Archive for the ‘Ireland’ Category
European Left leaders on Ukraine: Not even a hint of solidarity
We thank Dick Nichols, European Editor of the Australian Magazine Green Left Weekly, who drew our attention to an important article on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, written by Murray Smith.
Article Source : https://links.org.au/european-left-leaders-ukraine-not-even-hint-solidarity
About the author : Murray Smith is a member of the leadership of déi Lénk (“The Left”) in Luxembourg and is one of its representatives on the Executive Board of the Party of the European Left. https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?auteur11
European Left leaders on Ukraine: Not even a hint of solidarity
6 October, 2023
The site of the think tank Transform! published an article, “The Left and the inter-imperial war”, by Michael Brie and Heinz Bierbaum on August 13. The authors are long-standing and widely respected leading figures in Die Linke (The Left, Germany). Heinz Bierbaum was President of the European Left Party from 2019 to 2022 and is now President of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
Die Linke is today in a crisis that is widely described as existential. Many comrades are trying to help the party emerge from the fog in which it seems to have lost itself and develop an approach that is class-based and class-oriented. Brie and Bierbaum are two of them. Some time ago they co-wrote an article in Neues Deutschland along those lines. There were only passing references to the war in Ukraine, but they were disquieting. In the light of their present contribution, the disquieting references were clearly premonitory to something much more serious. (A recent contribution by Walter Baer, President of the European Left Party, “Making the difference”, which deals with broader questions, is on the question of Ukraine, close to the position of Brie and Bierbaum, albeit in a more moderate tone).
The authors quote from Ferdinand Lassalle: “All great political action begins with the enunciation of what is. All political small-mindedness consists in concealing and glossing over what is.” One can only agree. So, let us ask ourselves, what is, in Ukraine, today? And the first point to make is that the most important thing that is happening does not get a mention in their document.
We could say that the most important thing is that Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. That is of course true, and it is what started the present war. But actually, the really important thing is that the invasion was met by the massive resistance of the Ukrainian people. Not just the government and the armed forces, but the people. Partisans in the occupied territories, organisations and movements of civil society and grassroots initiatives everywhere, supporting the defence of their country. The Roma community, frequently the object of discrimination in Ukraine as elsewhere, has also mobilised. The forms of resistance can be many, both armed and unarmed. There are two major trade union confederations in Ukraine. They both support the defence of their country. They raise money to help their members who are in the armed forces and to buy military equipment. The political left supports the war, as does a very active women’s network. Even the anarchists have suspended their opposition to all states to join the army and fight.
Read the rest of this entry »Palestine, Ukraine, Neutrality and the right to defence
Des Derwin
(This is a repost of a post on the Irish Left With Ukraine Facebook page, 8th October 2023)
There is unlikely to be any supporter of Irish Left With Ukraine who will not also support the latest Palestinian uprising (though I for one by no means approve of attacks on civilians and non-combatants). Today supporters of the Palestinian cause are rightly incensed by the reportage of the Hamas offensive and of the savage Israeli retaliation. At the inconsistency and one-sided nature of that reportage, starting with the RTE radio news bulletins this morning which featured an Israeli spokesperson but no spoken word from Palestine. RTE’s flagship This Week programme had the Israeli Ambassador on. The double standards of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who mixes vociferous support for Ukrainian resistance with a crawling support for Israeli actions, sickens any decent humanitarian. And, yes, those in solidarity with Ukraine, including myself, have opposed Ukrainian President Zelensky’s bizarre obsequious salutes to the Israeli regime too. The Irish Left rightly blasts establishment inconsistency. But seems blissfully unaware of the beam in its own eye.
It really doesn’t feel at all like whataboutery, but more like disgust at dismal double standards to point out the lack of response, the silence, across the Irish organised left to the Russian attacks on civilians of recent days, of the past twenty months, and the contrast with the horror and condemnation being quite correctly displayed over the new Israeli attacks on civilians.
What can be the motivation here but blinkered and politically-guided theatre, without any real feeling for people wherever they are trampled on, without any actual cognition of aggression, invasion, occupation and imperialist colonialism?
What is happening to the Palestinians is monstrous. What is happening to the Ukrainians is monstrous. What does the organised socialist Left and its associated ‘peace’ groups do? It organises a national march on ‘neutrality’ that is really against supporting Ukraine. Just read the text of the leaflet copied here which was distributed at the Cost of Living march yesterday. While issuing statements on the same day offering “full solidarity with the heroic Palestinian people”, while posting on Facebook on the same day ‘End the occupation of Israel’, and then rushing to organise demonstrations for the Palestinians being assailed in exactly the same ways as the Ukrainians (without waiting for the solidarity groups who have campaigned for Palestine all along)!
