Archive for the ‘Media and State Misbehaviour’ Category
Ukrainian socialist and academic, Yuliya Yurchenko, speaks at a public meeting ‘Ireland – Ukraine International Solidarity of the Left’ in Dublin on Monday November 21 : Teachers’ Club, 36 Parnell Square West, Dublin 1.
Ukrainian Socialist Yuliya Yurchenko to speak at Solidarity Meeting in Dublin :
Ukrainian socialist and academic, Yuliya Yurchenko, speaks at a public meeting ‘Ireland – Ukraine International Solidarity of the Left’ in Dublin on Monday November 21.
The meeting is organised by Irish Left With Ukraine, which says that the purpose of the meeting is to extend solidarity to the Ukrainian people as they continue to resist the Russian invasion of their country – and to amplify the voices of Ukrainian socialists and trade unionists.
Statement – Meeting Chairperson Nóirín Greene
Read the rest of this entry »Biden Fist Bump – Political Candidates who make promises they do not keep
Presidential candidates often make promises they don’t live up to after elections. Take the capital of Israel for example. For decades, U.S. …
Biden Fist Bump
Clay Jones writes about US Presidents like Joe Biden who made campaign promises they threw into the wheelie-bin once they took over at Washington DC’s White House :
Presidential candidates often make promises they don’t live up to after elections. Take the capital of Israel for example.
For decades, U.S. presidential candidates promised to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. embassy to the holy city from Tel Aviv. But reality would arrive after they were sworn in and they’d ignore the promise. Most nations don’t recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel since the Palestinians also claim it. While there are multiple resolutions from the United Nations, the European Union, and organized middle east nations, most of them come down to stating the designation of the city hasn’t been resolved, so no recognition. It would take a real dumbass to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move our embassy there as it’d be a huge obstacle to ever bringing peace between Israel and Palestine. Donald Trump is a huge dumbass. While he kept a campaign promise others did not, he made it clear that the United States, while he was president (sic), didn’t care about the Palestinian people.
Read the rest of this entry »No to war – Russia hands off Ukraine!
This is a very clear statement – Russia Hands Off Ukraine! Source : http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article61191 – where readers can view a long list of people and organizations endorsing the statement. Sign the statement here : https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/2022/01/28/russia-hands-off-ukraine-2/
The Ukraine Solidarity Campaign in Britain released this call to action.
Readers may also like to read this recommended article written by Volodymyr Ishchenko, who explores the possible consequences that would flow from a successful Russian military invasion of Ukraine. https://lefteast.org/russian-invasion-could-destabilize-russias-political-order/
Volodymyr Ishchenko is a research associate at the Institute of East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. His research focused on protests and social movements, revolutions, radical right and left politics, nationalism and civil society. He authored a number of peer-reviewed articles and interviews on contemporary Ukrainian politics, the Euromaidan uprising and the following war in 2013-14, published in Post-Soviet Affairs, Globalizations and New Left Review, among other journals. He has been a prominent contributor to major international media outlets such as The Guardian and Jacobin since 2014. He is working on a collective book manuscript, The Maidan Uprising: Mobilization, Radicalization, and Revolution in Ukraine, 2013-2014. Source : https://lefteast.org/russian-invasion-could-destabilize-russias-political-order/
We, socialists, trade unionists, scholars, activists for human rights, social justice and peace, stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine against Russian imperialism.
The international left and labour movement must vigorously oppose Russia’s threats against Ukraine.
We say neither Washington nor Moscow. We oppose the policy and manoeuvrings of the big Western powers and NATO.
Read the rest of this entry »But currently it is Russia that is threatening the Ukrainian people’s right to self-determination and challenging their legitimacy as an independent nation.
British State Trying to Shoot a Birmingham Six Messenger Chris Mullin – Journalist in the Old Bailey Dock – Charged under 2000 ‘Terrorism Act” because he is protecting his sources
This Duncan Campbell story comes from the British Guardian Newspaper. The journalist and former Labour MP (Sunderland South) Chris Mullin is protecting his sources. He bravely confronted a monstrous British State frame-up of Six Irish political hostages, jailed for 16 years for a crime they did not commit. These men were known all over the world as The Birmingham Six.
Read the rest of this entry »Derry’s Bloody Sunday March January 30 2022 – Most Establishment Media Failed to Report It Accurately
Derry’s Bloody Sunday March, January 30 2022 – the 50th Anniversary : Diarmuid Breatnach offers this very perceptive analysis :
YESTERDAY WAS THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF THE BLOODY SUNDAY MASSACRE IN DERRY BY BRITISH TROOPS. WHAT DID THE MEDIA COVER?
