Tomás Ó Flatharta

Looking at Things from the Left

Archive for the ‘Ireland’ Category

Ukraine Peace Appeal: Toward a More Informed Solidarity

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FROM UKRAINIAN CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS
TO PACIFIST AND PEACEBUILDING MOVEMENTS WORLDWIDE

Original Source : https://www.ukrainepeaceappeal2023.info/

We thank Jim Monaghan for drawing our attention to this important appeal, which he spotted in the North American analytical and activist journal “Against the Current” : https://againstthecurrent.org/atc225/ukraine-peace-appeal-toward-a-more-informed-solidarity/

THE FOLLOWING “APPEAL to Pacifist and Peacebuilding Movements Worldwide” has been initiated in May, 2023 by the Ukrainian Community of Mediators and Dialogue Facilitators, and Ukrainian Feminist Network for Freedom and Democracy, and supported by Ukrainian civil society organizations and individual signers.

1. We, Ukrainian civil society activists, feminists, peacebuilders, mediators, dialogue facilitators, mental health practitioners, human rights defenders and academics, recognise that a growing strategic divergence worldwide has led to certain voices, on the left and right and amongst pacifists to argue for an end to the provision of military support to Ukraine. They also call for an immediate cease-fire between Ukraine and Russia as the strategy for “ending the war.” These calls for negotiation with Putin without resistance are in reality calls to surrender our sovereignty and territorial integrity.

2. We ask for nothing less than the full respect for internationally agreed humanitarian and human rights law and the UN Charter and the practical means to defend ourselves, our popular sovereignty and our territorial integrity, to resist the Kremlin’s expansionist and imperialistic attempts to re-colonize its neighbors. Yes, we need diplomacy, and yes, we need humanitarian aid, but make no mistake, Ukraine needs to continue to be supported with modern weaponry and other military assistance and strict economic and political sanctions on the Kremlin.

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500 Days Since Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine : Protest, Friday, July 7 2023, at 3:00 pm near the Russian Embassy in Dublin on Orwell Road

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Ukrainian Action in Ireland Announcement :

500 days since the full invasion. Irish protesters near the Russian Embassy and Ukrainian Action invite you to remind representatives of the aggressor country that they must not escape responsibility for their military crimes and urge the world community to help Ukraine expel Russian detainees from our land.

#RussiaIsATerroristState

Friday, July 7 2023, at 3:00 pm near the Russian Embassy in Dublin on Orwell Road.

Bring the posters, Ukrainian flags.

#StandWithUkraine

Also, on Sunday, July 9, there will be an art installation dedicated to 500 days of war in central Dublin, we will write about it later.

Link : https://www.facebook.com/UkrainianActionIreland/

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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Britain: The Lecturers’ Union and the Betrayal of the Intellectuals – The anti-imperialism of amoral idiots

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Many certainties about global politics were transformed on February 24 2022 when the Russian Federation began a genocidal imperialist invasion of Ukraine, a country in the heart of Europe with a population of 44 million people. The imperialist invaders have forced at least seven million people out of their homeland. This was a seismic shock to many parts of the existing international anti-war movement, which failed to see this catastrophe on the horizon. In itself, that is not a problem. The future cannot be foretold with perfect accuracy, we only have 20-20 vision about the past.

But, what to do?

Readers of this blog will be aware of activities sponsored by Irish Left With Ukraine (ILWU) and the heroic work of Ukrainian activist and academic Yuliya Yurchenko.

This is her take on the behaviour of the British “Stop the War Coalition”, which has parallels in Ireland and other parts of the globe :

Yuliya Yurchenko, a Ukrainian senior lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Greenwich, described the attitude of the ‘anti-war’ left, “who somehow manage to simultaneously recognise Russia’s right to ‘defend its interests’ while denying the right of Ukrainians to defend their very lives or assert their national self-determination”, summing this up memorably as “the anti-imperialism of amoral idiots”.