A post for such a demo actually says, “If Ukraine has the right to defend themselves so do the Palestinians”! While the same people, wearing even the same logos, are actively organising a march for November 4th against the Ukrainians right to defend themselves! Defending the right of Hamas and the Palestinians to defend themselves against Israel while opposing the right of Ukrainians to defend themselves against Russia, and attacking as “a breach of neutrality” even the supply of “flak jackets to the Ukrainian Armed Forces”!
This Left rightly condemns Israel but doesn’t even mention Russia in its leaflet for the neutrality march distributed yesterday.
Yes, I’ll be attending the Palestinian protests. No, I won’t be attending the anti-Ukrainian, succour-for-Putin, march in Dublin on 4th November.
Russia’s Genocidal Invasion of Ukraine – Discussion inside the DSA (USA) continues
The leadership of a USA organisation, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) recently deleted an article about Ukraine from its website – generating many protests.
John Reimann reports :
DSA’s National Political Committee is claiming that they removed the article on Ukraine on the grounds that the author is not a DSA member. However, David Duhalde says he listened to their meeting on Zoom and the real issue was the subject matter of the article. In any case, three of us DSA members – Linda Mann, Cheryl Zuur, and myself submitted this article. We will see what excuse they come up with now.
As DSA members and members of the Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign, we are writing to debunk several beliefs about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The first myth is that the 2014 Maidan uprising was a U.S. inspired right wing “coup”. Of course in any popular movement foreign powers will try to find an advantage. There were participants of the Arab Spring in Tahrir Square who were working with the (U.S. Republican Party’s) International Republican Institute. (One of the authors of this article, John Reimann, personally met them in Tahrir Square.) That does not mean that the Republican Party was manipulating and controlling the uprising.
Andrey Kurkov, a Ukrainian writer who was at Maidan
Read the rest of this entry »Irish Police Boss Drew Harris Offers Light-Touch Appeasement to Far-Right Protesters Outside the Gates of Leinster House – Skeletons Rattling in the Garda Commissioner’s Cupboard
Irish Police boss Drew Harris is in trouble – rank-and-file members of the Garda Representative Association (GRA) have voted no confidence in their chief – 10803 ballots issued, 9129 returned, 99 per cent of them (9113) against Harris, only 116 in favour. The GRA is on a collision course with Drew Harris and the Dublin Government over rosters introduced to deal with the Covid 19 emergency in 2020. Justice Minister Helen McEntee might be wishing she never heard of Drew Harris, but she has no excuses – plenty of warning lights were flashing.
Drew Harris was always a controversial choice. Appointed in September 2018, his preceding police career was spent in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) of Northern Ireland from 1983 onwards. The RUC was renamed the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in 2001 in order to overcome a well-earned bad reputation. Skeletons are in the cupboard, and they haunt the boss of An Garda Síochána. One significant reason for the RUC’s negative image is the 1975 Miami Showband Massacre.
Unclean Hands of Garda Boss Drew Harris
Miami Showband Massacre Survivor Stephen Travers on the Garda Commissioner Drew Harris :
Read the rest of this entry »When he was part of the PSNI, Mr Harris had blocked, delayed and frustrated every effort to “find out who shot our lads”, he told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland.
‘Lost Boys’ Film Adds Fuel To Kincora Fire And One Question: ‘Why Did The BBC Drop This Film?’ – Re- Blogged Posts which originally appeared on Ed Moloney’s site, The Broken Elbow
Introduction :
On Wednesday September 27 a world premiere takes place in Dublin’s Irish Film Institute
World Premiere
During the winter of 1969, young boys started to disappear from the streets of Belfast, never to be seen again. By 1974, as the Troubles were reaching a bloody and vicious peak, five boys in total had vanished within a five-mile radius. Fifty years later, as the disappearances remain unsolved and families continue to search for answers, filmmaker Des Henderson (How to Diffuse a Bomb) reopens these largely forgotten cold-cases, unearthing disturbing revelations in secret state documents to tell an extraordinary tale of abuse, trauma and potential cover-up.
Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn
Ed Moloney offers the recommendation below. Chris Moore, a journalist who has researched the subject thoroughly for many decades, wrote a fascinating (and chilling) background story about state collusion and child abuse on Ed Moloney’s blog in June 2023. it is reprinted below.
