Archive for the ‘The Irish Times’ Category
Ireland’s Open(ish) Border – Sinn Féin on the Warpath
Ireland’s Open(ish) Border – Sinn Féin on the Warpath
Sinn Féin’s is warning Irish voters about “Open Borders”.
The party is promoting relentless propaganda in the run-up to the June 7 2024 European and local elections in Ireland.
This leaflet from Balbrigggan (Dublin) is a local version of statewide propaganda.
Let’s ask ourselves a question : What’s wrong with Open Borders?
Andrew Flood calls the border in Ireland Open(ish) – and he is spot on. Here is why :
I say Open(ish) because for two decades black or brown people crossing that border have been stopped and told to produce ‘papers’ by the Garda (claiming to be doing random checks). Maybe they want such checks stepped up, if not what is the demand here?
The border between the EU and the rest of the world is so closed that 3,000 people died trying to sneak across it last year. Over 20 times the number of people killed crossing the Berlin Wall in the 28 years it existed. The border with the 6 counties is Open(ish) – is it that?
OK we all know this is a response to the far right working with FFFGGP to blame Sinn Féin on the government’s failure to plan & communicate for large number of Ukrainian refugees. But this shite is just going to underline that Sinn Féin are no more principled that the rest.
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Sally Rooney: Killing in Gaza has been supported by Ireland’s ‘good friend’ in the White House
Sally Rooney: Killing in Gaza has been supported by Ireland’s ‘good friend’ in the White House
Our Government is basking in the moral glow of condemning the bombers, while preserving a cosy relationship with those supplying the bombs
Source :
“The cries of the innocent will haunt us forever if we stay silent.” These are the words of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, speaking at an event in Boston this week about Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza. And who could disagree? What is taking place in Palestine now is one of the most profound and shocking moral catastrophes of our time.
Already for months on end, Israeli military forces have been pounding the besieged, starving and largely homeless population of Gaza with relentless aerial bombardment. Cut off from the outside world, Palestinian survivors have been forced to document the crisis in real time, sharing stories, images and footage of mass graves, destroyed buildings and abandoned bodies. And with no end in sight, the United States continues to pump money and weapons into Israel to prolong the onslaught.
Read the rest of this entry »The War in Ukraine: Agenda for the Left – the most serious war on the European continent since the end of World War 2 in 1945 has not gone away, you know
Here are the latest articles published on the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine website ukraine-solidarity.eu in English.
For more information, write to the network at info@ukraine-solidarity.eu.
Israel’s genocidal war against Palestine has pushed Putin’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine off the national and international headlines, but the most serious war on the European continent since the end of World War 2 in 1945 has not gone away, you know.
In a rational left-wing political ecosphere, all forces across the left would be promoting the information below, and seeking collective action in solidarity with the workers and social movements of Ukraine against Moscow’s sinister far-right invasion. It is time to step up solidarity with Ukraine, before it is too late. One of the articles linked below is reproduced at the end of this blog post : The War in Ukraine: Agenda for the Left . We also reproduce the latest news report written by the outstanding Irish Times Eastern Europe correspondent, Daniel McLaughlin.
Racist Scumbags in Ireland Are Burning Unoccupied Buildings – The Hug-a-Thug Policing Strategy of Garda Boss Drew Harris is coming home to roost
A question to Garda Boss Drew Harris : How is the Hug-a-Thug Policing Strategy Playing Out?
In 2023, in his weekly Sunday Independent columns, Gene Kerrigan wrote devastating examinations of Garda Boss Drew Harris’s strategy for dealing with escalating far-right activity in Ireland. November 23 2023 racist riots in Dublin’s city centre prompted this sarcastic Kerrigan twitter comment :
“The classic part of their playbook,” Drew Harris said of the far right, “is an over-response by the authorities. We are not going to fall into that trap.” How’s the hug-a-thug policing strategy playing out, Drew?
Source : The Drew Harris Hug-a-Thug Policing Strategy
Racist riots erupted on Dublin’s streets on November 23 2023. The “hug-a-thug” philosophy of Drew Harris finds its way into this Irish Times report :
Many Garda officers do not accept the disturbances on the night were “far-right riots”, saying the event was more nuanced. They say the trouble was whipped up by a small far-right element before opportunists with no ideology seized the chance to go on a rampage, taking on gardaí and looting shops.
Conor Lally, Crime & Law
How far right-sparked violence dominated the year in policing during 2023, Irish Times December 27 2023
The Irish Far-Right is on an arson roll – its activists are burning unoccupied buildings which are earmarked to house homeless refugees.
Read the rest of this entry »Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin opens the door to coalition with Sinn Féin
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has said there would be “huge difficulties” with his party going into government with Sinn Féin, but did not rule out the possibility of such a coalition after the next election.
Irish Times December 26 2023
Fianna Fáil (FF) and Fine Gael (FG), two tweedledum and tweedledee capitalist parties, have controlled every government running the southern 26 county bit of partitioned Ireland since a 1921 Treaty was signed with the former occupying power, Britain. A carnival of reaction followed on both sides of the Irish border.
Faced with a false choice between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the only rational policy for the left was and is : no coalition, on principle, with any right-wing party.
The need for this policy is explained in this interview with Paul Murphy TD (People Before Profit, Dublin South-West) : To all of them we say: rule out coalition with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – interview with Paul Murphy TD after the February 2020 Irish General Election
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
Finbar Cafferkey: The life and death of an Irish fighter in Ukraine – Irish Times, July 15 2023
Dan McLaughlin and Conor Gallagher have written a fine tribute to Finbar Cafferkey. When Russia’s genocidal imperialist invasion of Ukraine is over – and hopefully is defeated – Finbar Cafferkey will deserve to be honoured as an Irish fighter who fought imperialist war at home and abroad.
How an Achill Islander came to fight and die as an international soldier in a foreign war
Colm Cafferkey was getting a bag of chips in Keel on Achill Island when he got the call saying his older brother Finbar was missing in action on the front lines in Ukraine.
Finbar and two other international volunteers were fighting with Ukrainian units in April to keep open a vital supply route to the city of Bakhmut, which was on verge of being overrun by the Russian invaders.
A sustained mortar strike hit the group, causing many casualties. Amid the chaos no one could be sure what happened to the 45-year-old Mayo man.
For the next week the Cafferkey family was worried but hopeful. Finbar had a reputation for disappearing for days or weeks at a time, only to pop up in another city or country.
Colm recalls them attending 1996 All-Ireland football final between Mayo and Meath and Finbar failing to show up at an arranged meeting spot.
“He rings us a few days later and he is in London. And then he rings a week later and he’s in Holland,” Colm recalls with a smile. “He could go three months without texting you.”
A week after he first heard his brother was missing, Colm got confirmation: Finbar was killed in the strike near Bakhmut, the devastated city in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, during Europe’s bloodiest battle since the second World War. He is the third Irish man known to have been killed in the fighting since the war started in February 2022. Continued fighting and the trading of territory between the sides meant recovering his remains was impossible.
Interviews with those who knew and fought alongside Cafferkey paint him as a brave, occasionally withdrawn man who was unable to stand still for long and who was willing to make sacrifices for his beliefs, even when it meant working alongside ideological opponents.
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Tomás Ó Flatharta 