These issues have erupted inside a British trade union, the University and College Union (UCU) which has a reported membership of about 120,000 people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_and_College_Union . The report below makes for often ghastly reading. All the same, effective left-wing solidarity with Ukraine is essential – we urge readers to engage.

Article Source : https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article66925


Many academics in both Ukraine and the UK are horrified by the Putin-enabling posturing of far-left factions within the UCU

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The Neutrality Policy of the Irish State – A rational defence strategy is required

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The left campaign to defend the current Irish foreign policy of Neutrality should be supported – (more accurately the campaign should be styled Non-Alignment, in the sense of 100 per cent opposition to membership of NATO or any other imperialist military alliance).

Opponents of the Dublin government’s attempt to move closer to NATO got lucky.

Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin set up a public “consultative” forum examining Irish foreign policy – which is designed to push the Irish state closer to NATO. President Michael D Higgins launched an effective public attack

Irish President Michael D Higgins Mocked a British Empire Dame from Waterford, Louise Richardson – Is this Expert a good choice to chair an Irish Public Forum on the Neutrality Foreign Policy?

Higgins forced the issue into the mainstream media. Otherwise, the Forum would have taken place with much less publicity. Opponents of the government cannot rely on a lucky break like that every time.

The Irish State has ignored its responsibility to police our skies and our seas. It allows other states – primarily Britain – to do that job. Today, in 2023, international global tensions have risen to an alarming degree, and a very serious imperialist and genocidal war is occurring in the heart of Europe, in Ukraine. Russian imperialism is threatening the Irish state’s balancing act. Putin’s regime has openly threatened military action against the Irish state. That should not be laughed off or ignored. That is the reason the Dublin government is under pressure to get involved with a military alliance.

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‘Ireland’s Father Michael O’Flanagan’ by Cora MacAlbert from The New Masses. Vol. 28 No. 9. August 23, 1938 – valuable biography of Ireland’s radical priest, and one-time President of Sinn Fein, Father Michael O’Flanagan

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Very few leading personalities of the Catholic Church in Ireland actively supported left-wing causes. Father Michael O’Flanagan was one of them, and this is a very interesting biography. This is the source :

‘Ireland’s Father Michael O’Flanagan’ by Cora MacAlbert from The New Masses. Vol. 28 No. 9. August 23, 1938.

There is an very comprehensive account of Michael O’Flanagan’s life on Wikipedia, which concludes “A memorial was placed on his grave by the National Graves Association in 1992 to mark the 50th anniversary of his death. A memorial commemoration organised by the National Graves Association was held at O’Flanagan’s grave in Glasnevin cemetery on August 25, 2019. After an oration delivered by Tommy McKearney a new Celtic cross headstone was unveiled.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_O%27Flanagan

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Bizarre Things that American Con Artists and Clare Daly MEP Believe or Don’t Believe

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Joan McKiernan, who has been a socialist activist in both the United States and Ireland, reports. Joan also writes for Against the Current https://againstthecurrent.org/joan-mckiernan/

When I was teaching college sociology, I used to do a session on the bizarre things that Americans believe or don’t believe. Like, only 60% of Americans believe in evolution. 10% believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, to mention a few notable examples. Long ago, Mark Twain remarked, “It is easier to trick the average person, than it is to convince them that they have been tricked.”  

I should not have been surprised then during the Trump era and the pandemic, we saw so many Americans accepting untruths, refusing masks and vaccines, refusing to believe that Covid was real, even as they went to their deaths. And during these years after Trump’s defeat, so many still refuse to accept facts, electoral counts, data. We are told there are alternative versions of facts! 