‘Lost Boys’ Film Adds Fuel To Kincora Fire And One Question: ‘Why Did The BBC Drop This Film?’
I had the opportunity yesterday to watch the new Kincora film made by Belfast’s own film company Alleycats. Called ‘Lost Boys’ it asks a simple but necessary question: was the disappearance and murder of four Belfast schoolboys in the 1970’s linked to the subsequent Kincora scandal, which broke some few years afterwards, revealing that all the employees at the home for wayward boys had been abusing inmates for years?
Read the rest of this entry »Irish troops to provide weapons training to Ukraine despite Government’s ‘non-lethal’ assistance pledge – Irish Times News Report, August 18 2023
“Department of Defence insists training does not impact neutrality and that there was no attempt to mislead public” – Irish Times
A copy of Conor Gallagher’s report is here :
Paul Murphy TD (Dublin South-West, People Before Profit) has issued a deeply mistaken public response, consistent with his party’s previously stated opposition to any military anti-imperialist solidarity action in support of the Ukrainian masses’ fight against a genocidal Russian invasion. Source :
This is a grim PBP Left-Evasionist chapter, part of the shocking story: failure to show anti-imperialist solidarity with the masses of Ukraine who are resisting a genocidal Russian invasion.
On July 29 2023 the PBP helped to organise a well-supported anti-racist rally in Dún Laoghaire, a town which proudly hosts a magnificent statue honouring the Irish anti-imperialist gun-runner and human rights activist Roger Casement.
PBP speakers drew attention to the many reasons we honour Casement today : but they overlooked a vital fact : this Easter 1916 rebel imported weapons from Kaiser Wilhelm’s German Empire in order to strike a blow against the then mighty British Empire.
John Meehan August 18 2023
What is a word you feel that too many people use? (indirect answers – or statements you should never believe in Ireland)
i was asked to answer this question :
What is a word you feel that too many people use?
The question is not directly answered here.
Many people deploy the following suggestions instead of saying Yes or No to a direct request – pointless conversations, EMail exchanges etc follow instead of simple actions.
Some of these are famous – they are assurances you should never believe in Ireland :
The cheque is in the post.
Send me a copy of a document (which the author already has) and I might be able to do something for you.
I will do that immediately and get back to you.
Correcting Mandel: Why arming Ukraine is the road to peace
This is a very good polemical article, written by the Canadian author David Gutnick, examining Professor David Mandel’s calls for Ukrainians to accept a ceasefire and negotiate with Russia immediately.
The source is :
Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
David Gutnick’s article was originally published in :
Canadian Dimension
Monday 14 August 2023, by GUTNICK David
Correcting Mandel: Why arming Ukraine is the road to peace
“Pacifism has its place, but not here and not now,” writes David Gutnick
David Mandel and I share much more in common than our given name. We’re both French-speaking Anglophones who live in Montréal. Like professor Mandel, I worked for decades at a publicly funded institution: he taught at universities, while I produced documentaries for CBC Radio. We both consider ourselves humanists who want to help build a kinder, more democratic and socialist world.
But while reading Mandel’s August 2 piece in this publication, it became clear that we profoundly disagree on how to get there.
In a nutshell, Mandel calls for Ukrainians to accept a ceasefire and negotiate with Russia immediately, while I—following the lead of Ukrainians—believe the country needs more arms: the deadlier the better, unfortunately.
Mandel—like Vladimir Putin—says his position is the humanist one, as it will save lives.
I think that is wrongheaded. A wealth of evidence proves Volodymyr Zelensky’s position is right: Russia’s present leadership is bloodthirsty, intent on building an untrustworthy imperialist power. Putin slaughtered Chechens and Georgians when they would not submit to Russian domination, and now he is slaughtering Ukrainians. He will not hesitate to slaughter whoever is next to get in his way.
Humanists think of peace-building in the long term, and that means standing up to aggression now, not turning the other cheek.
Pacifism has its place, but not here and not now.
Unless Putin pulls back his army, Ukrainians have no choice but to fight.
Mandel writes that over the decades he has been “opposed to the policies of the regimes of these states, which were and remain deeply hostile to workers’ interests.”
We share that view.
But since the first Russian tanks illegally crossed Ukraine’s border into Crimea on February 20, 2014, then again into Kyiv on February 24, 2022, it is not just “workers’ interests” which have suffered: tens of thousands of Ukrainian trade unionists, kindergarten monitors, university students, mothers and fathers and innocent children have been killed by Russian invaders.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tomás Ó Flatharta 