Archive for the ‘Solidarity (USA)’ Category
“War and an Irish Town” – Joan McKiernan reviews a classic Eamonn McCann study of Derry and Partitioned Ireland
Joan McKiernan is an Irish-American socialist-feminist activist living in New York.
Joan McKiernan
War and an Irish Town
Source : https://againstthecurrent.org/atc223/war-and-an-irish-town/
By Eamonn McCann
First publication Pluto Press, 1974. Chicago: Haymarket Books edition, 2018, $20 paperback.
“‘WE’RE GONNA WALK on this nation, we’re gonna walk on this racist power structure, and we’re gonna say to the whole damned government — “STICK ‘EM UP MOTHERFUCKERS.’”
WITH THIS QUOTE from a film of the Black Panthers, Eamonn McCann, launches the Haymarket edition of his classic study of Derry and the North of Ireland Troubles, War and an Irish Town, taking us back to those heady days when so much change not only seemed possible, but likely to happen.
This is an especially timely reissue when the question of a united Ireland is again on the table.
Those in Derry that 1968 night cheering the Black Panthers’ words shared a common goal: the fight against inequality and repression, whether on the streets of Derry or Chicago where Black activists were “then under murderous assault by the feds and local police forces across the US.”
In those years, from Vietnam to Yugoslavia, Chicago to Mexico and many other places, the world was filled with students, workers, communities fighting back. McCann argues that “Each upsurge of struggle sent out a flurry of sparks which helped ignite struggle elsewhere.”
He situates The Troubles in the North of Ireland in this time of international struggles. Those who were there for those struggles should read this latest edition, with a new introduction by the author, to reconsider what happened and why we did not win. Those who were too young at the time can read about those exciting times and what lessons can be learned for the future.
Read the rest of this entry »Internationalist manifesto against the war – Anticapitalist Organisations of Russia, Ukraine, and NATO Countries
An excellent initiative.
Anticapitalist Organisations of Russia, Ukraine, and NATO Countries
The criminal war launched by Russian imperialism against Ukraine is the most serious threat to world peace since the end of the Cold War. It brings the world closer to a global conflagration than at any time since Mikhail Gorbachev’s peace initiatives.
The main culprit for this dangerous evolution is US imperialism, which took advantage of the fall of the Soviet Union in order to consolidate its global military network, expand its presence in various parts of the world and launch invasion wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Washington fostered in Russia and Eastern Europe the adoption of a brutal neoliberal program that created conditions for a far-right drift in most of these countries, especially Russia where it supported Boris Yeltsin’s antidemocratic coup in 1993.
American Biden-Democrat “Hostility” to Trump – Not the same as “Opposition” – A Highly Recommended Article
At times readers of online political commentary despair going through useless drudge that can be found on the internet. But if you keep at it, watch for sources you know are usually solid and reliable, you find excellent material. This article came to the attention of the Tomás Ó Flatharta blog via an FB friend Suzi Weissman.
https://www.kpfk.org/on-air/suzi-weissman/
It is a devastating, withering, attack on the Biden-Democrat “hostility” to the Trump administration – which is not the same as opposition. A stunning catastrophe looms now in the USA as the Trump Government “opens up” this land to the Covid-19 Monster at the Door of New York. Now, more than ever, the USA radical left must look towards the November 2020 General Election, and attempt to offer a credible alternative to the Evil Biden-Trump Tweedledee Monster. Shame on Bernie Sanders. The article concludes :
Bernie’s consistent criticism falls flat these days as he loyally signs on to the party consensus while trying to push additions and improvements. AOC is a lone voice in the wilderness daring to cast the occasional no vote.
What’s left are endangered and desperate people daring to walk off the job and appealing to their peers for support. We the people are on our own and must find our own way forward without waiting for leadership that doesn’t exist. By shedding illusions to the contrary, we open up new possibilities.
An internal government document circulating in the United States projects a surge in coronavirus cases and a sharp rise in daily deaths by June 1, the New York Times reported, even as President Donald Trump urged states to lift restrictions in place to quell the pandemic.
The document, based on modelling by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, projects that COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, will kill 3,000 Americans a day by the end of May, the Times said on Monday, up from a current daily toll about 2,000. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/05/model-projects-fold-increase-coronavirus-cases-200504185028572.html
Hostility Is Not the Same As Opposition – Resistance is Needed
There is hostility, which is not the same thing.
Opposition implies a critical analysis and an alternative program, that is, an examination of what is being done wrong, why this is so, and what should change. On all three points, the loudest non-Trump voices offer confusion, distraction, and hypocrisy, not leadership around which a movement could cohere.
What is wrong? Read the rest of this entry »
Bernie Sanders Chooses Lesser-Evil Politics in the USA – Joe Biden Versus Donald Trump is The Evil of Two Lessers
A dimwitted comeback kid staggers into a saloon called “The Evil of Two Lessers”
The Twilight of the Political Revolution
The Twilight of the Political Revolution
— Read on louisproyect.org/2020/03/09/the-twilight-of-the-political-revolution/
Lesser-Evil Politics from a defeated Democratic Party Candidate Bernie Sanders :
Just as was the case in 2016, Sanders will stump for Biden like he did for Clinton. Yesterday, he told Meet the Press’s Chuck Todd, “Look, Joe Biden is a friend of mine. He has indicated that if he wins the nomination I will be there for him. Together, we are going to beat Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country, but you can’t — we live in a democracy, and we have to contrast his — our records and our ideas, our vision for the future.”
The dogged investigative journalist Ed Moloney adds extra toxicity :
Now that Joe Biden is the favourite to win the Democratic presidential nomination, expect to see his failing mental powers – his increasingly hard-to-ignore senility to be blunt – assume centre stage.
Democrat bosses would not be human if they were not concerned about how he will fare against Trump in the back and forth of debates. Biden’s mental confusion is now so obvious and embarrassing, even if much of the US media don’t want to go there, that it is enough to make you wonder whether the Ukrainian scandal was really staged to make it appear that Trump was scared of Biden when in fact he wanted him to be his opponent.
This piece in Commonweal magazine mercilessly examines Biden’s mental problem.
The question for the radical left in the USA becomes : is there a credible third-Party campaign which can be supported?
This is one option :
https://solidarity-us.org/every-state-is-a-battleground/
https://howiehawkins.us/whats-wrong-with-capitalism-and-why-we-need-ecosocialism/
Every state is a battleground – Howie Hawkins, Green Party USA Presidential Candidate in 2020 – Standing on the Ecosocialist Left Against the Democrats and Republicans
Every state is a battleground
— Read on solidarity-us.org/every-state-is-a-battleground/
Howie Hawkins is the Green Party Candidate in the USA 2020 Presidential Election.
He eloquently presents the case against making a “lesser evil” choice between the two wings of one American Capitalist Party – the Republicans and the Democrats. 
Tomás Ó Flatharta 