Diarmuid Breatnach
In the morning, a couple of hundred gathered for politicians including the Taoiseach (Prime Minister of the Irish State) to attend a memorial at the massacre Monument in Derry.
In mid-afternoon, an estimated 20,000 marched in rain and wind, along the original route of the anti-internment march upon which the British Paratroopers had opened fire in 1972, fatally wounding 14 and injuring many others. Speakers at the rally at the end of the march included two of the original organisers and speakers in 1972: Eamon McCann and Bernadette Devlin (now McAlliskey).
Later, a maximum of 400 attended an event in the Derry Guildhall which figured among others artists of various media.
A trawl of the on-line mass media coverage found only two of those events even mentioned. Which one was excluded? The one attended by 20,000 people following the original route in the wind and rain, being addressed by two of the original organisers 50 years ago.
Isn’t it fortunate that we have a free press, unlike in some countries because, as we are often reminded, you can’t have democracy without a free press.
Here is the visual evidence – a huge march occurred in Derry, established media outlets failed to report it :
Read the rest of this entry »Thousands took to the streets to march on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday – DerryNow Report
The feedback I got all week was that the 2022 Bloody Sunday March in Derry today would be huge. This turned out to be true. An initial report is below.
Here is the intriguing bit. The mass media (e.g. RTÉ Radio Bulletin this morning at 8.00am) reported lots of other stuff – for example, Dublin government taoiseach Mícheál Martin laying a wreath – and said nothing about the march this afternoon at 2.30pm in Derry featuring speeches by Bernadette McAliskey, Éamonn McCann, and others. RTÉ is a public service broadcaster in Ireland largely funded by a license fee. It comes under pressure from the “great and the good” to toe the line and exclude radical voices. And sometimes it gets things spectacularly wrong – today was an example.
What is the key political message today : Prosecute the Generals!
We will keep fighting – and, eventually, we might win. If we don’t fight, we definitely lose.
“There Were Plans in Train for Something Terrible to Happen” Robert Ballagh on Derry’s Bloody Sunday, January 30 1972
“The Thirtieth of January” is a new Robert Ballagh Painting about Derry’s Bloody Sunday, January 30 1972. In a brief interview with the Museum of Free Derry, The artist describes his motivation and his actions at the time in Ireland’s capital city, Dublin. https://youtu.be/9ZZZNhwnpG0
He notes that the British state’s Saville Inquiry found that the people killed by the Paratroop Regiment were innocent – but there is a “nagging question” – “nobody has been proven guilty of anything”. Robert included a reference to this “nagging doubt” in the painting. It is a “shoot to kill” order written by the British Army’s Major General Robert Ford some time before January 30 1972. Ford suggested that several of the Derry “young hooligans” – as the Major-General called them – should be shot.
I am coming to the conclusion that the minimum force necessary to achieve a restoration of law and order is to shoot selected ringleaders among the Derry Young Hooligans
Major-General Robert Ford of the British Army
The artist reproduces these words on an elegantly designed document in the painting. The source for the words is an Éamonn McCann booklet about Britain’s Parachute Regiment.
Bernadette McAliskey and Éamonn McCann Marching in Derry, January 2019
Convicted Criminal Ghislaine Maxwell – Low Media Standards, an Irish Link, and a Prince of England
A lot of public commentary about the convicted criminal Ghislaine Maxwell, her late boss Jeffrey Epstein, and an alleged client, Britain’s Prince Andrew, suffers from low media standards. An interesting exception is the reporting of a former BBC correspondent John Sweeney.
It is a horrific story. Known credible allegations should be highlighted.
Lazy speculation and lurid gossip should be avoided.
John Sweeney – a Blogger-Journalist who carefully assesses hard evidence
John Sweeney carefully assesses real hard evidence. The author avoids sloppy tabloid-gossip methods. He explains the serious evidence very well. The scandal is far from over in the courts – especially in the case of the British state’s Prince called Andrew.
John Sweeney explains no evidence was presented at the Maxwell trial implicating Bill Clinton in either trafficking or criminal sexual intercourse with underage women. Evidence was presented proving that Clinton, ex US President Donald Trump and other wealthy powerful men accepted freebie flights given by Epstein and Maxwell. Sweeney sarcastically observes at one point that men such as Clinton and Trump enjoyed having sex with 23 year old women – the Epstein/Maxwell gang assisted them.
Sweeney also explores very interesting connections between the criminal behaviour of Ghislaine Maxwell and her late father Robert Maxwell : a corrupt billionaire who died after he fell off his private luxury yacht “Lady Ghislaine” in disputed circumstances.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 
