Archive for the ‘Human Rights’ Category
Deport an Immigrant? The view of Sinn Féin TD Claire Kerrane (the party’s Integration Spokesperson)
A highly-respected human rights campaigner Wendy Lyon draws our attention to a public statement issued by the Sinn Féin spokesperson on Integration Claire Kerrane TD (Ropscommon-Galway). Kerrane’s home town is Ballaghaderreen, which has recently been the target of sinister anti-immigrant racist mobilisations.
Wendy Lyon posted this comment on the X/Twitter platform :
“A party representative who doesn’t think immigrants accused of crime should be entitled to legal aid is not fit to be integration spokesperson.”
Sinn Féin party leader Mary Lou McDonald TD led a pile-on against critics, featuring a legion of self-declared SF supporters [note of caution : many of them may not be real individuals]
Wendy Lyon has a much better policy :
Anyway, “criminals should be deported instead of imprisoned” is Little Irelander nationalism. If someone is really a danger to others then (until there’s a better alternative) prison is exactly where they should be, not free to be a danger to people in their country of origin.
Claire Kerrane TD, in her own words :
“Sinn Féin’s integration spokesperson has stood over a deleted Facebook post saying deportation should be considered for any immigrant who commits a crime.
But Claire Kerrane said it’s a personal view and she’s “not pushing for it” to become party policy.”
An anti-racist correspondent, EamonVIDF has done an excellent job providing context for this dispute :
This kind of lets the ‘optics’ cat out of the bag
The full information thread is here :
https://x.com/EamonnVIDF/status/1853423563346153484
Who is Wendy Lyon?
Wendy Lyon holds an LLM in International Human Rights Law (Griffith College Dublin), for which she wrote her dissertation on sex workers’ right to health. She has been involved in feminist activism on both sides of the Atlantic for longer than she cares to admit. By day, she works as a solicitor, practising mainly in the areas of immigration and sexual/reproductive/maternity rights. She tweets about human rights law, politics, and her cats at @wendylyon. Wendy contributes to the Feminist Ire blog :
Feminist Ire :
John Meehan November 10 2024
Free Boris Kagarlitsky – Free All antiwar prisoners in Russia
BORIS KAGARLITSKY
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN
On February 13, 2024, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation sentenced prominent Russian socialist, anti-war activist and author Boris Kagarlitsky to five years jail
for ‘justifying terrorism’.
This campaign exists to win his freedom and that of all other antiwar prisoners in Russia.
Free Boris Kagarlitsky – Free All antiwar prisoners in Russia (Web link)
Register for Boris Kagarlitsky Conference (Web Link)
Online Conference – Boris Kagarlitsky and the Challenges of the Left Today
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
Read the rest of this entry »Gardaí criticised over treatment of minority communities at Culture Night block party – Disturbing Dublin Reports : Gay Community News and University Times
This report comes from Gay Community News via the Cedar Lounge Revolution blog.
The author is Sarah Creighton Keogh
Gardaí criticised over treatment of minority communities at Culture Night block party
The arrests of three individuals at a Culture Night block party have led to discussions around the treatment of minority communities.
Source :
Light-touch policing
On the night of Friday, September 20, three individuals were arrested in Dublin’s Temple Bar area for public order offences, according to An Garda Síochána. The arrests took place during a block party hosted by Tola Vintage, a popular clothing store, as part of the city’s Culture Night celebrations. The event was held outside the flagship store on Fownes Street, with Tola Vintage having two other locations in the city on College Green and Aungier Street.
The incident, captured on video and widely circulated on social media, has ignited public discourse around policing in Ireland, particularly in relation to the treatment of minority communities.
The footage shows a significant Garda presence at the party, and what started as a celebration quickly escalated into a violent altercation. In the video, multiple gardaí can be seen subduing one man, with witnesses heard shouting, “He’s bleeding.”
Read the rest of this entry »“Cork city’s Lord Mayor defends Naked Bike Ride photo” – far right desperados open a new culture war in Ireland
A key idea needs endless repetition.
The far-right is on the warpath, highlighting a number of seemingly obscure cultural and political issues. These bigots are 21st century spiritual descendants of the sinister religious orders who created magdalene laundry prisons and torture chambers locking up generations of Irish women and children after the 26 county bit of Ireland became a state in 1922.
We can say with confidence – first they came for the transgender community, then they went after the naked bike-riders. Cork’s 21st century spiritual descendant of the notorious Laois anti-semite bigot Oliver J Flanagan TD (Fine Gael) is Kenneth O’Flynn of the Independent Ireland (II) party.
An editorial from the current Belfast Media publication offers a very useful guide to these issues :
A settled and utterly uncontroversial matter until it was identified in far-right focus grouping
‘The Trans question was a settled & utterly uncontroversial matter until it was identified in far-right focus-grouping as a potential goldmine for those who profit from fear & division.’
Read the rest of this entry »
Majority of Irish people welcome migrants who move here to ‘make a better life for themselves’
Survey responses often depend on how the question is framed.
Like me, I am sure many readers are sick and tired of tactics used by many mainstream media organisations to bolster a sinister racist agenda. This is a drum regularly beaten by friends who post at two excellent blogs : Irish Election Projections and the Cedar Lounge Revolution
Sources :
The Journal.ie story :
Majority of Irish people welcome migrants who move here to ‘make a better life for themselves’
Read the rest of this entry »The (undemocratic) Democratic Party machine lurches toward the election – Grim Presidential Tales from the USA
Sharon Smith, writing for International Socialism, explores the control wielded by the Democratic Party establishment over the nomination process in her article, “The (undemocratic) Democratic Party machine lurches toward the election.