So now we have the same lack of truth applied to support for Ukrainians resistance against the Russian invasion and destruction of their country. Recently, this was seen in this article, The Con Artists Who Blame Ukraine Aid for America’s Social Problems, in which independent presidential candidate and anti-vaxxer, RFK Jr., Green Party candidate Cornel West, Glenn Greenwald, and other Putin apologists are making disingenuous, pseudo-populist arguments against U.S. support for Ukraine. Rather than looking at capitalist exploitation, the Trump tax cuts, unemployment and low wages for the majority, they are blaming the Ukrainian support for all of the US social problems.  
https://newrepublic.com/article/173902/ukraine-war-cost-russian-propaganda-rfk-jr-greenwald  

The Con Artists Who Blame Ukraine Aid for America’s Social Problems

The reliance on untruths, twisted thinking and re-writing of history is no longer just an American characteristic. This week Irish member of the European Parliament, Clare Daly, came out with her own bizarre explanation of how to deal with the Ukraine war. She says, “The US sat down with the Taliban.” praised the role of United States in the Irish Good Friday Peace Agreement and said the international community should try and do something similar in Ukraine.  She accuses the West of giving arms in order to keep the war in Ukraine going! 

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The Con Artists Who Blame Ukraine Aid for America’s Social Problems

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We thank Joan McKiernan for drawing our attention to a very useful article. The issues it raises also affect political dialogue in other parts of the world, including Ireland. Sections of the left repeat, in many cases unwittingly, pro-Putin populist propaganda currently promoted by North American celebrities who sometimes dress in left-wing clothes. The author (Alaric DeArment) demolishes the apparently plausible claim below :

A scene of squalor unfolds as the camera moves along a city street lined with apparent drug addicts to the soundtrack of Childish Gambino’s “This Is America.” A caption reads, “While American citizens live on the streets and take drugs not to feel the pain, the United States would rather finance a proxy war against Russia,” while a bar graph says the U.S. has sent $46.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine.

Read on, to see what is fundamentally wrong with the above approach. Article Source :

https://newrepublic.com/article/173902/ukraine-war-cost-russian-propaganda-rfk-jr-greenwald

Howie Hawkins writes a very useful introduction :

The article below highlights a big problem the Ukraine solidarity movement faces. These influencers who are pitting Ukrainians against Americans have far more reach than we do. Glenn Greenwald has 300,000 substack subscribers. Jimmy Dore has 1.2 million YouTube subscribers. RFK Jr’ s celebrity status reaches millions.

Dore and these anti-Left influencers give expression to a conspiracist-minded populism that explains social problems as caused primarily by evil elite cabals rather than social structures. Their audiences are very susceptible to the conspiracist themes in Russian propaganda that these influencers amplify. 

The anti-Left “populist” influencers are also proudly “anti-woke,” which is to say hostile to anti-racist, feminist, and LGBTQ movements, saying that they divide the working class, which in their mind is white male when in fact it is majority women and people of color. It is their anti-woke rants that divide workers by race, gender, and sexual orientation. For example, see this ignorant denigration of Juneteenth by Jimmy Dore and his sidekick.

I don’t have any easy recommendations for us to deal with this phenomenon other than to keep organizing, speaking up, and building our own media.


Find out more about Howie Hawkins here : https://tomasoflatharta.com/2020/03/05/every-state-is-a-battleground-howie-hawkins-green-party-usa-presidential-candidate-in-2020-standing-on-the-ecosocialist-left-against-the-democrats-and-republicans/

The Con Artists Who Blame Ukraine Aid for America’s Social Problems

RFK Jr., Glenn Greenwald, and other Putin apologists are making disingenuous, pseudo-populist arguments against U.S. support for Ukraine.

A scene of squalor unfolds as the camera moves along a city street lined with apparent drug addicts to the soundtrack of Childish Gambino’s “This Is America.” A caption reads, “While American citizens live on the streets and take drugs not to feel the pain, the United States would rather finance a proxy war against Russia,” while a bar graph says the U.S. has sent $46.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine.

The video , on TikTok, is but one of the countless posts across social media that convey the same underlying message: By helping Ukraine defend itself from bloody subjugation by Russia, the U.S. is depriving its own citizens of critical aid. This pernicious narrative has spread in part thanks to fringe yet popular media and political figures who already had a history of littering the discourse with Kremlinesque talking points, and who now have weaponized and monetized the perception that the U.S. has been too generous to Ukraine and too stingy to its own people.

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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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