine.Putin is the dictator, not Zelensky#News&Politics

TLT: Lets get this 4 years over with (@ihatetrump4ever.bsky.social) 2025-02-28T18:02:44.753Z

The ignorant racist anti-Ukraine thug, Vice-President JD Vance, is not welcome in Vermont :

This makes me so happy. Thank you Vermont. This is so deserving to the POS human being vance is. He was beyond rude to a world leader and showed that he had no breadth of the ongoing war in Ukraine. http://www.politicususa.com/p/jd-vance-f…

SlavaUkraini033 (@slavaukraini033.bsky.social) 2025-03-02T03:23:30.548Z

One man is not joining the growing progressive popular pro-Ukraine in the USA.

His name is Jeffrey Sachs, a right-wing economist whose hands are very dirty ; “Sachs’ methods for stabilizing economies became known as shock therapy and were similar to successful approaches used in Germany after the two world wars”

Link :
Jeffrey Sachs, Wikipedia

The anti-Ukraine views of Dr Sachs are endorsed and shared by the ignorant imperialist thugs running the Washington White House, the convicted rapist President Donald Trump and his sidekick JD Vance, who publicly ambushed Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 28 2025 in the White House.

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European Parliament adopts Nordic Left MEPs resolution against Russian ‘shadow fleet’ – Doing Everything We Can to Support Ukraine

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Source: Left Party (Sweden)

(November 14, 2024) In the EU election campaign, we promised to do everything we can to support Ukraine. We have now adopted (!) a resolution to stop the Russian shadow fleet.

The shadow fleet consists of poorly maintained, often uninsured ships with unclear ownership that export Russian oil and gas via the Baltic Sea, in violation of EU sanctions against Russia.

The proceeds from these exports fund the war in Ukraine. The shadow fleet threatens both the environment and the people of Ukraine.

With today’s resolution, which Hanna Gedin and Jonas Sjöstedt (pictured) skilfully succeeded in pushing through in the European Parliament, hard pressure is now being put on both the European Commission and the Member States to take the decisions needed to stop the shadow fleet.
This is a great victory for all of us who want to stop the war in Ukraine.

Further information:

Text of resolution adopted

Briefing on Russian shadow fleet

Why are Russian ‘shadow’ oil tankers still sailing the Baltic Sea?

by Li Andersson, Jussi Saramo, Jonas Sjöstedt, Merja Kyllönen, Per Clausen, Hanna Gedin, Jan van Aken, Maciej Konieczny, and Zofia Malisz

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Julian Assange, Political Prisoner of the USA, Released on the island of Saipan.

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The remote Pacific Ocean island of Saipan suddenly hit Irish and global headlines in 2002 when Irish soccer star Roy Keane walked away from the Irish team’s base for the World Cup in Korea and Japan after a blazing row with his manager Mick McCarthy. Today the island is back in the headlines after the political prisoner Julian Assange walked to freedom following a court hearing in the USA-owned North Marinara territory. Like Keane, Assange did not linger in Saipan – he flew home to his native land, Australia.

That is not the only Irish connection. Many innocent Irish political prisoners were held, like Assange, in noxious British jails such as Belmarsh. A small number of dedicated human rights lawyers became household names in Ireland. The picture below shows the released Julian Assange beside one of those lawyers, Gareth Pierce.

Political Prisoner Julian Assange and Civil Rights Lawyer Gareth Pierce

The campaigns for the release of the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, the Winchester Three and Judith Ward offer an important lesson :

When the left should get together in defence of political prisoners, it is very often a serious mistake to conduct a debate about the political views and activities of the prisoners. In Ireland that was true of the Birmingham 6, the H-Block/Armagh political prisoners, Nicky Kelly and the IRSP members framed for the Sallins Train Robbery, and the Jobstown Not Guilty political activists in Tallaght. Many comrades would be well advised to go back further and examine the Sacco and Vanzetti campaign in the 1920’s, and the Moscow Trial Purges of the 1930’s. The faults (or lack of faults) of the victims are regularly used as an excuse to avoid a united campaign in favour of the victims. The bigger story is that “An Injury to One is An Injury to All”.

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Britain’s tankies react to Prigozhin’s mutiny

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Here is another article in a series concerning Britain’s political tankies (left wing activists who identify positively with Stalinist tanks sent into countries neighbouring Russia to crush popular working class and democratic uprisings – for example Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968). A leading spokesperson of Britain’s “Stop the War” Campaign is Andrew Murray, who operates within a narrow political spectrum opposing active solidarity with the Ukrainian masses. Regrettably Murray shares practical common ground with activists from a different non-Stalinist background, the British Socialist Workers’s Party. This political poison – supporting any camp that is opposed by United States imperialism – is demolished below by the social democratic author Paul Mason. Mason might do his readers a favour by pointing to the fact that many currents with political origins on the left of Stalinism and Social Democracy – for example the Fourth International, solidarity movements such as the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine, many anarchist organisations and activists – advocate policies on Ukraine in accord with his own thinking. The main Irish radical left organisation – People Before Profit – is strangled by political campism. It needs rapid lessons offered by Scandinavian comrades :

Nordic Green Left Parties Declare Solidarity With Ukraine “we demand a complete and immediate withdrawal of the Russian armed forces from all Ukrainian territory”

https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article61764


Stop The War movement finds yet another reason to tell Ukraine to stop resisting…

Putin’s regime is in danger of collapse therefore Ukraine should stop fighting…That’s the message from Stop The War. Having been struck dumb by the events of Saturday 24 June, the campaign has finally come out with a line, penned by self-styled Ukraine expert Andrew Murray.

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Revolutionary, peasant leader : Hugo Blanco (1934 – 2023)

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Article Source : https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article66912

Hugo Blanco, the Peruvian revolutionary, peasant leader, former member of parliament, fighter for the rights of indigenous people and for the environment, has died after a short period of acute illness. [1] He was born in 1934 in Cusco in Peru, in the indigenous heartland, and he constantly returned there. At the same time, throughout his life he was always on the road, living in several countries, repeatedly deported by those in power whom he criticised. As late as in March he arrived once more in Sweden, yet again because of political turmoil after a coup in his home country. He died, as he had wished to, close to his two daughters in Sweden, Carmen and Maria.

For many years, Hugo was a member of organisations affiliated to the Fourth International, first in Argentina where he arrived as a young student and then after his return to Peru in the late 1950s. That is where he participated in and played a leading role in the campesino movement against the cruel, neofeudal latifundista reign in the Peruvian Andes. The peasants’ demand for land was met with brutal repression. Hugo took part in the forming of armed self-defence. In one confrontation a policeman was killed. Hugo was put on trial in a military tribunal and the prosecutor argued for a death sentence, but in the end he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

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Nordic Green Left Parties Declare Solidarity With Ukraine “we demand a complete and immediate withdrawal of the Russian armed forces from all Ukrainian territory”

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Left Wing Political Parties from Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway show leadership. Political parties in Ireland which identify with the left should adopt a similar policy.

Source : http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article66870

We, the undersigned representatives of the Nordic green left, declare our solidarity with the rightful resistance of the Ukrainian people and emphasise the sole responsibility of the Russian regime for initiating this illegal invasion, escalating it to the point of risking nuclear war, and provoking global re-armament.

We deeply condemn violations of international law and illegal occupations, regardless of whose imperialist ambitions they serve.

To end the war, we demand a complete and immediate withdrawal of the Russian armed forces from all Ukrainian territory. We welcome anti-war resistance and democratic opposition in Russia and Belarus as integral elements of the struggle for peace in the region.

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