Foreword : USA Presidential elections are shit-shows – mud-slinging works.
Readers may know a famous Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) quip about why he called his opponent a pig fucker. Johnson admitted it wasn’t true, but “I want him to have to deny it,” he explained.
Mr Johnson became President of the USA in November 1963, taking over from the assassinated John F Kennedy.
Johnson won an election landslide in 1964 claiming his opponent Barry Goldwater was a fanatical warmonger. By 1968 demonstrators all over the globe were marching against the USA invasion of Vietnam – a favourite chant was :
“Hey, Hey, LBJ
How many kids did you kill today”
Donald Trump (age 78) looked more mentally capable than President Joe Biden (age 82) in a recent TV debate. The New York felon, convicted in a jury trial and fined 86 million dollars for sexually assaulting the writer E Jean Carroll, is now up against a more formidable Democratic party opponent Kamala Harris (age 59). The gloves are off :
“Ms Harris, speaking at a private fundraiser headlined by singer-songwriter James Taylor in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, said much of the rhetoric coming from Mr Trump and his running mate, US Senator JD Vance, was “just plain weird.”
Her use of the word “weird” to describe her opponents was part of a new strategy from Democrats.
The Harris campaign called Mr Trump “old and quite weird” following his appearance on Fox News on Thursday, and at least one supporter showed up outside the event yesterday holding a sign proclaiming “Trump is weird.” – RTÉ News Report
The (undemocratic) Democratic Party machine lurches toward the election – by Sharon Smith
What the Democratic Party establishment wants, it gets—and that includes its chosen presidential candidate. It had anointed Joe Biden well before the election primary season got underway in early 2024. This is why Biden ran virtually unopposed and predictably won every Democratic primary.
But the path to Biden’s reelection was not as smooth as Democratic Party leaders envisioned, mainly because Biden’s cognitive decline—underway for several years—has accelerated in recent months. Perhaps the leaders of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) believed they could shield the public from Biden’s decline through the entire election cycle by limiting his time in the public eye. That strategy backfired badly. The Party leadership is entirely to blame for the ensuing chaos. But don’t expect them to change course.
Read the rest of this entry »Julian Assange, Political Prisoner of the USA, Released on the island of Saipan.
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.
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”.
Read the rest of this entry »How well did the left go in the June 9 European election? – by Dick Nichols, Green Left (Australia)
A recommended article :
Source ;
How well did the left go in the June 9 European Election?
How well did the left go in the June 9 European election?
Provisional results of the 2024 European Elections, as at June 19. Source: results.elections.europa.eu
At first glance it looks as if the parties to the left of the social democracy held their ground against the surge of the far right and mainstream right that marked the June 9 European Union (EU) parliamentary elections (see here for results in detail).
Although the smallest of the European parliament’s seven groups, The Left managed to maintain its EU-wide vote at 5.4% and increase its seat tally from 37 to 39 in the 720-seat assembly.
In addition, left green Members of the European Parliaments (MEPs) and those representing stateless nations (part of the Greens group as the European Free Alliance) at least maintained their numbers in the chamber.
See also
Finland: Mass workers’ strike wave continues against gov’t attacks on workers, unions, welfare
Interview: Fascism and resistance in France today
Ukrainian unionists: Oligarchs, not Europe’s poor, should pay for weapons and aid to Ukraine
Workers’ Party of Belgium gains ground in European, national elections
Yet the Greens group as a whole shrank from 71 seats to 53 while that of the liberals (known as Renew) fell from 102 to 79. This drop reflected that the environmental issues that in part drove the big advance of these parties in the 2019 election were less important for many voters this time.
The campaign was dominated by insecurity about the future, the cost of living (particularly housing), the fear of war, the “immigration threat” and intolerance of difference.
In this grim atmosphere the biggest growth went to the mainstream right European People’s Party and the two far-right groups (Identity and Democracy and Conservatives and Reformists): taken together the right and far right won an extra 30 seats, bring it to 324.
Because it would take only 37 ungrouped MEPs to join them to from a reactionary majority, the June 9 result poses with new urgency two old questions about politics in the European parliament. How much, if at all, does the real balance of political forces in the chamber differ from that among its formal groupings? And how much does membership of a group represent disciplined commitment to its positions?
Left divisions over Ukraine
The questions are sharply relevant in the case of the Left group, where differences over what stance to take towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine were already pointing towards a split before June 9.
On May 31, Li Andersson, chairperson of the Finnish Left Alliance told the Helsinki Times that these differences could not be tolerated in the group in the new legislature. Referring to Clare Daly and Mick Wallace, Irish left independent opponents of military aid to Ukraine, Andersson said: “The Nordic Green Left as a whole [covering Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands] is of the opinion that if they manage to win re-election, they can’t join our group.”
For Andersson, the same went for the new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance: For Reason and Justice (BSW), a split in Germany from leading Left group member Die Linke (The Left). BSW opposes military aid to Ukraine and supports resuming the gas trade with Russia, in common with most of Europe’s far-right parties.
Read the rest of this entry »
